Ask the Author: Judi Moore
Answered Questions (14)
Judi Moore
When I called his name he ran towards me. As he got nearer I could see that there was no recognition in his eyes and his jaws were bloody.
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I am rubbish at horror stories. Don't read 'em, don't watch horror movies. This is actually, I suspect, the middle bit of a six sentence horror story. At six sentences I would definitely be peaking vis a vis the writing of a horror story.
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I am rubbish at horror stories. Don't read 'em, don't watch horror movies. This is actually, I suspect, the middle bit of a six sentence horror story. At six sentences I would definitely be peaking vis a vis the writing of a horror story.
Judi Moore
I have not. This is a different (American, I believe) Judi Moore. She is nothing to do with me. I do not write for children.
Judi Moore
I would travel up the Space Elevator to Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Red Mars'. What an opportunity that would be, to terraform a world and watch it turn green under our care. The views he describes are out of this world (sorry, couldn't resist) and the sunsets are to die for. Which reminds me - there are some who are keen that the project should not succeed and they are prepared to resort to murder. When outside is still a vacuum murder is quite easy ...
Judi Moore
I don't like a reading list. It smacks too much of the to-do list that I never get around to half of.
These days I spend a goodly amount of my available reading time reviewing other people's fiction (usually indie books), for Big Al & Pals and also on my own account. You can see my book reviews on my blog - judimoore.wordpress.com. They are also posted on Goodreads, but I have no idea how you would find them, unless you happened upon a book I've written about. I enjoy reviewing, but it does mean that often I'm not reading purely for pleasure. But then, when you start writing you never read for pleasure in the same way again.
I always seem to be acquiring samples of things that look as though I might like them (to the extent that my Kindle sighs with despair whenever I add another one). I may go on to buy some of them on paper or on Kindle, or borrow them from the excellent local library here which keeps up to date with the fiction and non-fiction it buys.
I acquire quite a few of what I call 'soft reading' books (genre fiction - SF, fantasy, thrillers, mysteries) for reading in bed, on Kindle, at reduced price (or free) from sites like Bookbub.
With all those influences, am I mistress of my own reading? Nope. Do I mind? Nope.
These days I spend a goodly amount of my available reading time reviewing other people's fiction (usually indie books), for Big Al & Pals and also on my own account. You can see my book reviews on my blog - judimoore.wordpress.com. They are also posted on Goodreads, but I have no idea how you would find them, unless you happened upon a book I've written about. I enjoy reviewing, but it does mean that often I'm not reading purely for pleasure. But then, when you start writing you never read for pleasure in the same way again.
I always seem to be acquiring samples of things that look as though I might like them (to the extent that my Kindle sighs with despair whenever I add another one). I may go on to buy some of them on paper or on Kindle, or borrow them from the excellent local library here which keeps up to date with the fiction and non-fiction it buys.
I acquire quite a few of what I call 'soft reading' books (genre fiction - SF, fantasy, thrillers, mysteries) for reading in bed, on Kindle, at reduced price (or free) from sites like Bookbub.
With all those influences, am I mistress of my own reading? Nope. Do I mind? Nope.
Judi Moore
I am working on two short sets of linked stories: 'Four stories from Camelbridge' and 'Tales from Piddlebottom'. Pure displacement activity whilst I continue to wade through the (self-inflicted) complexities of my 'history and mystery' novel about the Genghis Khan (which is going to be fantastic when it's done ...). One of the short books should be out this year.
Judi Moore
My life has been many things, but it has not been full of mysteries. This is perhaps why I so enjoy letting rip in the areas of 'what if' in what I write. I am an historian by training and inclination and there are a lot of mysteries still waiting to be uncovered in history. I enjoy riveting what we know about historical events and/or people together with what might have happened. That's what I did with my novella 'Little Mouse'. And, of course, you cannot write about the future without a sound understanding of the past, which is what I drew on for my first novel 'Is death really necessary?'
Judi Moore
I remain very fond of my own fictional couple in 'Is death really necessary?' - Teddy Goldstein and Gates Hanford. Each is so dysfunctional in their own way. Then they meet and discover - to their surprise - that they are capable of being moved by another person, despite the emotional damage they've each suffered. I'd write a further book exploring who they become, if I didn't have a bunch of other writing project gnawing at me.
Other people's fictional couples? I find it hard to remember books, movies etc in that level of detail to be honest. Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler linger of course - but I wouldn't say I like either of them much and am not any fonder of them as a pair. Aragorn and Arwen from the Lord of the Rings trilogy make a handsome couple - but there's too much yearning to be together and not enough doing anything about it for my taste. That's what I call the Mills & Boon approach to romance and what, for want of a more precise term, I'll call 'coupling' (boy finds girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again, the end). Life together is never explored. In the case of the Ranger and the Elf they're a bit busy saving Middlearth: I get that. But I don't have patience for a lot of unrequited yearning. For the same reason I am impatient with Lizzie Bennet (who misunderstands far too easily and could sulk for Team GB if it was an Olympic Sport) and Mr Darcy who is a supercilious prig. When they finally get together we are asked to believe that the priggishness and sulkiness are swept away, but are they really? I give that marriage 18 months ...
Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, out of Agatha Christie's canon, are fun. They make a good team because they complement each other. But she has constantly to permit him to exercise the obligatory chauvinism of the day, which makes my teeth grind.
I could go on.
So no: I have no favourite fictional couple.
