Kate Mosse stands accused — by embittered authors, many who read her life
story, and me, before I meet her — of being too lucky, too successful too
easily, and, yes, too pretty for a multi-million selling author.
With the success of her historical thriller Labyrinth; the follow-up,
Sepulchre, about to come out; a feminist-fantasy family life (including a
supportive husband who takes her surname); four months a year at their house
in France; yes, we're jealous. How do we get to be in the Richard & Judy
Book Club too?
I cornered her in a tiny office in Guildford — not unlike a police interview
cell, but actually where she was judging a literary prize — to extract a
surefire guide to hitting publishing paydirt. It's pretty definitive.
Step One: Be a supermodel...
Or not. There are few circles in which mention of Mosse is not immediately
followed by “no, not that one”. Channel 4 News recently rang the Orange
Prize for fiction, which she co-founded, to ask if she would appear, “yes”,
to talk about anything? “yes”, even Pete Doherty, “er, no”.
“It's that whole thing about keeping your feet on the ground. I had no
expectation of Labryinth selling like it did. I can't imagine that it could
have gone better, but it was very clear, however well your book sells I
would always be the other Kate Moss.
“That's quite a funny thing... if your book is in every bookshop, there will
still be the moment when a taxi picks you up to go to the Richard & Judy
dinner, and the driver goes: ‘Oh no, I thought I was going to get the other
one, love'. It's no bad thing, because it is just one novel out of many
thousands, and it reminds you of your place.”
Step Two: Get lucky...
Or not. Mosse seemed to have thrown in a good hand 13 years ago, when she
jacked in a stellar career in publishing. An editorial director at Random
House, she was offered a “fantastic” promotion while expecting her second
child (“I was bad at being pregnant, a big blob”). Most people would have
jumped at the salary, security and status.
“It made me think this is probably the moment to step out. It was financially
really scary, but that was the point that we sort of knew that if you get
hooked in too much with that sort of security, with a proper job and
maternity leave and all those things, it's really hard to undo all that.”
She and her husband moved to Sussex and a more patchwork series of jobs in
theatres, broadcasting, and books prizes.
Brave, I say.
“It didn't feel brave.”
Step three: Have experience as an editor...
Or not. She was “encouraged” by agents to try fiction. “I said, no, I'm not a
fiction writer.” She is highly driven — the first person in her family to go
to university, reading English at Oxford, and in the final months of working
on a book she rises at 3 or 4am, “so I don't get waylaid in ‘must just nip
to Tesco now'”.
She uses a curiously passive voice to describe her literary career. She lacks
a sense of entitlement, even now. Is it fair to say her first two, more
literary, novels were not commercial successes?
“Completely fair! Oddly, I didn't use my experience as an editor to stop
myself falling into all the usual mistakes. I was too self-conscious. Being
an editor was a handicap. I used to sit on my shoulder and think, that's not
the way to put it. What I'd always say to authors is get it down, then start
to work on the shape.”
Step four: Copy one of the biggest-selling books around...
Or not. Mosse estimates that Labryinth took ten years — research, a year of
writing, and a year of editing — because her novels have “time-slips”, she
writes the historic story first, then the modern one, then a third draft
intricately interweaving the two. She had just sent the manuscript, with its
themes of France, grails, and religious conspiracy, to her agent when she
saw another book in at airport with themes of France, grails and religious
conspiracy.
“I thought I was going to have a heart attack. When I read the blurb of The Da
Vinci Code, I thought, oh my God, I've been working on this book for years.
But when I read it, I realised that it was not the same. There are
similarities obviously, but all the time I thought maybe readers will be
sick of this sort of thing, think me a copycat.”
Her book grafted itself to the bestseller lists, raining gold on the Mosse
family. They moved to a nicer house, have a car that “doesn't stall every
third day”, and success has “bought a great deal of liberty” for her to
focus on writing. Other than that, “it made a difference, but not the
difference”.
“If something goes really well when you're middle-aged (she is 46 today) the
building blocks of your life are in place. It would be very different if
this had happened when I was 20. By your forties, your life is as it has
been the day before, domestic, about packed lunches and is the homework
done?”
Step five: Make hard-headed commercial decisions...
This is where I start to get tough, hard as it is with Mosse. Her new book has
an American heroine, Meredith. Something to do with wanting to crack the US
market? No, she says firmly, “she came out like that” and her nationality is
essential to the plot. But surely the decision to write historical
thrillers, after a couple of less popular highbrow books, was calculated?
No, she insists. It was more that with age came the confidence to shake off
her internal editor (who had, I suspect, exceptionally high expectations).
“You unlearn as you get older. I didn't not finish reading a book until I was
in my 30s. If I didn't like it felt either guilty, or a failure.”
But by choosing the thriller genre (she prefers to think of it as
“adventure”), she was “completely free”.
“That might be because I didn't study in that area, and I didn't publish in
that area. I've never had a professional relationship with that sort of
writing.
“There is more of me in Meredith than any other character I've written”. Like
Mosse, the heroine of Sepulchre was as a teenager devoted to music. Every
evening, every weekend was spent in orchestras or practice as Mosse pursued
a musical career, until (like her heroine), “I had that experience of: ‘I'm
not good enough'. I wasn't soloist material... and I never really played
again.”
It is telling, both her drive, and her self-judgment. But Mosse has at last,
discovered that she is soloist material.
Step six: Write the book you want to write...
There is another aspect to Meredith that is in Mosse: an American-ness in her
warmth, energy, and risk-taking. So what is the secret to a bestseller?
“This is the thing I feel strongly about, if you can do things that really
matter to you, not thinking about where they're going to lead, but just the
thing that seemed right to give your time to, whether it works out or not,
you feel satisfied, and that you enjoyed yourself on the way.
“If instead you do it because you want to be here in two years, or five years,
you spend all your time measuring yourself by things that are not
achievable.”
Sepulchre might be well-received, or “it might not, that's the thing, you
never know. Then I'll go and get a proper job again. Or something.”
Sepulchre by Kate Mosse
Hardback, published by Orion on October 31, £18.99; 544pp
