Clare Fryer Interview Published on: 04, Sep 2024

My parents always encouraged reading and an interest in books. Mum read to us from a lovely storybook, which is no longer politically correct, but I still have it.

Dad typed rapidly on his manual typewriter despite only using two fingers and a thumb on each hand. He told me the army had taught him to type this way during his national service. I was always fascinated by the rhythmic tapping. He wrote lists and was a bird recorder for Surrey, so he kept bird records and poetry.

Weekends often had a trip to Guildford and a stop to the library or Thorpe's bookshop. Thorpe’s was a great favourite of my Father's, and he disappeared in there for hours until Mum’s patience wore thin. If he wasn’t in a bookshop, he would be in the library while Mum did the serious stuff like clothes, school equipment and shoes.

As children, we wrote the occasional poem for homework or other school projects. My parents were always keen to read our work and kind with their praise. As children, along with our dogs and the world around us, we were a primary inspiration for Dad, and he shared his poems with us at times, too. I think we all felt inspired when we heard Dad's poems, especially if there were references to us or the dogs. My brothers and I wrote poems at school, some of which I recently discovered filed with Dad’s poetry. It was a very touching moment.

I loved free creative writing at school. My imagination was always ready to be let loose on the page. I don’t remember talking much about my stories, but a very good friend who went through secondary school with me remembers how much I enjoyed story writing. I only remember one story I wrote about a school reunion in the year 2000. How far away that sounded at the time. When stories were read, we were all buzzing about in spacecraft and travelling in space. I’m not sure why it stuck in my mind. The year 2000 seemed so far away at the time. When it arrived, of course, it was nothing like we had imagined.

Like my father, I often found that words arrived at the strangest moments, and I grabbed the closest scrap of paper to write it down. For example, I vividly remember sitting in a packed open-air car park near a sports ground where the school was holding its sports day. It was a very hot day and they were running late. I had so much to do at work but I’d had to leave to pick up my son. My mind was racing with everything I needed to do, and phrases began taking shape. I dug out my notepad and scribbled down what became a poem.

I always had this dream to write fiction, but it seemed such a distant dream that I’d never achieve while I was working. There was never enough time in a day when I was working full time and sometimes travelling as well, in addition to being mum to my two children. Luckily, my husband was a hands-on dad.

In 2016, my son had become extremely ill and later was discovered to have Chrons Inflammatory Bowel Disease. That year was extremely traumatic, as you can imagine, and it took a toll on my mental health. In 2020, I began a creative writing course, which was originally to have been just 8 weeks, but with Covid arriving, it continued by Zoom and has done so ever since. It was then that I began writing stories again and enjoying the creativity, allowing myself to escape everything else and slip into my own world for a while.

My father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2020, which progressed rapidly until June 2021, when we lost him. My writing was such an important part of coping with that. Dad could read and discuss the stories and poems I wrote for a while. Those are moments I particularly treasure now.

In 2022, I was offered the opportunity to take early retirement, and in truth, I knew it was the right time. My life had been very difficult over the past few years, and it felt time to change direction. This is something I have never looked back on.

The inspiration for The Invitation was a competition writing prompt which was ‘invitation’. We could interpret the prompt in any way and write prose or poetry. From the beginning, I knew an invitation was key to the story, but there had to be a twist in the tale. As I began writing, it seemed that the rules of the society in which the story was set would play an important role, and so the country of Anacadair began to evolve. I was completely bowled over when I won the monthly competition with my story, The Invitation, in 2020. Sharing my work has never been easy, but I let my parents and a few close friends read the story. They all said they had enjoyed the story, which was the most enormous boost to my confidence.

When my mum read the story, she said she wanted to know what happened next. Coincidentally, one of my close friends also said the same, and it got me thinking. I began thinking about the next part of the story, and slowly, it began to develop. As the story grew, I began to worry about the book's length, but I had to let it run until the right point to bring the threads together. Creating the world in which my story took place was fun, and I loved creating interesting characters and surroundings to progress the story. Honestly, I hadn’t worked out the ending until a few months before I wrote it. There had been no structured planning as I wrote I just let the story unfold. I have learned so much during this process.

