AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Lorraine Wilson Talks The Last to Drown

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words author interview, where today I’m talking to the fantastic Lorraine Wilson about her upcoming novella The Last to Drown, which is coming out in February 2024 as part of the 2024 Luna Novellas series from Luna Press Publishing! I’ve really enjoyed talking to all three of the 2024 novella authors, and this interview is no exception – it’s been fascinating to find out about what to expect from The Last to Drown, the themes explored in the novella, and what Lorraine’s experiences have been like working on this book! Read on to find out more about this intriguing novella…

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Track of Words: To start things off, could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your writing in general?

LW: Of course! Hi, I’m Lorraine Wilson, author of three previous books – This Is Our Undoing, The Way The Light Bends and Mother Sea. I live on the east coast of Scotland and write stories that are influenced by my love of folklore and my background as a conservation scientist. I tend to skip around between genres a fair bit but the themes I explore centre questions of belonging and identity, and also the legacy of trauma.

ToW: Your novella The Last to Drown is coming out in February as part of the Luna Press novella series for 2024 – congratulations! Could you tell us a bit about your novella, and what readers can expect from it?

LW: So The Last To Drown is a story of family secrets bubbling to the surface, and of the bargains we will make when (we think) we have nothing left to lose. My main character Tinna is recovering from a car accident that left her widowed and disabled, and missing three months of her memory. She returns to her childhood home in Iceland seeking healing and hoping desperately that her last memories of her husband will return. But there’s a reason her mother took Tinna away from this house when she was a child. When Tinna goes down to the black shore in the dark, and begs the universe for help, the sea answers… (cue dramatic drumbeats)

ToW: What do readers need to know about the main character(s) in this story?

LW: The story is told from Tinna’s perspective and I think one of the most powerful aspects of her voice is the near-fugue state she inhabits. Chronic pain and strong medication, and the weight of her amnesia and grief have cast Tinna a little adrift from the world – she’s in a kind of liminal mental space where the lines between the real and the unreal blur. She’s a strong person rendered a ghost within her own body, almost.

The other main characters are Tinna’s aunt – Lilith, and her partner Gerdie. Lilith has been carrying the family secret for decades and is now faced with trying to protect a niece she barely knows. She’s, well, not fantastic at communication or trust so this goes about as well as you’d expect. Gerdie was fab to write. She’s a no nonsense but very empathic woman and has just about had enough of all of Lilith’s secrets.

ToW: I gather this didn’t originally start out as a novella – how did you come to the realisation that it needed to be longer than its original short story length, and decide to extend it into a novella?

LW: I knew as soon as I’d written the short story it didn’t entirely work at that length. It felt like I was skimming over the surface of some deep waters and the whole story just lacked the weight it deserved. The decision to rewrite it as a novella though only came about because Francesca (at Luna Press) told me to write a novella! I’d planned to just shelve it under ‘nice idea but didn’t work’, but her suggestion made me reappraise and decide to give the rewrite a go. And I’m so glad I did – there are a couple of themes in there that I am really happy I took the time to explore fully, and I’m excited it’ll get to be out in the world.

ToW: Thinking back to when you first started work on The Last to Drown, what was the origin for the story? Why this story in particular, and why Icelandic ghosts?

LW: I spent time in Iceland a few years ago and always knew I’d want to set a story there because the landscape is just so breathtaking. It’s such a parsimonious, raw, fiercely alive place, and the folklore has the same sense of presence as it does in parts of Scotland and Ireland, which makes it such an enticing setting for a story. I didn’t feel I could write a story about a fully Icelandic person, but the story of an outsider returning to somewhere they only half-recognise, and only half-belong? That, I’m very familiar with, and feel I can perhaps do justice to.

And then I’d also been thinking a lot about the events that can make us willing to stake our hopes in the unknown, the times when we go looking in the dark for answers because real life has betrayed us. Which is how all my stories start, to be honest – with a setting, and a question.

ToW: Have you written novellas before? How do you find them as a story length/format to work with?

LW: This is my first novella! It was a little daunting at first because there’s no real guide to how to write novellas – it’s all either ‘like a novel but shorter’ or ‘like a short story but longer’, which is…not incredibly helpful. I also wanted to experiment with a story structure that doesn’t centre ‘conflict’ per se, but that is instead more about discovery arcs – for those familiar with it, I used a kishōtenketsu story structure to build my plot rather than the more common 3-act structure.

It was definitely a learning curve, but I like that. Every new book you write should challenge you in some way, and The Last To Drown definitely taught me new things! I think novellas are a really exciting length to be honest – they give you space to explore complex worlds and themes but the pressure to do so in a very streamlined way. They’re short enough to let you test the boundaries of voice and form more than novels do, but long enough to feel like a whole world rather than an interlude. I am in the middle of drafting a second novella that’s even more challenging in terms of structure, so I’ve definitely been sold on the format!

