MICHELLE
PAVER
Biography & Interview
BIOGRAPHY
M
ichelle was born in 1960 in Nyasaland (now Malawi), where her South African father ran the tiny Nyasaland Times, and her Belgian mother wrote a weekly gossip column. But the days of genteel colonial society were numbered, and in 1963 the family moved to England.
Michelle was educated in Wimbledon and at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. There she read Biochemistry and also made her first serious attempts at writing: two Mills & Boon-type novels, written in a matter of weeks and summarily rejected (‘with good reason!’ she says), followed by a couple of children’s fantasy novels - also rejected, although more encouragingly.
By then she was in the grip of the writing bug. She even managed to ditch the usual final-year laboratory project in favour of a written thesis: simply because, as she admits, ‘I'd stumbled on a great story: Soviet genetics driven underground by an illiterate croney of Stalin's. How could I resist?’
That got her a First, but by then she'd decided against a career in science. ‘I knew I wanted to write, but I didn't think I'd be able to make a living at it, so I looked around for a day job: something that would pay the bills while giving me time to write. Like an idiot, I chose the Law. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. One rainy afternoon I was leafing through a careers brochure when I came across an article on being a solicitor. I thought, ‘that'll give me a few years' breathing space before it gets too demanding, so why not?’’
Of course it didn't turn out quite like that. Michelle qualified as a solicitor with a big City firm, and was soon up to her neck in big-ticket scientific litigation. Multinational drug companies slugging it out over who owned which gene; tobacco companies battling to defend themselves against plaintiffs dying of cancer. ‘There were times,’ she says, ‘when I didn't exactly feel on the side of the angels.’
Outwardly she was a success, having been made a partner five years after qualification. But the strain of all-night meetings and missed weekends was beginning to tell. Then in 1996 her father died, and that proved a wake-up call. ‘I realized that I wasn't doing what I really wanted to do, and although I was earning lots of money, I'd never have time to spend it. So I decided to negotiate a year off, to get myself sorted out. At the time, that was unheard-of in a City firm. They didn't even have a sabbatical policy. But I told myself that if they said no, I'd quit anyway, and that at least gave me the courage to ask. To my astonishment, they said yes.’
Michelle spent 1997 travelling around Peru, Ecuador, South Africa, France, and the States, and finishing the first draft of WITHOUT CHARITY…
‘It's no coincidence that the story is all about seizing the moment. And it's also personal in another way, as it's partly set during the Boer War, which bankrupted my father's family. Although they were fiercely loyal to the Crown, they fell victim to the scorched earth policy when the British burnt most of their farms - by mistake!
To my surprise, researching the book in South Africa turned out to be a pretty emotional experience. I kept wishing my father could have been with me. For example, when I visited the little farming town of Reitz, where the early Pavers settled in the nineteenth century, I found a portrait of my great-grandfather, the second mayor, hanging in the Town Hall, and even a ‘Paver Straat’.’
After her year off Michelle returned to the City, and realized on the very first day that it was a mistake…
‘There were three thousand e-mails clogging up my computer, and all I could think about was WITHOUT CHARITY. So I sent the manuscript off to a publisher, and then, without waiting for a reply, I resigned. A couple of months later, Transworld offered me a publishing contract - to my relief!’
WITHOUT CHARITY was selected by WH Smith (Britain’s biggest booksellers) as one of a handful of debut novels to be awarded their Fresh Talent accolade for 2000. Since then, Michelle has worked as a writer full-time. She lives in Wimbledon, and is neither married nor divorced.
Michelle's second book, A PLACE IN THE HILLS, tells two intertwined love stories that take place two thousand years apart…
‘I've always been passionate about ancient Rome, and I've always loved the idea of a contemporary character having a real connection with someone in the distant past. But why a love story? Well, in a way, I was trying to prove to myself that great love - true, self-sacrificing, altruistic love - can actually exist. To my surprise, I ended up convincing myself. Although what the reader will think about that is up to them.’