In the autumn of 2022, I joined a ‘Write That Book’ Masterclass run by Michael Heppell. It was designed to support writers in writing, publishing, and selling their books. The timing was perfect because I was beginning to believe I had a book I could take forward. Committing money meant I had the incentive to push forward and get the book finished and edited. I had access to support for typesetting and cover design through the masterclass. I was with other writers who were also working to get their first books launched. It was a very dynamic group.

I had a major stumbling block in the autumn of 2023 when we lost Mum. My final steps ground to a halt for a while, but eventually, by the end of the year, I had a book almost ready for publication. That first short story became the first three chapters of the final book, The Invitation, which I published on my mother's birthday this year, 18th March 2024. It was the only way I could get past the first year without her.

I think The Invitation has several messages and themes. Strong women are a key element, and we have three women central to the book and seen on the cover. Each faces significant difficulties, yet they push forward initially alone and then together as they join forces. Anacadair is a patriarchal society, and women are expected to raise the family and manage the house. There are social expectations for their appearance and activities in this very restricted society.

I also played with the challenges to the male role model when social expectations and norms were challenged. Would the head of the family stick to the stereotype, or would he follow the changing world?

Inequality plays a part in the book, too, with clear lines drawn between those who have high social status and those who don’t. Explaining the stark differences between Thena and Cawsal was fun, but it also illustrated how much power influences social status.

I also wanted to give hope to those in difficult circumstances not of their making that change can come sometimes at the most unexpected times.

The face we often project is only a mask for what we feel inside. The same is true for the image we project of our family lives. I’ve been lucky to have had a secure family upbringing, but as my father and I researched our family history, we discovered some great stories. One of my favourites, and the one that initiated the research, was my grandmother’s great-grandmother. Rumour had always been that she ran away with the baker. How true that was! We also discovered children who had grown up with other family members, perhaps to support those who had no children of their own and give more space in larger families. That is how it appeared, at least from the records we found. As we dug deeper into my family and that of my husband, we discovered a likely link to King Henry I via one of the 23 recognised illegitimate children he fathered. I didn’t want to go too far towards the grim stories we see in the news, but the idea of people with hidden stories has always fascinated me. I’ve read much about the Tudors and how the powerful families had no scruples in putting forward daughters (and sons) as pawns in power marriages to better themselves or perhaps even catch the king's eye. This was also an inspiration behind the Promisary Agreements in The Invitation.

The creative writing group has remained a source of inspiration and support as I continue to grow in my writing journey. We meet weekly and always have some tutorial and workshop activity that involves writing and then reading back. Hearing how we all interpret the same prompt, phrase, or other suggestion in so many different ways is very enlightening, as is the feedback we all receive from our tutor.

This is a difficult question. I feel I probably should have a routine, but for many reasons, over the past few years, as I wrote The Invitation, I have written when there was time rather than in any particular routine. I sometimes put music on as background, but there are times when I prefer silence. I used to have a sticker on my laptop that said, "Do not answer the phone, do not check emails, do not look at messages. " It was a reminder to focus.

There is a recommendation to try to write in short bursts and have regular breaks. Personally, unless I write for at least half an hour, it doesn’t feel as if I’ve had time to immerse myself in the story sufficiently to get the words flowing. Setting alarms to remind me when half an hour is up encourages me to remember to leave my desk and make a drink. It's too easy to get engrossed otherwise.

Gardening gives me time to think in peace while I work. This time is renewing, and often, I find the answer to a problem I’ve been wrestling with at my desk. Crochet and cross-stitch both keep the feeling of achievement going while the writing process continues over a longer timeline. It also helps reduce the stress on my arms and hands from an ergonomic point of view.

These two were my constant companions, which was both comforting and frustrating. Having them sleep by my desk was lovely, but when they thought I’d written enough, they clarified their feelings. It was cuddle time and time for me to stop working, and usually, they were right, of course. Sadly, we lost Poppy in June, so when I can settle back to writing regularly in September, it will be interesting to see if she joins me or stays with my husband.

I have a number of writing projects in the wings. I have another novel I’m working on, rather different from The Invitation but hopefully equally absorbing for the reader. There is a poetry compilation of my father's work I’d love to publish in his memory. First, however, I must find them all and then select the poems to include. There is a lot to choose from, I’m discovering. Lastly, there will also be a sequel to The Invitation Watch this space.

I joined AllAuthor this year. It has been a good experience so far, and the cover competition is a great idea.