Meet the Author: Jamie Campbell
It must be something about the mystery, but I love when an author not only uses a pseoudonym, but when they extend that secrecy to include keeping almost everything about themselves hidden from the public. It adds to the intrigue of the person, and in my case, makes you want to delve deep into their writing so you can look for clues about who this person truly may be.
Jamie Campbell is one of those authors. Not only is there mystique about her, but as you can tell from her answers below, she is a thoughtful and eloquent writer. I think you'll enjoy this one!
Tell us a little about yourself. What made you choose to be a writer and who are you when you aren't writing?
I'm a pseudonym, and like all pseudonyms I don't really exist. Questions about 'self' are really hard to answer. Free will? When it comes to writing I have to wonder if free will can exist when self does not. As a nom de plume I only exist when I write - so outside of writing I float around on the edges of existence as ideas for plot and character.
Tell us about your book.
"Cin City" is a novel. And I mean that in the truest sense of the word because I haven't paid any attention to genre and what any particular genre requirements might be. My character narrates the passage of a few months out of her year in professional tennis. Although the story is one of family, friendship, and love - and tennis exists as a vehicle, as a lens for examining all that goes on with my
character. She has a 'thing' a 'mental thing,' and has to balance anxiety with her desire to embrace the world. Shannon's not a star player - not even close. More she's another anonymous player bouncing around low-end tournaments until she's given a chance to brush against the brave and famous. Her difficulty is that the more she embraces what she wants it becomes harder for her to hold on. "Cin City" is a story of jumping into life and coming up for air.
Who are some of your favorite authors?
I don't tend to have favourite authors. I have favourite books though. Or perhaps, more correctly, books I remember fondly. Coetzee: "Waiting for the Barbarians." Such a powerful story in so few pages; Doerr: "All the Light We Cannot See." An intricate story beautifully written; Hogarth: "The Glass Girl." A true Indie, and as good as Doerr - my book of the year 2015. These are fairly 'big' books in terms of impact. At the same time as reading "Waiting for the Barbarians" I can also get a kick out of the simple joy of Lynne Murray's Sybil character and her antics.
If you had to pick a character in your story that you relate to the most, which one would it be and why?
Personally I relate to the taxi driver - who is nothing but a plot device. He's mentioned twice, he has no name and no lines to speak. My other self used to drive a taxi so when I'm in my state of non-existence I can relate to being a plot device in other people's stories. Otherwise it's Shannon, my narrator. My other self deals with lost souls regularly on a professional basis. And on a few occasions the tragedy is that those souls are lost in the world because they didn't have the right people near them at the right time. So my character shares some of the burdens, save that she did have good people when it mattered. Shannon has developed the resilience necessary not to be lost. Her sport is both a narrative vehicle and her vehicle for coping with the challenges of wanting/needing to engage with the world.
What makes your work unique?
I don't write genre fiction - which in the Indie world is fairly unique. Indie tends to mean genre. And to be fair I did think that I had written a genre contemporary romance. But genre romance requires (I would say demands) that certain genre boxes be ticked. I realised retrospectively that in writing my first book, "Four Days," I had missed too many of those boxes to make the genre cut. It didn't help (or may be it did) that I had no idea what those boxes were necessarily when I started. I wanted to write a plausibly realistic story - at least as plausible as narrative fiction can get and still be an entertainment. Turns out that to an extent those genre boxes require significant suspension of disbelief and some questionable stereotypes - and I've always struggled with those as a reader and as a writer too. So I set out to write a simple story as well as I could - and assumed, since at heart it was a girl meets boy story, that it would turn out to be a genre romance. I was so wrong about the genre thing that with "Cin City" I had no genre in mind at all. I wrote a story as plausibly as I could in the context of its narrator. I'll leave it to my readers to determine whether or not my novels are actually simple stories told well.
How big of a role does personal experience play in your writing?
My characters are involved in tennis. I chose that sport because it is one of the few that is (close to) truly international and (close to) truly gender equal. I haven't attempted tennis since the late 1980s - and when I did I sucked unbelievably badly. So no, my books aren't even remotely auto-biographical and are quite removed from personal experience.
What else do you want us to know about you?
Both "Cin City" and "Four Days" are Kindle Unlimited and could do with some love - and both are on Kindle Countdown about now, so...
Well in that case, let's make sure we include blurbs and links (of course!) for these great titles so that you can go check them out and get a great deal. Thanks for the interview Jamie. We look forward to reading your work!
Cin City:
“Yeah, it's true. I do swear a lot. And that's only one of my issues. I've also got broken things in my head." When you're 14,000 kilometres from home it's important to have good people around you. Although for nineteen-year-old Shannon Smith finding those good people wasn't always easy. Not when her first instinct is to hide. Not when dealing with anything new is such a mammoth task. Not when she's yet another kid finding her way on the circuit - and when the only place in the world where she feels normal is on the tennis court. Shannon's year was never supposed to be this long, she was never supposed to be so far from home. And home was calling. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Cin City is a story of bravery and adventure; of love, family, and friendship - of finding life beyond your limits. Cin City is about the costs and benefits of life; about diving into the unknown and coming up for air.
Four Days:
“I had always known that his hold on me was so close to absolute that it made no odds." When your partner, your lover, your coach cheats on you it's supposed to be easy to end things. It's supposed to be. It wasn't. Not for twenty-four-year-old Luci Wijn. Not even being a world away from that man was far enough to make it easy. Luci had long ago given up on having the life she'd planned. On having a career she'd be proud of. In her first season she had come so close to the making the top fifty in Women's Professional Tennis. So close. But in tennis an inch is a mile and one year counts for nothing in the next. James Bell was a quiet ride to the airport. He should never have been anything more. Yet Luci's slide to the bottom of the world ended when she met James. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Four Days sits at the Literary end of Romance and the Romance end of Literary. It is a simple story told well. A story of two people who grow a relationship from silence. Two people who become a little less lost by dealing with that silence. Four Days is a book of a hope. So if you're tired of the same old romance tropes and the same old romance characters then give a Luci Wijn novel a go.
Jamie Campbell Bio:
I am a pseudonym, a pen name, a nom de plume. As such, I don't exist in a real sense. I exist to the extent that He lets me exist - at least that's what He tells me. I am tenuous at best. My very existence is threatened every day - unless I start to pay my way. The threats, the loathing - it really is no way to not quite exist. I tell Him that I do exist, that I am published. That strangers like what I do, call me literary; lyrical too. I tell Him that I will last for ever - that my achievements are real, tangible - and don't only exist as electrons. He says I am not real, my achievements are nugatory, transitory; piffling. I tell him that he ought to be like me: lyrical, beautiful - like a cloud. The cloud. He knows the cloud I talk of. The cloud, for what it was, looked close enough to touch; small enough to catch in a butterfly net. He tells me to shut up. He tells me He has a day job - and it can not wait. And that the cloud is His, and not mine. I hate Him. I love him too.