A PLACE IN THE HILLS was short listed for the 2002 Parker Pen Romantic Novel of the Year award.
Her third book, THE SHADOW CATCHER, is the first in the EDEN trilogy…
‘It's set in colonial Jamaica,’ she says, ‘at a crucial period of transition: the slaves had been freed, the great sugar plantations were in decay, and there was an incredible sense of uncertainty. The tone of the story is what I'd call Caribbean Gothic. With my background I'm obviously drawn to themes of the Empire under threat, but the EDEN trilogy is as much about class, and the position of women in Victorian society.’
‘Researching it was an experience in itself. In Jamaica, everyone seems to know everyone else, so if you've got family there, as I have (this time on my mother's side), you're instantly connected to what seems like half the population. For example, my cousin has a farm on the north coast, and his wife's friend's mother is a leading light in the Jamaica Historical Society, and she's married to the grandson of a Victorian vicar who just happened to write the seminal work on Jamaican magic back in the 1890s, and so it goes on...’
In 2003, Michelle started work on an idea for a series of six books that had been brewing ever since childhood. Set in prehistoric, hunter/gatherer times, in a world of dark enchantment, menace and superstition, the stories revolve around a boy - and his wolf companion - growing up, fighting for survival and unleashing a powerful magic…
‘CHRONICLES OF ANCIENT DARKNESS is my way of achieving what I used to dream about when I was ten years old: to run with the wild wolves in the prehistoric Forest.
‘As a child, my passions were myths, animals, and how people actually lived in the distant past. I read and re-read Roger Lancelyn Green's tales of the Norsemen and the Ancient Egyptians. I pored over pictures of Stone-Age hunters scraping hides and knapping flints. I bought a copy of Culpeper's Herbal, and dug up my parents' lawn to grow outlandish medicinal plants. And I read everything I could find on animal behaviour: especially about wolves. (Wolf researchers such as David Mech, Michael Fox and Lois Crisler quickly became my heroes.)
As I grew older, I managed to do a fair bit of travelling in out-of-the-way places: Iceland, Norway, South America, the Rockies; often hiking on my own so as not to dilute the experience. I worked as a volunteer on a wildlife survey in the Carpathian Mountains, where I heard red deer bellowing in rut, and found fresh wolf-tracks calmly crossing my own, and nearly lost my nerve when I came across an enormous pile of steaming dung. (Bear? Bison? I didn't hang around to find out.)
Gradually I realised that the old enthusiasms hadn't gone away; they'd just broadened and taken root. And when I had the idea for CHRONICLES OF ANCIENT DARKNESS, it all came together!’ And when I had the idea for CHRONICLES OF ANCIENT DARKNESS, it all came together.
`In fact, though, I'd had the basic idea back at University, in the early 80s. I'd even written it: a story about an orphaned boy struggling to survive with his beloved wolf-cub. But I'd set the story in the ninth century, and the historical context kept getting in the way. So I put the manuscript in a box-file and shoved it to the back of a cupboard. For twenty years the idea of the boy and the wolf simmered away in my subconscious. It nagged me. I really wanted to write it. But I knew I hadn't found the right context. Then, I unearthed the box-file and took another look at my twenty-year-old notes. The answer just leapt out at me. This isn't a story about history. It's about prehistory. As soon as I realised that, everything fell into place.
To learn what the Clans of Torak's world use for weapons, clothes, food and shelter, I studied the Mesolithic peoples of Northern Scandinavia, including the Maglemosians, and the Ertebølle and Kongemose cultures. I also borrowed from the more recent past: from the survival strategies of traditional Inuit and Native American peoples, and many others.
Similarly, in trying to understand how my hunter-gatherers actually think, I've been guided by anthropology: not only that of the Inuit and the Native American peoples, but also the Ainu of Japan and the Sami of Lappland; the San, the Eboe and the Kwaio of Africa, and the Aborigines of Australia.
