OUR
WRITERS MEAN BUSINESS OUR
WRITERS MEAN BUSINESS 
How has your first year as a published author been?
Hectic! We moved from Germany to Belgium a few months before The Vanishing
was published, so I was checking proofs at the same time as I was unpacking,
fighting my way through a new bureaucratic system and starting to learn
a new language. When The Vanishing was actually published, I was
in the middle of writing my second novel, The Glass Demon, which
is coming out in April 2010, and working up to my first year Dutch exam.
So it’s been a very busy time, but also incredibly exciting. Since
I was a child it has been my ambition to hold in my hand a book with my
name on the front, and now it’s finally happened!
For anyone who hasn’t yet read THE VANISHING, what can they
expect?
Lots of German culture, a mystery, and a very grisly denouement! I lived
in Bad Münstereifel, where the book is set, for seven wonderful years.
It’s a place with a long and fascinating history and simply bursting
with ghoulish legends, which I have woven into the story. I didn’t
need to make them up – I think it’s the most haunted town on
the planet!
What is one piece of advice you’d give to new authors?
Be very clear about what you want. There will be obstacles to overcome –
rejections, constructive criticism from your editors, revisions, maybe disappointing
reviews (though one hopes not!). It’s easier to get over these if
you always have your ultimate aim in mind, whether it’s to publish
one book, or get onto the bestseller list ten times in a row. I talked to
members of a writer’s group this year about the publishing process,
and one writer came up to me afterwards and said that if that was what it
was like, he felt he would be happier writing for himself rather than trying
to write commercially. It’s okay to decide that! The main thing is
to be clear-sighted about what you want.
What books do you read when you are not writing?
I like Victorian literature – Trollope, Dickens, George Eliot (The
Mill on the Floss is one of my most re-read books). I also read quite
a lot of crime novels – I’m having a bit of a craze on Scandinavian
crime novels at the moment – and ghost stories. When I’m getting
towards the end of writing a novel and my head is full of it, I often re-read
old favourites rather than start reading something new, which is just distracting.
And finally, what can we expect next from Helen Grant?
I’ve just started a third novel set in Germany, and I’m very
excited about that. Like my other German novels, it’s inspired by
historical events and local legends, in this case the witch trials which
took place in the sixteenth century. It’s a fascinating but horrifying
period of history.
In the longer term, I’d love to set a book in my new home of Flanders.
That’s still some way off - I’d like to be better at the language
(Flemish, a dialect of Dutch) first – but it’s something I’d
really like to do. It’s such a quirky place. Santa Claus arrives by
helicopter here and they have a pumpkin-weighing contest every year –
there has to be something to say about that!