An interview with YA author, Gillian Philip

Sometimes in life you just get lucky. I feel that way about having made friends on Facebook with Scottish author Gillian Philip. When I friended her (or she friended me – I forget which way round it was), I didn’t know anything about her, let alone what she’d written. But as is the way of these things, you get to know someone a little and you decide to read their books. Reading Gillian Philip's books has been a total treat for me. The strength of her voice and the honesty with which she deals with some tough subject matter makes me rate her up right up there with my favourite teen and Young Adult authors – who include Kevin Brooks and Meg Rosoff.

Basking in the Scottish sushine, Gillian claims not to miss the tropics.
Hmmm...
Photograph courtesy of Helen Giles

I’ve so enjoyed Gillian’s work that I’ve asked her to share some of her thoughts about her writing, and what she’s working on, here.

Let’s first talk about writing in general.

So here’s the old stock in phrase question, Gillian… What motivates you to write?

My overdraft! Just kidding… well, half-kidding… that’s what gets me to my desk in the morning, because I have to treat it like a regular job (what my mother would call a ‘proper’ job). But what really, seriously motivates me? Those characters banging on the inside of my skull demanding I tell their story. Isn’t that what motivates us all?

And that other classic question… Where do you get your ideas from?

For this one I used to quote a facetious Russell T Davies – ‘The Ideas Shop in Abergavenny.’ But no, I’m trying to take the question more seriously these days, because it’s a perfectly reasonable one!

The very worst moments are when I really have no idea what to write about, and those do happen. I’ll sit at my desk banging my head against a hot cup of coffee, but I know what I should do: either go for a long walk, or turn on the news.

I worked out the basic story for Crossing The Line when I was walking round Aberdeen, thinking of characters who would appear in it and the things they might get up to in certain locations. Some of them were the wrong characters: Allie started out as a little brother, before becoming a little sister in a blinding revelation. Some of them came out right the first time: Lola Nan sprang from my head fully formed in the middle of Springfield Road. Which was quite a sight.

My other favourite hunting ground is the news: headline stories, magazine articles, even opinion columns in the Sunday papers. It’s not the frontline stories I’m looking for, but the people in the background: the kid in the rubble looking for his football; the favourite niece of that adulterous footballer or politician; that murderer’s little brother, the one with the shocked face, who used to worship him. Once you readjust your focus and tune into the background noise, stories really are limitless. Well, the ideas are limitless. Turning them into stories is of course the hard part…

My starter collection of Gillian Philip's books - I'm expecting the pile to grow...

And then there’s that other one… How long, on average, does it take for you to write a book?

Ooh, tricky one. I’d estimate a first draft at between two and three months, but that really would be a rough first draft. It’s the rewriting and polishing that take the time, but that’s the part I enjoy the most. With edits and rewrites, I’m very nitpicky and I can never resist changing just one more word, one more scene. But getting it on a blank page to start with, that’s blood from a stone.

When did you start writing and was it a long slog to getting published – what was the journey to becoming a published author like?

It was a long slog, yes, but nothing I didn’t expect. I’d always wanted to write, but in a defeatist way I thought getting published would be impossible. So when I lived abroad for twelve years – I was jobless and childless and I had so much time I really should have been turning out two fat sagas a year or something – I wrote and sold short stories. I didn’t really enjoy them – I don’t think I’m that good at short stories – but I assumed I’d never sell anything longer, and I couldn’t think what to write anyway.

In 2001 I had my twins and came home to Scotland; at around the same time I discovered YA books (I bought them on the pretence of building a library for my kids’ future, but read them all myself). YA was in this golden age, and I found it was what I really wanted to write. I also discovered manuscript advice services like Hilary Johnson’s, and I can’t recommend them highly enough.

Then I had a few very frustrating years. I started with the attitude that I would give it my best shot, so that I wouldn’t be able to berate myself later in life for not trying. But of course, it doesn’t work like that, and the books I was writing became my complete obsession.
My worst moment came when my (eventual) agent, who had been agonising over a fantasy called Rebel Angels, eventually turned it down. I thought I’d blown my best chance. But she did then accept the novel that became Crossing The Line, and sold it to Bloomsbury; and in the meantime I’d sold Bad Faith to Strident, a small Scottish publisher – so I had two books published within a year. I’d say the whole process was no more difficult and frustrating than I expected, but it certainly needed doggedness, as well as a big dollop of brass neck. Writers do need a brass neck and a thick skin, so it was just as well I developed both!"