CHRONICLES OF ANCIENT DARKNESS has now been sold into every major publishing market worldwide, setting records in many of them.
INTERVIEW
* What made you start writing?
I wrote my first story when I was five: a rip-roaring adventure about an escaped Tyrannosaurus rex and a rabbit called Hamish. I don't remember what made me start writing stories: it was just something I knew I wanted to do, as soon as I could read.
* What did you find the hardest thing to do?
Simply to keep writing - day after day, week after week, and year after year, when I had no idea whatsoever if I'd ever get published. I used to get up very early in the morning in order to put in a couple of hours before going to the office, and sometimes I'd sit at my desk listening to the dawn chorus starting up outside, and ask myself if I was completely crazy, wasting my time like this? But the thought of chucking it in - of not writing - was just too bleak to contemplate. So I'd make another mug of coffee and shuffle back to my desk, and get on with it.
* How would you describe the ‘writer's life?’
Marginalized, solitary, sometimes worryingly lonely, but above all, not in the slightest bit grown-up. I spend my entire time day-dreaming, and getting paid for it. That's why I love it!
* Do you miss the excitement/pressure of the lawyer's boardroom?
When I heard this question for the first time, I laughed so hard that I nearly fell off my chair! This may sound as if I'm ‘protesting too much’, but since I left the law at the end of '98, there hasn't been a single moment when I've felt the slightest nostalgia for my old job. And that's not to say that I hated it, far from it - at least, to start with. I was a litigator for 13 years, and to begin with, it was wonderful to be learning the ropes of what was then still very much a man's job; and then there was all the excitement of going for partnership; and then - ? Well, then there was ‘more of the same’. More big-ticket cases about drugs and tobacco and disposable nappies (oh yes, I was one of the doyennes of the ‘Nappy Wars’ litigation of the 80s and 90s - which just about says it all); more horribly urgent ‘deal with it yesterday’ faxes from Japan and the States and wherever, more postponed holidays, and more weekends lost to work.
* What were your favourite books when you were younger?
As a small child, I adored Tove Jansson's Moomin books (I wrote to her once, and got a lovely long letter back, all about Moomins' dietary requirements), and then it was Tolkien, and Alan Garner's Elidor and The Owl Service; John Gordon (especially The Giant Under the Snow); all of Roger Lancelyn Green's masterly re-tellings of the myths - Greek, Norse, Egyptian; and any anthology of ghost stories that I could get my hands on: M.R. James, of course, and E. Nesbitt. I was ten when I first read her Man-size in Marble, and it kept me awake in a cold, terrified sweat, for hours.
* Who or what has influenced you?
That's really hard to answer, because some of the most powerful influences are the hardest to spot. But I'd certainly name my mother as a strong influence - because she never cuts corners, and always does her best at anything she sets her hand to.
I remember once when I was about seven, I got the part of the queen in the school play, so I needed a crown. My mother got to work that night, and didn't just come up with the usual foil-covered cardboard zig-zags: she also made a dome of red velvet to fit inside, and an `ermine' trim of cotton-wool and black fluff. With an example like that, it's no wonder that I grew up a little finicky when it comes to details!
* Where did you grow up, how did this place influence you?
I grew up in Wimbledon, south-west London, and I don't think it did influence me very much, because I had a happy childhood, and in my experience happiness doesn't tend to provide easily identifiable `influences'.
Adolescence, however, was another matter. I was overweight, spotty, and generally obnoxious. I hated everything, and that included Wimbledon, which was then just starting to get a bit more upmarket, so everyone suddenly seemed to be very thin and sure of themselves and fashionably dressed.
That did influence me, enormously. For one thing, I stayed in and read everything I could lay my hands on. For another, I experienced at first hand what it's like to feel lonely, unlovely and generally miserable, for what felt like a very long time. It all proved pretty helpful when I started writing novels.