Interview with Pippa Jay

There are some ladies in this world who simply refuse to accept the confining box in which people insist on trying to place them. Pippa Jay hasn’t been one to sit quietly in a corner and wait her turn. With three novels, numerous short stories and even a novella or two to her name, Pippa defends her corner of the SFF world with pride and refuses to allow genre stigma to interrupt her charge on the bestseller lists. Pippa’s current novel Keir’s Fall, the second book of the Redemption series was published in December. She is currently working on Reunion at Kasha-Asor also part of the Redemption series. At the same time as writing, she channels her endless energy into promoting both her traditionally-published and self-published work. The bulk of Pippa’s ever growing works belong on the SF-and-Paranormal-With-a-Touch-of-Romance shelves.

Wait a minute…

Romance?

Are you really an SFF author, or are you just hiding a romance story in a sciencey-wiency backdrop?

And what’s wrong with that, exactly? Lol. If you really pressed me to define myself by a single genre, it would be scifi because that’s my main area of interest and preference. But I find the romance element adds an extra dimension and delivers more emotional impact than without (although I do write non-romantic stories too!). So, yeah, I’m really an SFF author. Really, really.

How did you take the step from being an Analytical Chemist to a full time author?

Not in a single step, that’s for sure! More a wibbly wobbly, twisty turn-y, slog up a mountain. I’ve written all my life, but aside from submitting a Doctor Who novel back in the 90s as a teen, it was always more of a hobby. I never even thought about a career as an author. I was really into my science subjects at school, so I spent twelve years as a Chemist before leaving to look after my three little monsters. It was just as my youngest became a bit more independent that I realized I needed something more to keep me occupied. I was fat, unfit, bored, and feeling rather pointless beyond being a wife and mother (don’t get me wrong – those are both worthy titles and I don’t resent either. But I felt as though that’s all I was, that the person I’d been had ceased to exist and my life’s role had become nothing past housework and childcare). I needed something more. I needed to find my passion and rediscover who and what I was.

So I picked up an unfinished short story, sat at my computer, whacked on some music and started writing again after not doing much for over a decade. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. My husband thought I’d gone insane, but it was a real epiphany for me. It took me six weeks to get the first draft, then another three months to produce a polished manuscript. I spent a year submitting to the handful of agents in the UK who would represent scifi, and when I failed to find representation there, a fellow new author suggested trying the digital-only small presses springing up in the US. Out of the top three I chose and submitted to, Lyrical Press Inc. (now a division of Kensington Books) offered me a contract, and I was officially published in May 2012 with that debut novel. I now got fourteen titles available, two of them on preorder, and a fifteenth releasing in May. I’ve also got plenty more unfinished drafts filling up my hard drive too.

Does much of your former career inform on your writing? Did it affect the choice to write in the SFF genre?

Not so much. Ironically the only time I’ve ever really used my chemistry background in a story was for a paranormal short called Hallow’s Eve. It was for a resurrection spell being used to bring back a loved one by my main character. I had to work out the chemical composition of a human body, and then figure out what handy household equivalents I could use and how much of each I would need (charcoal for the carbon, matchboxes for the phosphorus, chalk for the calcium etc). Great fun to do, although I’m a bit rusty and I’m still not entirely sure I got all my maths right.

But I don’t think my former career has influenced my writing as such. I’ve been a lifelong fan of both science fiction and science fact, so both interests have run in tandem for me. I never intended to be an author but I always planned to work in a laboratory of some kind, and I suppose my interest in real science helps me with my world-building.

As an Indie Author have you found self-publishing to be a more rewarding route? Why?

For me, much of the reward is the whole control aspect. Control over my covers, pricing, formatting, running sales and promotions, choosing my editor and cover artist etc. Not that I’ve ever been particularly unhappy working with a publisher (I’ve never had a cover I hated or an editor I couldn’t get along with) and certainly that means less work for me in terms of all the uploading, editing and artwork, but I think self-publishing is the way ahead for me. While it means I now have to do all the donkey work myself and take on the burden of things going wrong and all the business side of it, at the end of the day I’m getting a bigger chunk of the royalties in return. It also means I can experiment more and put out titles that I might have struggled to find a publisher for. So, creative control and creative freedom are the big pluses.

I know you value your readers and have a lot of love for your fans. If you could invite all of your fans to a party, what piece of technology (anywhen anywhere) would you demand to have, and how would you transport them to it?

Oh, easy! The TARDIS of course! Then we really could go anywhen, anywhere with no worries about transportation, and still get home in time for tea. We could crash any and every party in the whole of time and space.

A never ending party but still with time to write, clever. Speaking of writing, what was the most challenging part of writing Keir’s Fall?

I had to make my hero do something that, even though it fitted with his personality and he had good reason to do, made me hate him just a bit and I found it very hard to reconnect with him afterwards. Which sounds bizarre, since I could simply have written it another way, but I thought it was more likely and believable that he would do it as I’d written it. However, it also meant quite a big change to the latter part of the story, and there was one particular scene I completely rewrote twice but my editor kept throwing back saying it wasn’t there yet. Ugh, I really hated that scene after a while. But I want the story to be the best it can, and I’ve worked with Dani since my debut novel so we know each other well and she knows exactly when I’m being lazy and slaps me for it (I am lazy on occasion – it’s one of my faults).

Social media is a key weapon in your arsenal, and it’s something you use with a deft touch. It’s also your self-confessed Achilles heel. What would you do if Twitter and its social media friends were deleted from existence?

Say what?! *blinks* um, run round in circles screaming? Twitter is one social media platform I’d hate to go without because I love to chat there (you can delete Facebook and Google+ without any tears from me), but assuming email isn’t counted as social media, I guess I’d have to manage with that. And actual real life public appearances. *gulps*

Don’t worry, Pippa, I don’t think running around in circles will be something you’ll be doing for a while. Thanks for taking the time to joining us. If you want to hear more from her Pippa is quite addicted to sharing her knowledge on Twitter, or in a less frenetic fashion you’ll be able to keep up with her and her many awards on her website http://www.pippajay.co.uk/

*****