An Interview with Rosanna Pike

In anticipation of her dazzling debut novel, we caught up with Rosanna Pike to ask some of the burning questions we had after reading  A Little Trickerie.

 

A: There were not a huge amount of historical sources on the Holy Maid of Leominster and those I located were relatively vague. I actually found this a bit of a blessing because I could use my imagination to fill in the blanks. In my head I painted a picture of the kind of person I thought might attempt a hoax like this and of course, why they did it. The main challenge for me was the date of the hoax and the time which has elapsed since then: over five hundred years. More than anything I wanted to write a character who was accessible to modern readers, and for the reader to be able to truly feel the hardships of life back then.

 

 

A: Tibb has spent her life roaming across England with her mother, looking for men and opportunities for deceit. They have existed on the edges of society, creating their own parallel reality. Though Tibb has seen more of life than many people her age, her world is also very cloistered, and her psyche has been formed in the sole company of a woman suffering from severe mental health concerns. It was really important to me that this was reflected in the way Tibb thinks and speaks. She is often very literal in her thinking and she has no filter. At the same time she hasn’t adopted many of the prejudices of mainstream society, making her a very interesting, complex and often very progressive person.

 

 

A: Having decided on the kind of person Tibb was, the actual voice- her sentence structure, vocabulary, phraseology etc- arrived pretty much fully formed. I found it extremely freeing to write in her voice. It helped me write quickly and not to overthink as I wrote. I was less judgemental of my writing as I went along because in a way it wasn’t mine to judge, it was Tibb’s.

 

 

A: Having fallen in love with Tibb, and bearing in mind her tolerance and open-minded attitude, I was desperate to write her some allies. People who had suffered like her for being different, though in other ways. It was important to me that there was good to be found in what was a highly repressed and repressive society. The character of Ivo was always very clear in my mind, but Ambrose did take some work. My editor really helped here.

 

 

A: I treat the synopsis as gold. I write the synopsis for months in great detail- though I don’t separate the story into chapters at this stage. When I’m happy with it, then I start writing and I do extra research as I go. If I encounter plot problems as I write then I stop and think, ironing them out in my mind- however long that takes. Then I amend the synopsis and continue writing. I generally love the planning and the editing stages, the actual writing bit in the middle I have to be slightly more disciplined with to get it done. The first draft is always quite loose but once the framework is done then I can start the fun bit.