Today I have the honour and pleasure of introducing you to Liane Moriarty - Author of What Alice Forgot
We were lucky enough to have What Alice Forgot in the UK last year. It was an early review for me and prompted me to write to the author Liane, telling her how much I enjoyed the novel and how it touched me. You can see my review here
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| Photos by kind permission of the author |
Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam (June 2, 2011) USA
ISBN-13: 978-0399157189
Thank you to Liane for joining us here today
Liane, please tell us a little about yourself?
About ten years ago, I got a phone call that would change my life. It was my sister calling to tell me that her YA novel, Feeling Sorry For Celia, had been accepted for publication. My sister and I had always wanted to be authors. When we were children, our Dad would commission us to write novels for him. At the time of my sister’s phone call, I was working as a freelance advertising copywriter, writing everything from websites to TV commercials. Although I occasionally wrote short stories and first chapters of novels that didn’t go any further, I’d let my childhood dream slide. My sister’s news was the inspiration I needed to get me back to the keyboard. In a fever of sibling rivalry I wrote a children’s book which was enthusiastically rejected by every publisher in Australia. I calmed down, and two years later, my first novel,
Three Wishes was published around the world.
Today, I’m a full-time author. I’ve written three novels as well as a series of children’s books. After a long, difficult journey to have children, I also have a three year old son and a 15 month old little girl to keep me on my toes. So this is a very happy time for me. I’m still grateful to my sister, (the best-selling YA author, Jaclyn Moriarty) for that phone call!
What Alice Forgot is a great read, where did the idea come from to write about a woman who loses her memory?
I’d always been intrigued by the idea of going forward in time and meeting my future self. What would I think of the person I’d become? Would I like her? Would I be shocked? I wanted to write something about this concept, but I always got tangled up in the logistics (not to mention the believability) of time travel. That’s when I read a story about a woman in the UK who had lost a few decades of her memory and didn’t recognise her own children or anything about her current life. It was like she was a teenager again. I realized that memory loss was like a form of time travel. So I came up with the idea of a woman who loses ten years of her memory after an accident at the gym. She thinks she’s 29, blissfully in love with her husband and expecting her first baby. In fact, she’s 39, with three children, and she’s in the middle of a bitter divorce.
You also write children's books, which genre is your favourite to write?
I love the contrast. My children’s books (the ‘
Nicola Berry, Earthling Ambassador' series) are intergalactic adventures, so I’m creating imaginary worlds, which is so much fun. However, after a few months of spaceships and alien life forms, I’m thrilled to return to the grown-up world of contemporary fiction
Are you working on a novel at the moment?
I am just doing the final editing of my new novel,
THE HYPNOTIST’S LOVE STORY. It’s about a hypnotherapist who falls in love with a man who is being stalked by his ex-girlfriend. It sounds like a thriller but it’s not. It’s about the mild craziness that lurks behind the facades we present to the world, especially when it comes to love.
What are you reading at the moment?
I’m reading Curious George and Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs to my little boy. I’m also reading the first draft of my sister’s extraordinary new fantasy novel, The Kingdom of Cello and the final draft of my youngest sister’s first novel, Freefalling (due out next year, soon there will be three Moriarty sisters on the bookshelves!)
I’ve also just finished and loved Maggie O’Farrell’s latest novel, The Hand that First Held Mine. One scene made me cry so hard, I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
What Alice Forgot is also available in the UK from Penguin (10 Jun 2010) - ISBN-13: 978-0141043760
Find out more about Liane
here
