CLIO GRAY
About Clio Gray
Clio Gray was born in Yorkshire, brought up in Devon and has been living in Scotland for the past fifteen years, where she works at her local library. She has won many prizes for her short stories, most notably the Scotsman/Orange Award in 2006. Her first novel, Guardians of the Key, a historical mystery, was published by Headline in 2006; the sequel, The Roaring of the Labyrinth, was published in 2007.
See the author's website at www.cliogray.com
An interview with Clio Gray
When did you first begin writing, and what inspired you to do so? Have any specific books/authors served as inspiration for you?
I used to write scary stories as a child at Primary School, and then lots of essays at college, usually veering wildly off subject into those things that interested me. I only started writing fiction seriously only once I moved up to Scotland, and have been hard at it for the past five or six years.
Can you tell us something about the inspiration behind Types of Everlasting Rest? And about what you were trying to achieve, what ideas you were trying to convey?
Most of my stories contain a kernel of death in there somewhere, and often vast or alien landscapes, very far from my normal, everyday life, presumably a mirror to my bleak and wandering interior landscape!
How do you go about creating your voice on the page?
With short stories, I usually begin from a single idea, maybe some intriguing fact I have read about, or even a single word which I like the sound of. Then I just sit down, and wait for the fingers to set off on the keyboard, and see where the original idea takes me.
How and when do you write?
I write in my study, surrounded by books and files, dogs at my feet, looking out of the window at the opposite roof and the sky above it; can be any time of day, morning, afternoon or evening, depending on what I have to do that day.
What do you enjoy reading? What are you reading that you can recommend at the moment?
I read a huge amount, cross-genre fiction and non-fiction; some books I have read recently and really enjoyed are:
P.J.Tracy: Snow Blind - the latest in a quite unique mother/daughter writing team which has given us the best crime fiction going today;
James Lee Burke: A Strained White Radiance: all his books are a joy; his ability to describe places and people is staggering, and you are right there in the Deep South with him, though sometimes wondering how he makes his life so complicated!
Ron Butlin: Vivaldi and the number 3 & other impossible stories: for sheer weirdness, these stories are unbeatable. They are also very moving, once you’ve got past the initial feeling of incongruity, and a superb example of their form.
Philip Reeve: Mortal Engines: I often read teenage or children’s fiction, often because they’re shorter and easier to finish at one sitting at night! This particular book was shocking in that he kept killing all the characters off, and actually had me squeezing tears. Great! Straight off to read another one…
Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman: Good Omens: If you want to know about the ins and outs of religious fundamentalism and how ridiculously easy it is to start wars, then this is the book for you. Plus it makes you laugh and has a great plot.
