The Monthly interviews author Angeline King – Part 1 – A writer from very early on

Any early memories of being interested in writing?

I’ve always loved writing. As a young child, I loved the act of writing, even if it meant scribbling on the edge of a Kleenex box or cereal box. Books were introduced to me early on because my dad was an avid reader, though my mum was the master of handwriting. My first book was a hardback copy of Little Women, and the earliest evidence of my handwriting is a signature in the inside cover of that book. I must have been at school by that point because the letters are formed into an outline of my name.

Did you get support for your writing at school or at home?

I went to a good primary school, and the teachers were encouraging, but I don’t remember anything specific about creative writing, other than describing my weekend. My P.4 teacher thought my weekend stories were funny, but I had no intention of being funny. I was just describing real life in the King household.

My dad once bought new, brown, leather shoes and displayed them on the mantelpiece for a whole weekend in place of the candlesticks. This story came back to him the next Friday in Dunnes when Mrs Park said, “Oh hello there Mr King. I believe you got new shoes.” This story went around the whole family with big loud cackles. “Ye’re no suppose tae tell folk that sort o thing!” he said.

What about secondary school?

I went to Larne High School because I failed the 11 plus, and everyone was a bit surprised, especially a neighbour, who suggested to my mum that I should transfer over to the grammar at the end of second year.

My only memory of creative writing at Larne Grammar School is from that year. And just to show how influenced I was by my background, I wrote a ghost story about the ghosts of King Billy and King James. I’m sure the teacher, Mrs Nelson, had a good laugh, but she didn’t let on. She just handed it back with the letter A on it. She gave me As the whole year.

I also wrote plenty of essays at school and sometimes even volunteered to write ones that weren’t set as homework. Essays poured out of me and they were always very long.

We studied poetry, drama and prose for GCSE and A level, but it was never put to me that I could write my own novel. All I know is that I wanted to, very badly. I told not a soul.

Did you go on to higher education?

Yes. I went to university and studied History and French Literature. I was very passionate about those subjects, but my main ambition was to live in France. I spent a year in Paimpol in the north west of France as part of the degree, but before that, I took part in a French exchange programme. A French guy came over to live in my house in the summer of 1993 and then I went off to Sète.

I had seen the exchange advertised in the French room at school, but didn’t tell anyone I was applying. My mum did such a good job at teaching me to handwrite that I could forge her signature with ease. I worked in a shop, earned my own money and paid for it myself. The teacher, Mis Williams, was a bit shocked when I turned up to class in Upper Sixth with a southern French accent.

This experience fed into my first novel, Snugville Street. Hannah, the protagonist, is not like me in character at all, but she goes off to Paimpol, where I had lived in my early twenties.

You were keeping experiences in the memory banks to use later on?

As I look back, there were clues that I was destined to move towards novel writing. I kept a diary and I always chose subjects that involved a lot of writing, but I didn’t know how to become a writer. I built up life experiences instead, and eventually those experiences filtered into novels.

In my twenties, I worked for McGraw-Hill Ltd, an international publisher, so I knew a good bit about publishing. A subsequent ten-year stint in the Edtech sector gave me useful business skills. However, I wasn’t aware of how the literary scene in Ireland was set up. I didn’t know that other writers were writing short stories and sending them to journals. I didn’t know anything about journals, in fact, and I found the whole writing scene in Northern Ireland a bit foreign at first. That first book, Little Women, which I didn’t read until I was a teenager, must have given me the idea that a novel was the thing to write.

How did you go about becoming a writer?

I tried to write a novel at around the age of 26, when I was living in Holland, and then again at the age of 30. At that point, I wrote half a novel. I abandoned it due to work commitments, travel and, eventually, young children, and went back to it at the age of 38. That novel will never be published. (I’ve since deleted it). But, I wrote another one straight away. And then, to the family’s and workplace’s shock, I took a big gamble, gave up a career and pension and became a writer. At first, it was just a year out, but I didn’t quite make it back in!