ToW: What do you think sets novellas apart from a reader’s perspective, compared to other story formats?

LW: I think there’s an accessibility to them, in that you get the full story experience of a novel – fully fleshed out characters and plots, but within a tightly contained frame. Much as I enjoy sinking into a door-stopper of a book sometimes, there are times I don’t actually want something that’s so expansive and time-consuming, and going by the popularity of novellas recently, I’d say there are lots of readers who feel the same way.

People talk about declining attention spans, or the dominance of competing media/social media. And I’m sure that’s part of it, but I do also think that there’s an appetite for rich, beautiful stories that aren’t full of sub-plots and huge casts and extensive worldbuilding, but that instead are honed down to the story’s shining heart.

The Last To Drown is one of three Luna Novellas coming in 2024

ToW: What are your goals, or aims, for this story? Is there anything in particular that you hope readers will take away from it?

LW: I want all my readers to be overcome by the strong urge to visit Iceland and read all the books on Icelandic folklore! More seriously, I would most love people to come away from this story with an understanding of what it is like to live with chronic pain. It’s not a part of my life that I’ve put on the page before as I quite like escaping it in my stories! But I’m really glad this voice is going to be out in the world. It felt very powerful to write this experience and I really hope that as well as enjoying an eerie story, people are moved by the strange, difficult weight that is a life lived in a broken body.

ToW: Could you tell us a bit about your usual writing process? And was there anything unusual about working on this story from a process perspective?

LW: As I’ve mentioned, I live with chronic illnesses so my writing time is largely shaped around my pain levels and my parenting (and fending the cats off the keyboard). I write while my daughter is at school, and usually set myself easily achievable daily targets to keep my motivation up. Daily targets don’t work for everyone and I have to forgive myself the days when I can’t meet them, but I like having the structure of a gentle deadline.

One of the trickiest aspects of being a published author with books at various stages of the process is that you’re juggling multiple projects with a lot of external deadlines, so this book was actually drafted as a distraction project while a novel went on submission to editors. One of the best bits of advice to querying authors is to work on something new whilst querying, and the same is very true of agented authors too! This book stopped me obsessively checking my inbox every half hour, which was a blessing!

ToW: From a writing craft perspective, is there anything in particular that you learned during the process of working on The Last to Drown?

LW: I think the biggest thing was using the kishōtenketsu story structure and exploring ways to create tension and suspense without relying on external conflict. I’ve always focussed more on internal character arcs than external plot in my books, but this was a definite step further away from the conflict-centred narrative form that we’re all so used to now. It was a really good lesson in trusting myself to venture into new territory.

ToW: If readers enjoy The Last to Drown and want to read more of your work, where would you recommend they look next?

LW: Probably the most similar book thematically is The Way The Light Bends, which has a contemporary Scottish setting, and follows two estranged sisters as their shared grief drives them into shadowy places full of deep water and terrible choices.

My next book after The Last To Drown (the one that was on submission while I drafted this!) is coming out in November 2024. It’s called We Are All Ghosts In The Forest and I am ridiculously excited about getting to share it with you all, so please keep an eye out for it.

ToW: To finish off…if you were to visit Iceland and meet a ghost or a character from folklore, who or what you want to meet, and why?

LW: The Jólakötturinn, no question! A giant cat prowling the winter landscapes? How very, very cool. I mean, I would absolutely make sure every item of clothing I was wearing was brand new, because I don’t want to get eaten. And then I’d take a mega tub of dreamies and make it my friend. That would totally work, right? [100% – I would do the same! – ToW]

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A conservation scientist and third culture Scot, Lorraine lives by the sea writing stories influenced by folklore and the wilderness. She has a PhD from the University of St. Andrews but left academia and turned to writing due to disabling illness. Her debut novel, the dystopian thriller This Is Our Undoing, was a multi-award finalist. The follow up, a dark folkloric mystery The Way The Light Bends, was longlisted for the BSFA Best Novel award; and her third book, Mother Sea is an exploration of motherhood, climate change and belonging, and a Saltire Award finalist. Her next books are The Last To Drown, and We Are All Ghosts In The Forest. Lorraine has been stalked by wolves and befriended pythons, she also runs the Rewriting The Margins mentorship scheme for marginalised writers.

For more information visit Lorraine’s website.

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Huge thanks to Lorraine for chatting to me for this interview, and giving us the lowdown on The Last to Drown – it sounds fascinating, and I certainly really enjoyed reading these thought-provoking answers! I can’t wait for this novella to come out in February. If this has piqued your interest, you can find out more in this blog post on the Luna website, and by checking out the trailer for the three novellas on YouTube.

I’ve also interviewed both of the other authors involved in the Luna Novella series 2024! Here are the links to those interviews if you’d like to learn more: