Kate Mosse at Marlborough LitFest

Marlborough LitFest was pleased to welcome Kate Mosse CBE, the hugely successful author, playwright, European Woman of Achievement and founder of the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. Mosse spoke about her latest book The Map of Bones, the last in the Joubert Family Chronicles, and about her research and writing processes.

The Map of Bones is not published until October 10 but some copies had been made available for lucky fans to buy and have signed by the author. 

Like most of Mosse’s books and perhaps the reason she is so popular, The Map of Bones is a historical adventure story. It contains, she says, “A high body count, horse chases, guns but is also a love letter to southern Africa.” There are always “people you have to kill. Readers are more traumatised than the author by the killing off of favourite characters.”

The book has dual time sections. The 1688 section follows the fortunes of Suzanne Joubert, a Huguenot refugee from war-torn France who goes to southern Africa to discover what happened to her notorious pirate cousin, Louise Reydon-Joubert. The 1862 section focuses on Isabelle Joubert’s attempts to find answers about what happened to her long-lost relations. The Epilogue is set in London 1872, 10 years later. And here it becomes metafiction as Mosse brings in real characters from her non-fiction writing.

The Joubert Family Chronicles overall investigate faith and war and the consequences of each. Mosse is also concerned about the absence of women and their stories in history and wants to redress this.

Mosse carries out extensive research for all her novels which is “the bedrock” of her writing. “I don’t need to prove to you I’ve done my research but I need to write well enough for you to know I have done research. Every piece of research must earn its place in the book, most doesn’t make it.”

“Landscape and place is the biggest character in my books,” explained Mosse. “Every novel I’ve ever written comes from place, what I call the ‘whispering in the landscape.’”

Mosse writes on a computer as she can type faster than she can talk and is accurate. However, a tip for budding authors is to frequently change the type font for editing as this prevents word blindness. She usually works for 4 hours a day starting at 4.30 am.  However, the “real work of writing a book is in the editing.”

Finishing The Map of Bones was, commented Mosse, “the end of an era. I have followed one family from 1562 to 1862 and living and dreaming those scenes since 2012. It was emotional.”

However, Mosse has plenty of plans for the future. Next year is the 20^th anniversary of the publication of Labyrinth, the book that made her an international best seller. She has written a one-woman show inspired by Labyrinth which will tour the UK and celebrate the 20 years she has been writing historical fiction.

After that she is embarking on a new series of novels which are based on crime cold cases, unsolved murders all set in Sussex in the twentieth century. The first is set in 1948, which explained Mosse, “is when the great betrayal of women took place. Women who had done heroic things in the war were sent ‘back to the kitchen’. So there is much for fans to look forward to.