Author Interview
Diane Chandler
Diane was a political lobbyist in Brussels before then working at the European Commission in overseas aid for several years. Back in London, she joined the Ukraine and Africa desks at the Department for International Development (DFID). Her first novel, The Road to Donetsk, draws on her experiences in overseas aid. Her second, Moondance, on the emotional impact of fertility treatment. Her third novel, Only Human, is about a woman struggling to find new meaning in life after her husband cheats on her and her only daughter flies the nest. Diane co-runs Creative Writing Workshops London with Stephanie Zia of Blackbird Digital Books, and also coaches aspiring writers. She hosts www.Chiswickbuzz.net book club Words with Wine in W4.
Your third book, Only Human, was published on 8th September. Can you tell us a little bit about it? Yes, it’s a family drama, a tale of love, lies and betrayal! Anna Bond is in her mid-forties and gave up her career to stay home with her family. Her teenage daughter is now chopping at the apron strings and she’s just discovered that her husband of twenty years is having an affair. She considers leaving him but has lost all confidence, having been duped by him and also a stay-at-home mum for so many years – a product of the school gate, as she calls herself. So she’s floundering, struggling to restore herself to the confident woman she once was. Then her daughter’s first boyfriend enters their lives, bringing a breath of fresh air to the whole dysfunctional family. Anna begins to find new purpose, but she makes some dodgy decisions and finds herself caught up in a web of lies and deceit… What inspired you to write Only Human? When my daughter started secondary school, I was already pursuing my passion of writing and was about to be published. But around me were so many women, friends and other school mums, who now had more time on their hands and were desperate to do something for themselves again, but had no idea what. The corporate world, where many of them had worked before having children, was no longer appealing for them – they’d moved on. But they were struggling to find a passion, a new meaning in life now it was their time again. I was inspired to explore these issues in my novel. he cover of Only Human is very unusual and personal to you. Can you tell our readers why? Absolutely! My daughter created the cover and painted the original artwork. She chose a blank face looking down amidst a myriad of shapes, which could be Anna’s mind, or could be mountains to climb – or really anything the reader wants them to be! Then the wonderful Aimee Coveney at Bookollective added the graphics and came up with the sketchy font which has imperfections, suggesting the title Only Human. Genius really! Before you started writing, you had a very impressive international career. Tell us about your life before writing. Well, I lived abroad in Brussels throughout my twenties and early thirties, working first as political lobbyist and then at the European Commission. There I worked on regional development programmes, providing aid to the coal and steel communities across Europe, and then moved on to international development programmes in the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine. How much did your work in Brussels influence your decision to start writing? I’d always tinkered with writing, bits and pieces here and there, and my job involved designing aid programmes and drafting many documents. When I came back to the UK, Ukraine and its people lingered in my mind – the country had got under my skin, and I wanted to write about it. Tell us about your first novel, The Road to Donetsk, that won the People’s Book Prize for Fiction 2016. The Road to Donetsk draws very much on my personal experiences in overseas aid. I wanted to bring the daily realities of aid to life, and also Ukraine itself. The novel is a love story, between an idealistic English girl who wants to change the world and a cynical older American man who knows that you can’t. I now wish I had called it ‘The Girl with the Bleeding Heart’ which would have been much more accessible as a title...
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