Featured Interview With Clare Stevens
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Raised in Somerset, England, now living in Nottingham (the legendary land of Robin Hood). I have a hyperactive Springer/Pointer cross called Max.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I could read before I went to school, age 4. Before that I had a fascination with stories, sparked by my older sister who created an imaginary world full of ghosts and monsters set in the village in Somerset where we grew up. She’d tell me stories at bedtime which kept me awake! I started writing at a young age too, and recall an occasion when the teacher read out one of my stories to the class. It was a proud moment that made me want to become a writer.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
A genre I enjoy is magical realism – I like books set in the real, contemporary world that have a supernatural thread running through them, such as How to Stop Time by Matt Haig and A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman. I also enjoy literary fiction as long as it’s not too miserable! Contemporary authors I admire are Mitch Albom, Gail Honeyman and Joanna Cannon. My all time favourite book is The Great Gatsby.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Blue Tide Rising is my first novel. It tells the story of Amy, a young woman running away from her past who winds up on a coastal eco-farm on the island of Anglesey, North Wales. At the start of the book, she’s at rock bottom, medically tranquillized and living in a crummy bedsit in a deprived part of Manchester. Here she meets the mysterious Jay, who encourages her to start a new life in Wales. Once at the farm, she encounters kindness and acceptance from people who don’t care about her past. She starts to rebuild her life, grounded by the earth and healed by the salt air. But it isn’t just her inner self she manages to uncover. She stumbles on a mystery that only she can solve, and in so doing, tackles the ghosts of her own past.
Amy is a complex character who had the foundations taken from under her at a young age and for a while went off the rails, trusting the wrong people. Throughout the course of the novel, she finds her place in the world and realises she has something to give.
The eco farm – Môr towel (which means ‘quiet sea’ in Welsh) – is based on a real place. In the novel, it’s populated by an eccentric mix of characters, such as the multi-lingual woman who walks compulsively all over the island with her four children, and the man who pitches up at the farm one day, builds a wigwam in the garden, never speaks and leaves exactly a year later.
I began writing the novel in 2014 while studying for an MA in Creative Writing – I used it as the basis for my dissertation. After several drafts I landed a publishing contract with Inspired Quill, a small ethical indie-press. The book was published in 2019.
Connect with the Author on their Websites and Social media profiles