Waiting in the freezing Scottish mist for her son to take her photograph, Gillian's on the verge of changing her mind and going inside for something warming...

What would you say most motivates and informs your writing?

Probably when I get mad about something. I suspect I have a useful streak of misanthropy, but humans fascinate me, too – the things we do to each other in the name of politics or religion, love or revenge, envy, national pride, the movies of Richard Curtis… anything. I’m dreadful to my characters – that’s a writer’s job – but most of the time they will get through it all, because I love ’em, and I want them to win the day. Mostly…

How much contact do you have with your readers – and do you think contact with your readers is important?

I’d like to have more! I love meeting and talking to readers and yes, I think it’s hugely important. I almost can’t believe there are writers who wouldn’t want to talk about their books – even to readers who disliked them, if only so that you can argue the toss and try to convert them. I thoroughly enjoy school visits, love doing talks and workshops, could do Q&As for hours on end. JD Salinger I’m not.

Gillian with some of her readers
Image courtesy of Gillian's website

Now, let’s get into the actual books…

Like Kevin Brooks and Melvin Burgess, you’re not afraid to tackle really gritty subject matter, which involves protagonists who are in their mid teens. Cass, in Bad Faith is 15 and Allie (although not the main protagonist), in Crossing the Line, is the same sort of age. What motivated you to write these books - and for this age group?

It’s such a terrific age, a difficult, frightening, exciting age. It’s right in the heart of the teen years and secondary school, and you’re dealing with all those hormones, all that fear for the future; all that heartbreak, and optimism, and bravery…

I do like gritty subject matter, but I’m not trying to send messages or teach lessons. I want to tell gripping stories, make the reader care about the characters the way I do. And as I said, that usually means throwing the most awful stuff at the poor beggars.




Crossing the Line, which has been nominated for and won several awards, deals with, amongst other things, knife crime and has been banned in certain schools. What is your response to that? And why do you think it might be important for teens to read this sort of novel?

Yes, I was bewildered when I heard that (and pretty cross, obviously). Of course schools are entitled to stock whatever books they like, but the attitude was based on such a misreading of the book (or perhaps no reading at all). I was told (via a third party) that the ban was down to Crossing The Line ‘glamourising knife crime’… which simply isn’t true. The book does investigate how blades and violence hold an element of glamour for some young men, which is something I think we can’t ignore.

But I wasn’t out to send a message about anything – that’s what email’s for. I treated the theme responsibly, but essentially the novel was about my characters and their actions and decisions, and how they deal with some terrible events. I hope I never get so tangled up in issues that I forget the story. I don’t think it’s important for teens to read any particular sort of novel – I just think it’s important that they should read. Otherwise they’re missing out on so much!




Bad Faith deals with religion gone out of control. Your father was in the church so how did your own religious experiences inform the writing of Bad Faith and what is it you really wanted to get across in the book?

My father was a very liberal priest in the liberal and tolerant Scottish Episcopal Church, and that’s how I was brought up. I’m lapsed now, but I still have a great fondness for the Anglican church and I’ve been shocked by some of the attitudes it has allowed to stand in the name of unity. So together with the direction religions all over the world have been taking, it got me thinking about the desirability or otherwise of closer religious ties and church unity. Politics and religion do fascinate me, especially in conjunction, and for the background to this novel I wanted to write a world where the greatest world divisions were between secular states and theocracies.

But that’s the background! Mostly I wanted to write a heinous murder, with plenty of scandal, family secrets, blackmail, mystery and romance thrown in. I wanted to find out if my protagonists Cass and Ming could get together in the end without getting themselves killed!



You also write to commission and the Darke Academy series which is a fantasy/paranormal is quite different from some of your other work and is also written under a nom de plume, Gabriella Poole. How do you find writing to commission and what motivates you to do it? And, why the nom de plume?

The nom de plume Gabriella Poole actually belongs to the book packager Hothouse, who devised the Darke Academy series. This protects both the company and me, because if either of us want to bring the partnership to an end, Gabriella can continue to exist! It’s an increasingly popular phenomenon in publishing.

Hmm, what motivated me? Curiosity; the fact that they liked my sample chapter enough to offer me the job; the fact that I really liked the concept and the characters they came up with; a reliable pay day! I hugely enjoy working with the Hothouse team – it is of course completely different to working on my own novels with my own characters, but it’s collaborative and fun and lets me stretch my writing muscles.




