Dr Lorraine Wilson

Hi! Thank you so much for having me on your blog. I am a writer of speculative fiction inspired by folklore and the wilderness. I live near the sea in Scotland and worked as a conservation scientist before turning to writing around ten years ago, when I became too unwell to continue in academia. I spend my days staring out the window at the birds, wrestling cats off my keyboard and knowing more than you’d expect about Taylor Swift and Marvel movies thanks to my teenager!

Meet Dr Lorraine Wilson

Questions on Writing

What is the hardest part of your writing experience?
To be honest, it’s the ongoing battle to maintain a sustainable balance between the demands of publishing and my health. I am a ‘spoonie’ so everything from writing to events to deadlines carries a significant health cost, and the constant juggling act of meeting publishing timelines, protecting my creative energy, and not damaging my health too much in the process never gets easier.

What have you learned about yourself when writing?
One of the greatest gifts writing has given me is the space to explore my own identity and how I’ve been shaped by my heritage. I’m a mixed-race child of immigrants and it was only when I started exploring themes of belonging and identity on the page that I learned to view myself in a clearer light. It’s allowed me to be more forgiving of my sense of internal dislocation, and more unapologetic in embracing all the disparate parts of my self. Some of it might be that I’m now in my mid-forties and have no f*cks left to go (!), but it’s been an incredibly empowering discovery process for me.

Do you make yourself write everyday/regularly, or only when inspiration strikes?
Tying back in with my health – the main detriment of my writing time is my pain levels/vision etc. any my parenting. My writing time is during school hours, and then within that it just depends how well I am that day. I do set myself timetables and targets because having that structure works for me, but they are very gentle and provide room for the days when I can do nothing.

What does literary success look like to you?
Oh gosh, I have no idea! I think one of the hardest things in publishing is that the industry throws so many milestones and markers of success at you that it’s really easy to constantly shift your own goalposts. I think it’s healthy to have aspirations, but even healthier to remember to take stock and be proud of how far you’ve come. So for example, a few years ago, my main aspiration was to see my book on a table in my local bookshop – that’s come true, which is amazing. Now, my main aspiration is probably to see my books in translation. But underneath all those external markers, the reason I write is to connect with others. To write stories that speak to the hearts of other people. I’m lucky to know I’ve managed that, at some small scale, so who could ask for more?

How much planning/world building do you do before writing, and how much comes along as you write?
I’m a bit of a planner, so…quite a lot! I do a lot of world building of the environment (because you can’t take the ecology out of the ecologist, apparently), and spend a lot of time developing the theme and the psychological arcs of my characters. It all involves more graphs than are probably necessary! I put much less work into figuring out the external plot though, so while I start off with a rough plot outline, that does get revised and altered quite a bit as I write.

Your books seem to straddle different genres; do you have a favourite genre to write in?
They do! To the despair of my agent! I actually feel like I write in the same area all the time – they’re all stories that explore identity and the legacy of trauma, full of the natural world and folklore. So from my perspective when drafting, they all start from the same rootstock, if you like, but then grow in different directions. In my mind, genre labels are very much a marketing tool rather than a directive for me, the writer. So I tend to just write however feels true to that particular story and then once it’s finished worry about where it sits in a bookshop. Which is not a particularly business-savvy approach, but I’m okay with that!

How do you celebrate when a book is published?
Chocolate and tea. But that’s how I celebrate every day, so I’m not sure it counts! I don’t know, to be honest. Publication day is usually a bit of a blue of social media posts and thanking hundreds of people, so I need to make more of an effort to stop and celebrate the day.

Questions on Books and About You

Firstly, the most important question, what books are currently ‘on your bedside table’?
An embarrassing number, and if they weren’t mostly eBooks, we’d need a bigger house. Next up to read are probably an ARC of Snowblooded by Emma Sterner-Radley, and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

What children’s book would you suggest every adult read?
Ooh good question! Either The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper, or the Earthsea series by Ursula le Guin. Both appear straightforward children’s fantasy, but are so much more. The latter, particularly, was a revelatory read for me as a child. First because it was the first time I saw brown people on the page, and second because it taught me that a fun story could carry deeply powerful messages about our society.

What does your writing space look like?
I have a desk in a corner of the dining room, looking out at the garden. It’s 80% taken up with plants and cat basket (in a futile bid to keep them off the keyboard), but there’s usually a small herd of notebooks roaming the space as well.

How many books do you think you own?
Oh I have no idea! Physical books…maybe around a thousand? eBooks (which are what I mostly read now), several thousand at a guess.

Who is your literary icon?
Ursula le Guin. No-one else is/was quite in the same league for the combination of deeply perceptive, ahead-of-their-time politics and searingly beautiful imagination.

If you could own one rare/1st edition copy of a book, which would it be?
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. The closest thing I have to a deity!

Is there an author who you always read?
Several! Natasha Pulley, Kazuo Ishiguro, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Laura Purcell, N.K. Jemisin, I could go on…

And finally, are there any plans for any new books? If so, what teasers can you give us?
2024 is a two book year! Three if you count the paperback release of Mother Sea! So first, upon the 19th February is my first ever novella, The Last To Drown, which is a story of PTSD and family secrets, Icelandic ghosts and the bargains we make when we think we have nothing left to lose. It explores the weird fugue state of living with chronic pain, and I’m so proud to have that voice out in the world. Plus Icelandic ghosts – who could resist?

Then there’s the Mother Sea paperback in May, and then in November, my next novel – We Are All Ghosts In The Forest – is coming out, which I’m ridiculously excited about. It’s a story about a hedgewitch whose past catches up with her in the form of a silent boy left in her care by a stranger. It’s set in a future world haunted by digital ghosts and sentient forests, and I am so excited to share it with everyone.

Thank you Lorraine😊Tea and chocolate seems like the perfect way to celebrate any day, in my opinion!

Dr Lorraine Wilson’s Books