Ellie Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"

Whether you’ve read my book or not you can probably deduce from the blurb that there’s a fair few made up words in The Arben Bridge. Some of these are completely made up through an extremely intelligent and complex process of taking parts of words that I like the sound of and combining it with other words that I also like the sound of. Or simply changing one letter in a word. I know, it’s groundbreaking stuff.
However, a few of my made-up words have a lot of meaning and reasons behind them. I haven’t included all of them because I think it spoils the fun but here’s a few that may be of interest. Who knows, maybe one day they’ll be a question on a real-life pub quiz!

Liliath – This is the name of the country in which the story is set and is named after my late fabulous nan. Her name was Lilian and I thought the ‘iath’ at the end made the country sound like somewhere you might find in Wales (Welsh speakers please don’t come for me, this is fiction.) I decided to name the country after her because she was a complete powerhouse of a woman and this seemed like a suitably epic tribute.

Jobern – The name of Liliath’s capital city is named after my grandfather (or as I called him; Bampy.) His name was Bernard but everyone called him Joe, as you do. The story goes that when he was a child he and his friends decided to call each other by their father’s names for the day but somehow his stuck for eighty-three years! Jobern is simply an amalgamation of his two monikers and as someone who adored words I like to think he’d approve.

Andice – This is a flyaway reference in the book that you may miss! It’s another city and an amalgamation of my parents’ names. My dad is called Andy and my mum is called Janice so you can see how I arrived at this one!

Yanto – Again, another small detail that won’t have any meaning to anyone other than myself. My Bampy gave my brother the nickname ‘Ianto Full Pelt’ when he was a kid, which I think is a common Welsh nickname but in all honesty I never asked about it so if someone can enlighten me that would be great! My brother’s name is actually Ieuan but I thought this would be too difficult for non-Welsh readers to understand due to all the vowels, as is Ianto, so I just swapped out the ‘I’ for a ‘Y’ to make it more readable.

Carida – This is the name of Tarley’s mum and a very slight anagram for the Welsh word for ‘love’ which is ‘cariad.’ This character is full to the brim of love and it’s her driving force in life so I felt this was the perfect name for her.

Hyd/Haf – If you’ve read the book you may have noticed that my characters are never called ‘Mr,’ ‘Miss,’ ‘Mrs’ etc. and that is a very contrived decision on my part because I truly hate the idea that women’s titles are dependent on their relationship to a man and if you’re making up your own world why not change a few things? Therefore, ‘Hyd’ is taken from the Welsh word for autumn which is ‘hydref’ and ‘Haf’ is the Welsh word for summer. In The Arben Bridge all men have the title of Hyd and all women have the title of Haf. If you’re wondering why I chose those seasons it’s because summer is my favourite (so I had to give this to the ladies) and autumn is the season I was born in.

You can read this blog and others on my website here: http://bit.ly/ERLTWBlog1

Last month the wonderful Becky Sandy agreed to let me interview her for this blog (via Skype in case you’re thinking of dobbing us in) so not only can I show you all how fabulous she is but I will also have some nice content to post on here. So, yes, it’s all pretty self-serving but I’ve got books to sell.

Joking aside, Becky is possibly the loveliest person you will ever meet, is crazy talented and one of my closest friends. We lived together for about eighteen months and it was during this time that I asked her if she wouldn’t mind creating my book cover for me. Thankfully, she agreed and designed such a beautiful cover that sometimes I just find myself staring at it longer than is deemed appropriate.

Becky launched Becky Sandy Art and Illustration five years ago and specialises in bespoke pet portraits, so creating a book cover was a little different to her usual work! Below we talk about the design process, fancy sword hilts and loveable rogues.

Hello! Thank you for agreeing to this, you are most wonderful. So, I’ve tried to come up with questions but I’m worried they’re a bit lame. We’ll have to see what happens.

Well, I can’t promise that I won’t have lame answers, to be honest.

Great. Are you ready for your big interview?

Go on, then.

Excellent! First question, as someone who isn’t remotely artistic; what does the beginning of the design process look like? Especially for this project as I know it’s different to your usual stuff.

Yeah, it was definitely different, because for most of the stuff I do it’s pet portraits so I don’t really have a process so much because I get a picture and just make that a painting! I think with this the first thing I obviously wanted to do was read the book so I could know the story and what was needed in the cover. I guess that was kind of an ideation thing in itself because as I was reading through it I was working out what was important and there’s a bit where Tarley is describing her favourite gate and the image was so clear in my head, especially with the coloured crystals. I thought that could be quite a striking cover so once I got that idea I started doing some Googling to see what fancy gates look like in real life!

A common Google search, I’m sure.

Yeah. GATES.

To be fair, the stuff I’ve Googled for the book is pretty weird. How to make a sword, why do people want to kill each other etc. Anyway, carry on.

Ha, so I read through the story to see what stuck out to me, what would work well as a cover and then searched the internet for some inspiration on top of the idea that I had in my head. And then I had to make sure that that matched what you were thinking as well.

I remember with the sword you were sending me ideas of what you had pictured and I said ‘Oh I actually have a picture of that!’ because I’d seen the exact one I’d imagined when I went to Copenhagen.

That was super handy by the way when you were like ‘this is actually the sword!’

It was mad because Ryan [also a close friend] and I went to a castle in Copenhagen and we were just looking around and I saw that sword and went ‘What?! That’s it! That’s the one I’ve written!’ So obviously I had to take a picture of it.

That’s so cool.

It stuck out because of the way the handle curves. I did a lot of Pinteresting while I was writing because I don’t know anything about swords, but I always liked the style of the ones in Pirates of the Caribbean and the fancy hilts. I thought I had better get some reference images so I can describe it properly!

It was really helpful because in my head I think I overshot what you wrote in the book because I imagined a King Arthur style sword with a big hilt so when you sent me that picture I was like ‘Ohh…’

Isn’t it mad that two people can read the same thing and have a completely different interpretation of it? Anyway, digressing! This is an arty question because I don’t know much about art; what materials did you use?

This was done in ink and watercolour and, to be honest, I can’t give you too much detail because I’m quite new to it but I used watercolour because that’s what I paint in most. I like that it’s light and freer than other paints.

That’s interesting. In my head when I asked you to do this, I know nothing about art and obviously I knew that you did the pet portraits, but I expected something quite graphics led and then you came back with this beautiful painted image. It was just so much better than what I had imagined.

That is something I thought about because I used to do a lot of digital painting but when I thought about the book I thought it would suit a traditionally painted cover, which I think always look really nice and some of my favourite books have those types of covers.

Such as?

Well, I’ve got a really nice copy of Watership Down with an illustrated cover…

I’ll take that! I’ve been lucky enough to have a few people review the book on social media. How do you feel about reviewers calling the cover ‘Instagrammable’? Is that a word you ever though you’d hear to describe your work?

That’s a fun question! Umm, no? Whenever any of them say that I’m so happy because I think when you do a painting or piece of art you get to a point where you’re like ‘Ok, this is finished now,’ because I know that if I stare at it for too long I’ll find little bits to do. But there’s always that bit where you’re not sure if you should add to it or will it be overkill, so I’m never completely satisfied.
But obviously I wouldn’t send you anything unless I thought you would like it and I was really happy with it, so it’s so nice to hear it described like that. I would never have thought that anyone would ever call something that I had painted Instagrammable; that’s really nice.

Well, in case you didn’t already know, I love it. But it does beg the question…why on Earth did you agree to do this?

Umm, because you asked me to? But then also because I really liked you story.

Phew! I’m glad it didn’t feel like too hard work.

I really want to do more art for it but I just haven’t got round to it yet!

Well I’m not going to stop you, I love your art. This may be a really obvious question but what are the key differences between doing the pet portraits and this? Did it feel like a big challenge?

I think the challenging aspect of it was trying to get something that I felt represented what you had in your head or what was a good representation of what was in the book. I wanted something that would look nice on the cover but also sell the story so I think the context was the most challenging thing but doing it was really fun. With pet portraits, because you’re trying to accurately reflect a pet, you don’t have a lot of freedom. I do try to keep them quite loose but you can’t go too wild on them, so this was a nice chance to have more freedom and get creative.

OK, I’m now going to ask you some questions to inflate my ego even further. Who is your favourite character in the book?

My favourite character is West but I’m not really sure why! I just felt from the moment he was introduced that I warmed to him and then as the book went on I really liked his story.

With West, he’s a bit of a loveable rogue and those are some of my favourite characters in literature.

That’s exactly my type of book character to be fair.

Yeah, for example I love Haymitch from The Hunger Games; he’s one of my all-time favourite characters. I think that’s why I liked writing Lenna too because she is a loveable rogue and that’s traditionally more of a male trope. Anyway, do you have a favourite moment? No spoilers!

Ooh but my favourite moment is the biggest spoiler! I’ll just say that I really liked the big twist because I didn’t see it coming at all.

Oh, that’s such a relief! Also, thank you. I’ll never forget when I did a creative writing course in uni I was told that when you write a twist it has to be shocking but also believable so I wanted something that had that kind of impact.

It definitely did, the red herrings really worked on me.

This is where I do an evil laugh. OK, last character question; which character do you think you’re most like?

Oh God, I don’t know!

May I make a suggestion? I’m going to say Carida because you’re very warm and lovely just like her. And she’s a seamstress so she’s creative like you, too!

Aww, I’ll take it!

What’s coming up next for Becky Sandy Art and Illustration?

At the moment, it’s mainly Christmas commissions, which is really cool but also a bit annoying because I can’t post anything as they’re all secret! I’m also releasing gift vouchers, too, as I’m a bit swamped with commissions at the moment but people can still gift them. My future plan is to also start working on things like cards and maybe pieces that aren’t custom pet portraits but just prints. I’m also thinking of working on an Etsy shop!

Well I know that I will be first in line for everything you have on sale! Becky Sandy, thank you very much.

If you'd like to read more of my blogs and some of my writing you can do so at www.elliereeslikestowrite.com