Deborah Wright interview

Interview - 10/04/02

Ken Macdonald talks to author Deborah Wright

Deborah Wright’s enchanting second book, largely set in Camden, is ’The Rebel Fairy’. A romantic comedy, where much of the action is controlled by fairies who live in a tree on Primrose Hill, it bagged Deborah a ?100,000 advance from publishers Time Warner.

You might even be able to find the fairy tree from a close reading of the book - it’s situated in: "...the large oak in a ’V’ of green grass overlooking the aviary cages at London Zoo." Although this book has its share of whimsy, the fairies are not quite like the ones you’ll remember from childhood. These fairies have sexual feelings and they like to get high on fairy drugs.

Princess Road, Chalcot Square and the Goat in Boots pub on Camden’s Drummond street are other real life places that get a mention. Deborah told me that she had spent lots of time in Camden doing research for the book and that Primrose Hill was her favourite place in London.

She has a close friend who lives in Princess Road - who’s always impressing Deborah with the people she sees in the neighbourhood like Jude Law, Kate Moss and Sadie Frost. Deborah’s favourite places include Odette’s French restaurant in Regents Park Road where the desserts suit her sweet tooth and she’s a fan of the Greek restaurant Lemonia.

Primrose Hill bookshop is another favourite haunt and she loves St Marks Church - some of the scenes in Rebel Fairy are set in the graveyard. If she had the money, she says she’d definitely live in Primrose Hill.

I met Deborah in a bar on Portobello Road - she is herself almost slight enough to be mistaken for a shimmering fairy. Perched on a stool sipping an orange juice, she told me, "I had my first novel, ’Olivia’s Bliss’, published in 2000. I’d entered a competition to write a bestseller and then forgotten about it. Out of the blue six months later, they told me I’d won. That book sold 40,000 copies but it still didn’t make me any real money.

"I was struggling to come up with my next work for publication when my agent told me that I should try and come up with something unusual, something that broke the normal genre rules. Then I remembered a book I’d actually written nearly five years earlier. We sent that off to Time Warner and within 24 hours, despite the fact that it was nearly Christmas they got back to me with their ?100,000 offer for ’The Rebel Fairy’. Yes, that was the best Christmas present I’ve ever - better even than winning the lottery.

"Writing is a fiercely competitive business. My agent gets around 2,000 manuscripts to read each year, so I’m very excited that I’m now in a position to make my living from writing. But I’m certainly not blas? yet - whenever I go past a bookshop I pop in to see my new book on display.

"I’m planning to make it a long career. I’ve thirty-five books planned out so I’ll be in an old folks’ home and still writing. My next book is which I’m working on now combines fantasy and magic realism in a re-working of the Mary Poppins’ story."

So look out for ’The Rebel Fairy’ which is in the shops now - and for many more novels to come by Deborah Wright.

Click here to visit Deborah’s website

Click here to buy the book from Amazon