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Pollyanna of print confounds pessimists by reinventing a writer's life for the ebook age: Kate Mosse tells Robert McCrum how, through creativity and connecting with readers, novelists can still thrive in a digital age(Observer (UK) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Ever since the millennium, the e-revolution, plus the credit crunch, has sponsored all kinds of apocalyptic predictions about books, with regular bad news from the digital frontline. In America, even bestselling authors such as Malcolm Gladwell have taken to YouTube to denounce Big Brother, aka Amazon. In Britain, book-selling is said to be on the rocks, libraries doomed, the ebook all-conquering, with the Visigoths of online selling storming through Waterstone's. Earnings are down and contracts scarce, putting careers in crisis and livelihoods at risk. In 2013 the median income of the professional writer was about pounds 11,000, well below the pounds 16,850 which the Joseph Rowntree Foundation considers a minimum standard of living. And that's before you even begin to address the creative questions. Last May, Booker-nominated novelist Will Self added his thunderous tones to a Stygian chorus mourning the fate of literary fiction. "How do you think it feels," he boomed, "to have dedicated your entire adult life to an art form, only to see the bloody thing dying before your eyes?" Amid the gloom, however, there has been one tireless Pollyanna of print, an optimistic literary entrepreneur for whom the glass is not merely half full but positively running over. Kate Mosse, bestselling author of the Languedoc Trilogy (Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel), and champion of the prize formerly known as Orange, has become the smiley face of English writing during the credit crunch and the IT revolution, and an indefatigable advocate for an old-fashioned creativity. Mosse is a stranger to Selfian angst. She brings a rare and infectious energy to her life as a writer reminiscent of the Victorians. For instance, while completing her door-stopping (more than 2,000 pages) trilogy, she also revelled in her role as co-founder of the Orange prize. Despite Mosse's public face, this was no picnic. When, in 2012, Orange withdrew its sponsorship, some speculated that the game was up for the English-speaking world's premier writing prize for women. The crisis would have fazed anyone less skilled at contemporary arts management. Eventually, Mosse's board, including successful and determined women such as Martha Lane Fox, prevailed. They announced a one-off renewal of the Women's Prize for Fiction, funded by some private benefactors led by Cherie Blair and Joanna Trollope. Meanwhile, Mosse devoted herself full-time to overseeing a year of private sponsorship to keep the prize alive. Looking back, she says: "It was impossible for me to be writing in 2013, and that was really disappointing." Her sacrifice paid off. The Women's Prize for Fiction confounded every prediction of imminent disaster. In the spring of 2013 it carried on as if Orange had never quit, gave its prize to AM Holmes for May We Be Forgiven, then announced a new sponsor, Baileys Irish Cream. Some of the commentariat expressed dismay. Was a sickly-sweet liqueur an appropriate replacement for a communications giant? But when the first Baileys prize was awarded in May to Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, it looked like business as usual. The Bookseller calculated that, of the five top-selling prize novels in shops, four were Orange titles. Mosse says now: "I couldn't be more thrilled about that first year. This new team has revitalised us. 2014 was a huge relief. And I was allowed to be a writer again." Just weeks after the inaugural Baileys prize, Mosse delivered her own new novel. In keeping with her Victorian literary ethos, she had managed to keep her creative and her managerial lives flourishing. "Your writing voice," she maintains, "is not necessarily your reading voice." In January, with the prize going full steam ahead, Mosse had begun to work on a gothic thriller. Its subject? Taxidermy. "Strange, but true," she says with a laugh. On closer examination, however, Mosse's latest fiction reflects both her unquenchable optimism and her instinctive understanding of her strengths as a writer. The Taxidermist's Daughter will be launched next week at the Horniman Museum in south London, with an event that should confound the book trade's pessimists. In addition to 800 guests, the reading public can attend for free. In anticipation of her big night, Mosse describes the massive poster of herself hanging outside the Horniman with merry candour. "I look like a mad person," she says. Perhaps Mosse is exhilarated by the fulfilment of a gothic fantasy. The Taxidermist's Daughter, a whodunnit and a whydunnit, takes its inspiration from Mosse's childhood fascination with a celebrated Sussex tourist attraction, Walter Potter's Museum of Curiosities. This lost Victorian collection of bizarre tableaux, such as The Original Death and Burial of Cock Robin, was "my favourite outing", says Mosse. Crucially, it was this strange kaleidoscope of kitsch, mortality and fancy dress that nurtured her adolescent appetite for storytelling, an unabashed desire to entertain. So when Mosse decided to write a gothic thriller, it was perhaps no surprise that she should focus on the strange, obsessive world of the taxidermist. Less predictable, though characteristic of her attention to detail, was her decision to learn the trade. Simultaneously with completing the first draft, Mosse took instruction in "how to skin and stuff animals". Is this embalming? "Embalming is different," she corrects. "Before movies, taxidermy was how things were remembered, and part of the working life of British high streets." The Taxidermist's Daughter is not, however, just about feathers, fur and skin in the heyday of a forgotten art form. It is also set just before the Great War, in the summer of 1912, the wettest summer of the last century, among the marshes of Fishbourne, West Sussex, in an atmosphere of imminent dread. The tide is rising, the sky is falling, and there's a terrible, unmentionable secret in the young life of Connie Gifford. As a genre writer, says Mosse, "I've come out. It's Mill on the Floss meets Psycho." She also pays homage to other classics in the gothic tradition - The Castle of Otranto, Frankenstein and The Monk - but insists that Connie is "not a victim", like most gothic heroines, but a "modern Ms". So, following the rebranding of the Women's Prize for Fiction, Mosse has gone on to give a three-part masterclass in How to Survive as a Writer in the 21st century. First, she has reanimated a familiar genre, coming up with "a good, old-fashioned story". Second, she has demonstrated how to write from a powerful connection to her true self. Once, in the 1990s, Mosse wrote literary fiction with titles like Eskimo Kissing. Not any more. "I realised," she admits, "that I should have listened to myself sooner. My skill is storytelling, not literary fiction." Finally, she has connected her creative life to everyday experience. Challenge her overcrowded schedule, and she retorts: "Every writer I know does lots of different things. I know very few writers who are able just to survive by writing novels. It always used to be like that. For me, being out and about is essential. I'm not interested in writing stories where people reflect a lot. I prefer them to do things. The bit that I like least is sitting on my own, writing." She also dismisses Self and the Jeremiahs: "The market is tough, but ebooks have not changed things as much as people feared." Besides, for every Mosse reader, there's a practical dividend to her R&D. "Once you have read The Taxidermist's Daughter," she concludes, with a mischievous smile, "you'll be able to skin your own crow." Captions: Kate Mosse pictured last week in the Covent Garden hotel, London. Her new novel, The Taxidermist's Daughter, launches next week. Photograph by Andy Hall for the Observer (c) 2014 Guardian Newspapers Limited. |