Alison Knight is a writer, teacher and editor living within sight of Glastonbury Tor. She is a member of the Society of Authors and The Romantic Novelists’ Association. She carries the dubious distinction of having introduced Kitty and Jane at an RNA conference.
I’ve always found entertainment, wisdom and solace in reading. When times are tough, it’s good to be able to escape into a story that takes you away from your everyday life and worries. So I suppose it was natural for me to become a writer.
Creating a legacy
My latest book, Mine, which is published by Darkstroke Books, is my fourth novel and a project that is very close to my heart because it is based on real events that happened in my family in the late 1960s. I’m the only one left who can tell this story and it was important to me to wrote it in order to introduce my children, nieces and nephews to people that have gone before. It’s my legacy to them, helping them to understand that the world was very different fifty-odd years ago and the people I portray in Mine were driven by the attitudes of society at that time. If the same things happened today, the outcome would be very different.
Understanding why
I also wanted to write Mine for myself. My memories of that time were stuck in the mind of a ten-year-old child. By putting myself into the minds and shoes of the main characters, I was finally able to understand what happened with an adult’s perspective.
I’ve written it as a novel rather than a memoir because I didn’t want it to be all about me. Instead, I wanted to explore how ordinary people made decisions that led them into an extraordinary situation. I was also aware that I would never be able to find out exactly what happened as the people who could tell me are not longer here. Instead I used my memories, conversations with family members, newspaper reports and official documents to piece together the story. Where there were gaps, I used what I knew and took into account the culture of the times and used my imagination to fill them. It soon became clear that the guiding themes were class, ambition and sexual politics.
Getting published
It has been an interesting journey to publication. At first, the book was far too long at 140,000 words for any publisher to take it on. A rewrite reduced it by over 20,000 words. Some agents and publishers suggested I give it a happier ending or turn it into a psychological thriller. If Mine had been pure fiction, I’d have considered these suggestions. But because it is based on real events, there were some things I simply couldn’t do.
The question of genre was a problem too. It’s a love story, but not a romance with a happy ever after. It was turned down several times because publishers weren’t sure how to market it. When asked to categorise Mine, I describe it as a family drama, or domestic noir.
But then I found Darkstroke Books, an excellent small publisher with a reputation for hard-hitting fiction. After years of rejection, Darkstroke’s acceptance happened quickly and Mine is finally being launched in November 2020. The editing process was fairly painless – my brilliant editor totally ‘got’ what I was trying to do and Darkstroke have been wonderfully sensitive and supportive.
So, how do I feel about finally sending this story out into the world? I’m excited, but also slightly terrified. It’s not often a writer is featured as a character in her own novel!
Find out more about Alison at www.facebook.com/alison.knight.942
