Hello readers, a little bit of a reposting today with the fantastic Mary Lawlor. Myself and Mary have been working together on a couple of bits and bobs recently and she kindly asked whether I would re-post our brilliant article on her book The Fighter Pilot’s Daughter (with a couple of adjustments to give you a little more information!) Enjoy and if you want a beautifully written story that will really pull on your heart strings use the links below and bag yourself a copy!
If you were to describe your book in three sentences what would you say? (They can be long sentences!)
It’s a story about my life as the daughter of a military pilot who was often away from home and dramatizes the ways the Cold War sifted down into our household. The climax of the story comes with me getting caught up in the heat of the student uprisings in Paris when my father was in Vietnam. The story concludes with our reconciliation: we found our way back to each other as the Cold War ended.
What was the most important thing you learnt during writing this book? How did you feel when the book was completed?
I realized what a problem I was—a pain in the neck, really—for my parents during those really tense years. For decades I’d thought of my mother and father as the bad guys, but in writing the book I came to see that they were afraid for me; and that I was difficult for them to talk to and refused to get along with them.
Is there anything in the book you wish you had changed now that it’s out there in the world – (I love this question!)
I’d give more attention to my sisters. They’re very interesting, imaginative people, but they have their own ways of understanding and remembering our life as a family. As much as I’d like to have included more about them in my book, I have to respect their separate visions.
Could you give us an insight into your writing process?
I try to listen to the words moving around in my head. In hearing things said in my family all those years ago, I probably didn’t get them exactly as they were in fact uttered, but I really did hear them. Once they were written down, more memories came; and when those were written, more came still…
Is there a message in your novel that you wanted your readers to grasp?
I wanted to show how complicated military families can be—how the members of a given family don’t necessarily hold the same views about military culture itself. I wanted readers to see the crazy trajectories Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine kids are made to follow and the difficulties of finding yourself in those situations. I wanted to tell my mother’s story, of how it was for her making, unmaking, remaking the household and her self every time we moved. And for my father I wanted to show the human side of a professional warrior. Very difficult.
How can readers discover more about you and you work?
On my website: http://www.marylawlor.net
So there you go a little bit of an insight into Mary’s book and the fantastic writing that this author does and why. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Mark number of times now to promote her books and she’s a really brilliant author with a lot of passion.
On a side-note: this will become my usual review date. Unfortunately my plan to get the blog up and running a little more smoothly has been put on the back-burner. I’m tempted to wait until Christmas to really get everything back up and running again but I hope you’re enjoying the little bits and bobs I’m posting for now.
Links for Mary Lawlor’s Fighter Pilot’s Daughter: Growing Up in the Sixties and the Cold War
mylittlebookblog 
An arresting and very honest interview with the author which I really enjoyed, Lizzie. Thank you for sharing.
Nice way of writing, I liked the flow and enjoyed the interview 😀