JJA Harwood is an author, editor and blogger. She grew up in Norfolk, read History at the University of Warwick and eventually found her way to London, which is still something of a shock for somebody used to so many fields. When not writing, she can be found learning languages, cooking with more enthusiasm than skill, wandering off into clearly haunted houses and making friends with stray cats. The Shadow in the Glass is her debut novel.
We chat with debut author JJA Harwood about The Shadow in the Glass, writing, book recommendations, and so much more!
Hello! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hello! My name is JJA Harwood and I’m an author, editor and blogger. I grew up in a tiny village in the east of England, studied history at university, and now I work in publishing. I’m an enormous nerd with a fascination for the macabre, and I’m pretty sure that I would be the first one in any given haunted house to say “let’s split up and look for clues.”
How is your 2021 going in comparison to that other year?
Much better! My debut novel, The Shadow in the Glass, has been released and I’ve started a new D&D campaign. All I need now is the vaccine and that’s me sorted!
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
The first book I remember reading is The Witches by Roald Dahl. It was my favourite book in the world when I was about five, which probably tells you a lot about what kind of kid I was. I can’t really remember the first book which made me want to become an author because I’ve wanted to write for so long, but if I had to pick, it’d be Twlight by Stephenie Meyer – I didn’t really enjoy it, but it was the first book which made me sit down and think about what I would’ve done differently if I’d been writing it, so it ended up being a really positive experience even though the book itself wasn’t really for me. And the book I can’t stop thinking about is probably always going to be Deathless by Catherynne Valente, which breaks my heart with such skill every time I read it!
When did you first discover your love for writing?
I can’t really say, to be honest! I’ve been writing since I was a kid, it’s really hard to pin down the moment that I actually started after doing it for so long. I have vague memories of telling stories to a bunch of stuffed animals when I was small, but I started taking writing seriously when I was a teenager, and I first had the idea for The Shadow in the Glass. When I realised I could just write the stories that I wanted to see, the whole world opened up for me!
Your debut novel, The Shadow in the Glass, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
I can do it in one: Fausterella.
(Yes, really.)
What can readers expect?
One extremely complicated and morally dubious heroine, a love interest who walked in expecting a Jane Austen novel and received something very different, a bunch of Victorian grime and the world’s most sinister fairy godmother. If you like your fairy tales dark and are highly suspicious of all those wishes that get granted for free, this is the book for you!
Where did the inspiration for The Shadow in the Glass come from?
I’ve always been interested in fairy tales, but the story of Cinderella never really grabbed me until I came across the version of the story as told by Giambattista Basile in the seventeenth century. In this version, Cinderella is tricked into killing her own stepmother by the woman who goes on to become Stepmother #2. From there the tale proceeds along fairly traditional lines, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the murder of the first stepmother. I’d always thought of Cinderella as a good, kind, sweet character, and I was burning to know what had pushed her to the point of murder. Add to that one terrifying nightmare when I was about seventeen, and I was all set!
Can you tell us about any challenges you faced while writing and how you were able to overcome them?
I faced a lot of challenges which I imagine are already familiar to anyone who writes in a historical setting – namely, I’d get jolted out of what I was writing because I had to check a historical fact. There’s only so much you can get from historical records, and every so often I’d just have to fling caution to the winds and fill in the gaps based on what I had found out. I’d say the most challenging thing was writing to a deadline around a full-time job, though. For my first round of edits I ended up pushing myself way too hard and getting a chest infection right after I turned them in! I definitely made sure to pace myself for the next round!
Were there any favourite moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I don’t want to say too much for fear of spoilers, but I loved writing Eleanor justifying all the bad things she ends up doing. It was so much fun as a writer to let her twist herself into knots explaining how nothing was her fault – and planting all the clues for the reader that hint that maybe she’s not as trustworthy as she seems. Also, pretty much all the scenes at the final ball, I was having the time of my life.
What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?
It was a very long one! I first had the idea for Shadow about twelve years ago, but I was nowhere near ready to write it. I redrafted it all the way through university and tried to teach myself as much about writing as I possibly could. Three or four years ago I decided I was ready to look for an agent and started going on submission – but almost as soon as I had sent the first email, I had an idea to make the whole thing a lot better, and took another year to rewrite it. I found my brilliant agent Chloe once I’d finished that draft, worked on the MS with her some more, and then went on submission. The whole thing escalated from there very quickly!
What’s the best and the worst writing advice you have received?
The best writing advice I have received came from my editors at Voyager (thank you Natasha and Vicky). It is that every scene should have a purpose, and if you can’t say what that purpose is, then you should cut that scene. When I complete a first draft I make a list of all my scenes and write the purpose underneath each one, and if I can’t say what the purpose is, then that scene goes into my cutting doc. It’s completely revolutionised my drafting process! As for the worst writing advice, that is probably that you have to follow very strict grammatical rules at all times. Obviously you need to know how grammar works, but I’ve found that bending the rules a little to create a specific emotional response in my reader is much more effective than sticking rigidly to everything in a grammar textbook.
What’s next for you?
I’m working on something new but I can’t say too much about it right now, except that I’m very excited about it. Watch this space!
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
Always! I absolutely love the Amberlough trilogy by Lara Elena Donnelly, If We Were Villains by ML Rio, Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver and pretty much anything by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. There’s such a lot of talented writers out there, it’s so hard to choose!
