The Graces

About Laure Eve

Laure Eve is a French-British hybrid who grew up in Cornwall, a place saturated with myth and fantasy. Being a child of two cultures taught her everything she needed to know about trying to fit in at the same time as trying to stand out. She speaks English and French and can hold a vague conversation, usually about food, in Greek.She is the proud owner of a degree in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University, has worked as a bookseller and, for one memorable summer, a costumed bear for children's parties.

She now lives and works in London in the publishing industry.

A Q&A with Laure...

What inspires your writing?   This is going to sound like I’ve misplaced a small handful of my marbles, but… dreams. I get most first ideas for stories from dreams.  It’s just a scene, one scene. I wake up with it clanging insistently in my head, and it won’t let me go for hours, sometimes a couple of days. I feel like I’m only half living in the real world until it finally fades. It clangs so hard I have to write it down, and then somehow find a story and a world and characters that fit around it.
Music is another. I can’t write to music – too distracting. But listening to it generally is incredibly inspiring, especially for coming up with the right mood and tone for something. Music transports you, the way reading does.

What has been the most exciting moment of your career so far?  Getting the deal with Hot Key, bien sur!  But also strangers who are not my mum nor my friends, and owe me nothing, telling me they loved reading the book. People I don’t even know love reading it. My mind. It cannot comprehend.

How did you first become an author?   I got bored in history class at primary school and realised I could write stories down whilst looking cunningly like I was taking notes. From then on I was helplessly in love with making up other worlds I could daydream in.

What are you reading right now?  The Elites by Natasha Ngan, Night Witches by LJ Adlington, Milton’s Paradise Lost. The latter being one of those I always meant to read, someday. And now I finally am. Albeit… slowly.

What was your earliest career aspiration?  First it was a zookeeper, so I could be near animals all day.  Then it was a marine biologist or a dolphin trainer. Can you tell I grew up by the sea?  After a while, I realised you had to have at least a passing interest in biology for any of these careers, and I stopped liking them so much.
Then, when I was 11 or so, I read Stephen King’s IT (I know – too young. Since then I’ve been highly suspicious of clowns). I realised that words could profoundly affect me. I had understood that words could make up whole universes for me to get lost in, but IT was the first time I realised that I could do that to other people, if I wrote my own book. The power! I had to have it!

What advice would you give to budding writers?  I sort of dread this question because I’m so clearly making it up as I go along. But when I was a budding writer, I loved reading advice from writers Who Had Made It. It gave me hope and inspired me. So here goes, my 5 point list.

1.    Read. Read. Read.
2.    Write. Write. Write.
3.    Consume art/media voraciously. Watch theatre and dance shows. Watch films and TV series. Go to art galleries and museums. Listen to as much varied music as possible.
4.    It doesn’t matter how busy you are; find the time. Try for every day. Don’t beat yourself up if it isn’t every day.
5.    Write until you have a complete story. Accept that completing a story is an incredible achievement. Accept that your first complete story is actually terrible. Keep writing.

What was your favourite childhood book?  I re-read the Narnia series over and over and over again ad nauseam, but I think my favourite was probably Elidor by Alan Garner. That book lied to me. It made me firmly believe that magic was, without question, real.

Where is your favourite place to write?  I know this is odd, but on the tube. I have a fairly long commute to work but fortunately only one train to take. It’s something about being alone in a crowd. It just puts me in the mood to get lost for a while.

How do you read- print, digitally or both?  Both. The sheer amount I read for work means e-book readers are a godsend, and I no longer kill my back by carting a bag full of books everywhere. But if there’s a book I want to keep, I’ll buy it and read it in print.

Who do you most admire?
Living or dead?

Living:-
Stephen Hawking
Paula Rego
Daniel Tammet
HR Giger
Terry Pratchett

Dead:-
Stanley Kubrick
Salvador Dali
Moebius