Q & A with Lauren Laverne
Author of the Candy Pop Trilogy

Lauren Laverne started her career in 90s punk band Kenickie, before she began appearing as a presenter on shows such as CD:UK, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and The Culture Show as well as coverage for V Festival, T in the Park and Glastonbury. She’s also presented extensively on the radio, including Xfm and BBC 6 music. During her career she has won several awards, including Sony Music Competition of the Year and NTL Commercial Radio Newcomer of the Year.  

She began writing again recently after encouragement from her husband (who said “you’re an excellent speller”) and now is a Grazia columnist and has written for the Guardian as well as turning her pen to the brilliant Candy Pop trilogy.    

"When I was a kid, all I ever wanted to be was an author. To be writing a book of my own is absolutely wonderful (and, like most things worth doing, occasionally terrifying)”. Lauren Laverne

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
I’m a big fan of what the Japanese call “tree bathing” – lying underneath the things and looking up at the leaves on a sunny day is as good as it gets. Add my family, a picnic and a good soundtrack and I’m pretty much in heaven.

What keeps you awake at night?
For the past year or so it’s been my book! Now that it’s done, I’m sleeping pretty soundly, although with a new baby on the way in the Autumn I am enjoying it while it lasts!

What is your greatest fear?
It’s too scary to write down.

What has been your most embarrassing moment?
I’ve done some dumbass stuff in the course of my music, TV and radio adventures yet nothing has quite eclipsed the acute embarrassment of throwing up in front of the entire class when I was standing at the front by Sister Fedelis’ desk in primary school.

What is your most treasured possession?
My wedding ring.

What is your favourite smell?
My son’s head. Delicious!

What is your guiltiest pleasure?
I never feel guilty about pleasure.

What is your greatest regret?
Regrets are a waste of time. Spending time regretting your regrets only compounds the problem!

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Making my son - a whole, entire, fascinating, surprising, funny and beautiful person who is beyond the limits of anything I could have imagined.

One piece of advice to someone who’d like to follow in your footsteps?
Be brave.

If you had a superpower, what would it be?
Invisibility. By far the most useful and adaptable of the superpowers!

What is your favourite word?
To look at, I like the word skiing. To say out loud, I like ululate.

What is your least favourite word?
I hate the clichéd way people say ‘legend’ these days. But I try not to grump about it because, you know, I’m a TOTAL LEGEND.

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
This could take all day, really. For brevity, I’d say beautiful things I can get lost in – whether that’s a song or a sky or a story – and finding joy in small things.

What turns you off creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
Small=mindedness or a reductive attitude frustrate me.

What sound or noise do you love?
The sound of the sea puts pretty much everything back into perspective – it’s like listening to the planet breathing. It predates and will outlast us all! It also reminds me of home.

What sound or noise do you hate?
The ‘classic’ Nokia ringtone. DUD-DU-DUHDUH-DUD-DU-DUH-DUH=DUD-DU-DUHDUH-DUUUAAARRGGGHHH!

How you started:

Did you always want to be a writer?
I always did when I was a kid. My Dad writes books sometimes so I think I got my first typewriter when I was about four! I started the band, which took me in a different direction for a while, but words have always been as important to me as music (writing lyrics was my favourite part of the job!) and I came back to it pretty quickly after my band split up and I started broadcasting full-time.

What was the first piece of work you had published?
A faked problem in Just Seventeen when I was fifteen. I was desperate for a new pair of Converse trainers, so submitted my “true life” story, which was a concoction featuring the classic J17 hallmarks of a sleepover, a Ouija board, and romantic rivalry. They titled it “I ruined her life!”. I showed my renegade Eng Lit teacher, who was very proud! 

How did you get your big break? How many (if any) rejection letters did you get? What did you write in your submission letter to get published?
I was very lucky meeting up with HarperCollins, who were so supportive of Candypop from the start. Submitting the first few chapters and my amazing publisher Ann-Janine Murtagh  pitching the rest of the trilogy got me the deal but sending her the rest of the book was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done! I was terrified they’d suddenly hate it…

Where do you write, and what makes it the perfect place to write? What surrounds you? i.e. pictures, view from the window etc.
I write in my attic, which has a beautiful view out over our garden and the woods behind, it’s like being up in the trees. Mostly it’s great, especially at dawn when only the birds are up. It was hard to look out on summer days and see my son playing with his Dad and not run out and join in, though!

What is your daily routine like? Do you find it hard to be disciplined? Do you have any rituals? Do you lock yourself away, or do you need distraction? What music do you listen to while you write?
I get up extremely early (before 6) and crack straight through ‘til around two, then spend the rest of the day with my son. I probably couldn’t have been so disciplined before I had my little boy, but motherhood makes you into a bit of a hardass! I can’t write with music on as it’s too distracting, with one very strange exception – Queen! I was flicking through a few albums of theirs as one of my characters is a major fan and found that they rev you up without taking over. I particularly recommend “Fat Bottomed Girls”.

Any secret projects languishing under your desk yet to be published?
I’d love to do something for younger kids. I make up lots of stories for my son, many of which involve an anarchic duck called Hubert Duck, who wants to forsake the duck pond, move to the jungle and learn to become a monkey. 

Have you ever had writer’s block? How did you deal with it?
Not yet! I had a couple of bad days, when I wrote a load of rubbish and had to go back over it all but so far getting to my desk has been the battle; once I’m there the rest has been OK.

How do you plan your books?
Not thoroughly enough! This is a lesson I am taking with me for book two…

Do you know how a book will end as you start writing it?
I knew with Candy and the Broken Biscuits but even then, lots changed in the getting there. That was what was most fun about it!

Do you plan an entire series, or take it book-by-book?
I have a plan for the series but it’s not set in stone yet.

What do you feel makes a good story?
Escape, I suppose. No matter what kind of story it is, if it’s truly absorbing, it takes you out of yourself and sends you somewhere completely different from your everyday reality.

Is there a character / characters in your books you particularly identify with?  How do you feel about film adaptations of books? Any you particularly admire? Any you particularly don’t?
I’m quite attached to all of them now, having spent such a long time in their company! Funnily enough I wrote the character who is last to appear in the book first…by about four years! Don’t want to say too much about him but he is pivotal to all the action!

Book that you love that doesn’t have the audience it deserves?
There is an incredible Hunter S Thompson book called The Curse of Lono that’s out of print. I find it hard to believe there is stuff of his you just can’t get, unless you can afford to pay a fortune for it. He’s such an important writer. In terms of a teen book, although its probably for an older reader than my book, I’d say the hilarious How I Paid for College by Marc Acito.

Book that says something about you? [Not your own!]
I think The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon is close to perfect. So I suppose that means I love stories about family, history, a great ending and don’t mind bursting into tears or laughing out loud on public transport!

Book for a long journey?
See above. I love short stories for travelling, too. The most recent McSweeney’s anthology The United States of McSweeney’s is ace if your suitcase is big enough!

Book you’d take with you if you were stranded on a desert island? (Not including Shakespeare or the Bible)
Probably a Dickens! His writing is pacy, funny and endlessly humane. I’m not sure which… I read that David Copperfiled was Dickens’ favourite book of his own so maybe that one! 

Fictional character you most identify with?
Having read it a thousand times when I was small, I think part of me will always be Sophie from The BFG!

Giggle-a-minute rock chick-lit from award winning music presenter Lauren Laverne!