In both Bad Faith and Crossing the Line you write with a remarkably powerful, connected and authentic voice, how do you feel then, about writing material that doesn’t come from the heart in the same way?

I couldn’t have taken on the Darke Academy contract if I didn’t like and engage with the characters. It’s true that they didn’t come from my brain, but I’m very, very fond of them (I confess to a deep affection for the sleazy Richard Halton-Jones).

When I got the brief, the outline and the concept attracted me straight away. I loved the idea that the school moved to a different exotic city every term, and I liked the uniqueness of the idea – these people weren’t vampires, but possessed by ancient spirits, and I wanted to find out where they came from (and I should add that we started work on the Darke Academy series before Twilight even appeared!)

It is a very different way of working: very much a team effort. My first draft – expanded from the editors’ outline – will always be altered, but then if I have some objection or quibble or a sudden idea, I know I can put it to the editors and that it will be considered very seriously, and more often than not worked in. It’s a bit like how I imagine it would be working for a US sitcom, or a British soap – the characters didn’t come from my head, but working together we can make them the best they can be, and keep them consistent and the story cohesive. It’s been tremendous fun working with Cassie, Ranjit and co. It’s not the same as my own work but I love it.

The Shades series

What sort of relationship do you have with your characters and do you find they really get into your head and stick there? Who, do you feel, has been your strongest character to date and why?

You know that song Can’t get you out of my head? Like that, but even more irritating.

But seriously… that moment when a new character takes up residence in a space in your brain, makes themselves at home and demands a drink and a bowl of olives: that’s one of the most fabulous moments in writing. But you know this, Nicky – I’ve heard you talk about your own characters!

Strongest characters… well, I hope my main character in each novel is the strongest. That’s what I’m aiming for of course, and if they weren’t, I’m sure someone else would have taken over the plot. I’m not sure which characters other readers would find powerful – objectively speaking I think Orla and Shuggie in Crossing The Line are strong characters in their own right…

As for my most tenacious character, the one who won’t leave me alone: that would have to be Seth in my upcoming Firebrand. The little sod. He started out as a villain, took over the story without so much as a by-your-leave, and I haven’t been able to get rid of him since. When I started writing Bad Faith – which came after the Sithe books in writing order – I thought I was going to need an exorcist.

You have another new series coming out this year with Strident Books. Can you tell us a bit about that?

That would be the Rebel Angels series, starring the aforementioned little sod. Firebrand is the first book; it’s set in Scotland at the end of the sixteenth century and tells the story of Seth MacGregor, who’s the son of a Sithe nobleman, at the time of civil war and rebellion in the Sithe world. The next three books in the series move right up to the 21st century and bring the characters into the modern world (they live a long time, those Sithe). The story has evil queens, treason, assassination, telepathy, witch trials, burnings, kelpies, monsters, car chases, junkies, betrayal and cat burglary. And romance, of course. (Can never resist that last one.)

What else do you have planned?

Right now I’m working on a second book for Bloomsbury, provisionally titled The Opposite of Amber. It’s another contemporary novel, like Crossing The Line, this time with a girl called Ruby as the main character. It’s another murder mystery, and there’s a serial killer involved…

And finally, a number of aspiring authors read this blog, what advice do you have for new and aspiring authors?

Just – do persevere! Persevere, and take advice from objective sources. I know how disheartening it can be, but the important thing is to keep writing. As soon as you send something off to an agent or a publisher – and before you hear back from them – start the next book. The more you write the better you get, and if you have the talent and you don’t give up, you’ll get there. Keep writing, and take note of constructive criticism and advice. And GOOD LUCK, aspiring authors!

Gillian Philip and furry friend
Photograph courtesy of Gillian's Facebook Fan Page

Many thanks to Gillian for agreeing to do this interview.

And can I just say – thank so much, Nicky, for inviting me! I feel equally lucky to have met up with you!


Do visit Gillian Philip at her website or her Facebook Fan Page and consider following her on Twitter: @Gillian_Philip

Gillian's books can be found on Amazon and a several other online bookstores.

Gillian Philip's bio can also be found on Hilary Johnson's website.

If you'd like to ask Gillian a question, do so in the comments section and she'll get back to you.