Photo by James Glossop
Interview by Mike Wade, The Times (July 4th 2016)
read the full article online in The Times
Hear ye, hear ye! I've an interview in The Times (4 July 2016), about my novel (The Talkers) being shortlisted for the Half the World Global Literati Award. It's a full page, with a snap of me in bed. Here's the interview, from the pen of the brilliant Mike Wade.
An author whose unpublished manuscript has been turned down by at least
a dozen agents has been nominated for a book prize.
The Talkers by Russell Jones, a novel for young adults, did not seem to appeal to
the British literary establishment. A panel of judges in America took a rather
different view and shortlisted it for the $50,000 (£37,600) Half the World
Global Literati Award.
The Edinburgh-based writer has another feather in his cap. As the title
of the prize implies, it aims to reward books that “give a voice to the inner
lives of women”. Men are rare among the shortlisted writers.
Fortunately Jones is “a strong feminist” as his writing, apparently,
makes clear. His girlfriend, who works for a charity helping women who have
suffered violence, encouraged him to enter the competition.
The novel is a sci-fi fantasy following Chris, a highly intelligent but
emotionally tangled girl of 15, as she seeks her parents’ killers in a world ruled
by “Talkers” – powerful individuals who can psychically control animals.
According to the citation, the depiction of the matriarchal world is a
means of “critiquing the gender inequality that exists without our societies.”
The narrative is told in the third person “telling Chris’s story from an
outside view”, said the author.
“We do slip into her mind. I didn’t really find it a challenge, to be
honest. Essentially, I just wrote a character I liked, wanted to talk about and
follow. The gender elements were outside her. It was just a question of writing
a good character. She happens to be a 15-year-old girl.”
Jones, 32, worked for eight years as a teacher and as a teaching
assistant in Wester Hailes, a tough housing scheme in southwest Edinburgh. “I
guess I have an affinity with young people,” he said.
He now earns the bulk of his living over three or four hours a day by
helping to write commercial websites. The rest of the time he makes from what might
be called a comfortable living from literature: he writes prose and poetry from
his bed, at home in a flat near Meadowbank, Edinburgh.
Jones recently had a book of poems published and is editing a
forthcoming collection of Edinburgh poems and prose. He is also deputy editor
of Scotland’s only sci-fi magazine, Shoreline
of Infinity, and says that he has the plot of another sci-fi novel in his
head.
What is the appeal of sci-fi? “It is a genre which breaks boundaries and
allows us to project current concerns into the future, or to take them to an
extreme and see what happens,” Jones said. “It is about lack of restrictions.”
Half the World Holdings was established this year on International
Women’s Day as an investment platform devoted to women’s interests. The
literary award was a response to research showing that recent prize-winning
books rarely had a woman “at the heart of the story”.
Entries can be screenplays, novels or short stories, but must be
unpublished. The public can read the shortlisted works if they sign into the
awards website.
As well as the first prize, there is an audience award of $1000
for the most popular new work. The
Talkers was in second place in the public vote yesterday.
“The fact I’m on the shortlist and near the top of the public vote
is probably good for me,” said Jones. “Maybe an agent will notice.”