Other people's fictional couples? I find it hard to remember books, movies etc in that level of detail to be honest. Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler linger of course - but I wouldn't say I like either of them much and am not any fonder of them as a pair. Aragorn and Arwen from the Lord of the Rings trilogy make a handsome couple - but there's too much yearning to be together and not enough doing anything about it for my taste. That's what I call the Mills & Boon approach to romance and what, for want of a more precise term, I'll call 'coupling' (boy finds girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again, the end). Life together is never explored. In the case of the Ranger and the Elf they're a bit busy saving Middlearth: I get that. But I don't have patience for a lot of unrequited yearning. For the same reason I am impatient with Lizzie Bennet (who misunderstands far too easily and could sulk for Team GB if it was an Olympic Sport) and Mr Darcy who is a supercilious prig. When they finally get together we are asked to believe that the priggishness and sulkiness are swept away, but are they really? I give that marriage 18 months ...
Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, out of Agatha Christie's canon, are fun. They make a good team because they complement each other. But she has constantly to permit him to exercise the obligatory chauvinism of the day, which makes my teeth grind.
I could go on.
So no: I have no favourite fictional couple.
Judi Moore
Thank you for the opportunity, Maryann, but I'm fully booked with review work now until the end of March.
Judi Moore
I'm going to fudge this. Not least because I'm still working on my third novel (which is my most recent opus) and I don't want to give everything away ;o) Even a short story isn't really a single idea. If I have a single idea I want to explore I tend to use poetry. A novel will be an interweaving and marinading of lots of ideas. It will develop along the way. It may cease to resemble the original idea at all by the time it's finished. I'm not a great planner. I once made the mistake of trying to co-write a book with someone who was. It didn't go well. You can write as many notes and lists as you like, but you are not writing a book. You may get to know of what the book consists extremely well - but you haven't written the book. I like to plunge in and thrash around and see where the book's current take me. At the end of my first book 'Is death really necessary?' a whole bunch of people turned up in the final chapter. I didn't plan that they should, but there they are. They were, in their own, fictional, sort of way, quite insistent. So I let them stay. I think they're there for the sequel. If there ever is one ...
Judi Moore
I like to wait for a conjunction of things - an interesting plot, a setting, at least one main character, and somewher in the back of my mind all along there will be a theme I want to explore. The first three will pop out of the news, my reading, somewhere I've been - and that's the basis of the stew. In the same way that the Hairy Bikers call 'carrot, celery and onion the building blocks of flavour' so these are my building blocks of story.
Judi Moore
Be aware that once you start to write you will never read in the same way again. You will always read more critically. Be prepared for that and use it to help you hone your own writing. I still regularly say to myself (when reading a novel, not my own) 'yikes! that's clunky. Do I do that?' And go and check ...
Judi Moore
I am absolutely never bored. I used to wonder why my hindbrain insisted I stored up all those little nuggets that come one's way (the ones that are useful on pub quizzes and 'Pointless'. Now I know. A writer (well, this writer anyway) knows a little bit about a lot of things. Jill of all trades - s'mee.
Judi Moore
I'm currently working on my third novel, which is set in Norfolk, Oxford and (mainly) China. It concerns Ghengis Khan and is what a friend of mine calls a 'history and mystery' in the same vein as Kate Moss's enjoyable mega-tomes Labyrinth and so on. But shorter. I hope. And not set in France. Now that I'm writing a novel which has two complete stories, one in each timezone (present day and 13th century) I begin to see how Ms Moss's books get so big. And I have yet to answer satisfactorily the question of how to lay it all out! My background is in history and how to study it, so readers can be confident that the research that underpins the book is accurate, and that the fictional elements I've grafted on are plausible. I believe there's an historical breakthrough in this novel. I hope you agree when you read it. When I showed an early draft and synopsis to an agent at a Foyle's Day I was advised to junk the historical material and stick with the present day story, just dripping in a bit of the historical material 'for colour' and as necessary for the plot. As there are currently 50,000 historical words, I was a bit averse. What do you think?
Judi Moore
Yes, it does exist. No, it's not wimpy to suffer from it. And there is a close relative of WB which is having worked so hard and so long on a piece of writing that you have lose all critical faculties concerning it. That is, to my mind, worse.
I have two remedies for WB: one is to allow myself officially to stop working on whatever it is I'm blocked over. If there is a writing-related problem at the bottom of the block my subconscious will let me know when it's figured out a fix. In the meantime I get on with something else - anything else. A poem. A bit of flash fiction. Even something basic like a freewrite - just letting your mind wander about wherever and writing down the stream of consciousness that comes along with that. The other remedy is to get away from all the other stressors in my life. A writer's retreat is a good plan. But if you can't get physically away get away from Facebook, email, phone, commitments, evenings out, days away and focus. As habituees of NaNoWriMo know, if you really knuckle down you can write 50,000 words in a month, or a complete first draft of a 90,000 word novel in 3 months.
I have two remedies for WB: one is to allow myself officially to stop working on whatever it is I'm blocked over. If there is a writing-related problem at the bottom of the block my subconscious will let me know when it's figured out a fix. In the meantime I get on with something else - anything else. A poem. A bit of flash fiction. Even something basic like a freewrite - just letting your mind wander about wherever and writing down the stream of consciousness that comes along with that. The other remedy is to get away from all the other stressors in my life. A writer's retreat is a good plan. But if you can't get physically away get away from Facebook, email, phone, commitments, evenings out, days away and focus. As habituees of NaNoWriMo know, if you really knuckle down you can write 50,000 words in a month, or a complete first draft of a 90,000 word novel in 3 months.
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