A.J. West is an award-winning television and radio journalist and author of The Spirit Engineer (his debut book), a gothic historical fiction mystery set in 1914 Northern Ireland and based on a true story.
After discovering A.J. West on social media (he’s charming and personable and I highly recommend everyone go follow him!) I picked up his debut book, The Spirit Engineer. I’m so glad I did – it’s easily one of my favourite reads of 2021 (click here to read my review of The Spirit Engineer). So I’m very excited to have AJ West doing an author Q&A with me!
Plus, it’s the debut of my new ‘The Frolic 15’ Author Q&A series! I really want to have more authors do Q&As here on book frolic so to make it easy, I’m using the same set of 15 questions – I think it will be interesting to see how different authors respond to them. Look for more The Frolic 15 posts soon (I hope!)
Now, onto A.J. West’s Q&A:
The Q&A
TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF.
I grew up in Milton Keynes with teacher parents and went to uni in Preston before starting a career as a TV and radio newsreader and reporter. I bite my nails, I’m six foot two, I’m a fully qualified homosexual, I love historic buildings and gardens and my favourite pastime is walking around London and sneaking down gloomy old passageways I’m probably not supposed to enter.
LIST THREE FUN FACTS ABOUT YOURSELF THAT WE WOULDN’T READ IN YOUR ‘OFFICIAL’ BIO.
- I intend one day to have a pet pig and a shirehorse.
- I still hope to be a father one day. Our daughter’s name will be Marigold.
- I’m a fully qualified nail technician.
WHEN DID YOU FIRST REALISE YOU WANTED TO BE A WRITER?
As a boy, I could see the tower of Newport Pagnell Parish Church from my bedroom window and at night it was lit up bright yellow like a castle keep. When my eyes were sleepy, I would turn the curtains into a teepee using my dressing gown cord tied above my head to the bedpost and rest my cheek on the windowsill, making up stories about the Kings and Queens who lived inside the tower. So storytelling was always in me somehow, and I would dream of having my own name on a book one day, but it seemed completely impossible.
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR WRITING STYLE?
It depends on what I’m writing really, but The Spirit Engineer is written in the style of my favourite classic novels. I like historical fiction to transport me to the past and for that to happen, I need the language to feel authentic, otherwise, the spell is broken. If I’m writing something more contemporary then my style is far looser, but I guess there’s still the melancholy sfumato and the humour I inherited from my mum. The other day she described a neighbour as: a lovely woman, very kind… but then again, she does have terrible wallpaper. I grew up watching Coronation Street and Victoria Wood, listening to Round the Horn and reading PG Wodehouse, and I enjoy trying to feed a bit of humour into my work, no matter the style and setting.
DO YOU WRITE FREELY OR DO YOU WORK STRICTLY WITH AN OUTLINE (IE. PLOTTER OR PANTSER)?
I plan ahead because I think you have to, if you’re going to identify the research necessary to bring a historical setting to life. Also, complex plots with hidden clues and double meanings – as with The Spirit Engineer – require foresight, otherwise it would end up a terrible mess. Planning is often seen as the enemy of free expression in writing but I disagree. Just because you know where you’re going doesn’t mean you can’t have adventures along the way! That’s how I live life and how I write. I call the method: Plonstering.
WHAT IS THE ONE BOOK YOU ALWAYS RECOMMEND TO PEOPLE (ASIDE FROM YOUR OWN, OF COURSE!)
Oh dear, well you see, the truth is I rarely recommend books because I don’t particularly like having them recommended to me. Just like secret places, I like to discover stories on my own. It’s a symptom of my stubbornness I suppose, and the sense that something is less magical when other people have tromped around it; like new snow or the secret garden, I want to be there first and completely alone. I do think people ought to read E.F. Benson for ghostly wit and, to answer your question, I’ll recommend people read Pitcairn: Paradise Lost by Kathy Marks and The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale. Both are works of utterly brilliant journalism and profound storytelling.
HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO RESEARCH/WRITE THE SPIRIT ENGINEER?
Research and planning about eighteen months. Writing, two years. Reality TV nonsense made me quite ill, mentally and physically, and life was a struggle when I started writing but it saved me really, by reminding me what I loved and giving me hope and a purpose.
DURING YOUR RESEARCH DID YOU TURN UP ANY SURPRISING FACTS?
Loads! But I suppose one thing that stands out to me is that the young medium Kathleen Goligher grew up to completely eschew her psychic past, never speaking about it again, not even when she was dying. How she became the quiet, gentle grandmother after such a guileful, eccentric youth will always be a mystery to me, as it is to her grandchildren.
WHICH CHARACTER IN THE SPIRIT ENGINEER DO YOU RELATE TO THE MOST?
William, without a doubt. Some people respond to him in a completely negative way – he is an antihero after all and readers are supposed to find him challenging company – but I think some overlook the pain he’s suffered and the many ways in which society at the time made monsters of men. Women were facing terrible oppression at the time, and I believe many men were suffering in their own way too, being told who they had to be and what they had to do and being railroaded into often brutal, life-shortening work, regardless of their capacity for it, and never being able to admit to their own weaknesses and feelings of inadequacy. Not to mention the horrible pressures back then of having to support a family in the face of failure on little money and the constant threat that they might, on any given month, be packed off to some far-flung battlefield to die in agony, alone, far from home, on the whim of some idiot with more sideburns than sense. None of this excuses violence or justifies chauvinism and my character wasn’t down the mines or living in the slums, but even so I do feel a measure of empathy for William, in spite of everything. He acknowledges his own inadequacy throughout the book and, ghosts aside, he has so many demons in his head, which others only make worse with their dishonesty, arrogance, or misunderstanding. The truth is, I’ve written some of my own paranoia and inadequacy into William.
Ah well. I’ve been taking a keen interest in Walter Sickert of late. He’s a very famous English painter from Victorian London who has a suspicious whiff about him, the closer you look. I’ve a writer friend you may have heard of, who is keen to know what I make of him. Patricia Cornwell has proved to be a real champion and it’s so much fun looking into her research. Incidentally, I spent a day in the London Library recently, reading up on the painter and as I searched the endless gloomy bookshelves, who should I chance upon at the top of a darkened staircase but William Jackson Crawford!? The Spirit Engineer himself! His books were right there in front of me. First editions of his three published works, leather-bound with gold embossing. I held them for a long time, wondering if there isn’t more to this world than we know, after all.
The Quickie 5
- FAVOURITE FOOD: halloumi
- BEVERAGE OF CHOICE: espresso martini
- MOST PRIZED POSSESSION: my old teddy bear
- SUMMER OR WINTER? Summer
- FAVOURITE VACATION SPOT? St Ives, Cornwall
To keep up to date with AJ West online, including where to buy copies of The Spirit Engineer, background links and AJ West’s social media accounts – CLICK HERE.
