Fiona Valpy, author of 'The Cypress Maze' - Historical fiction author chats mixing fact with fiction, challenging yourself, and looking through the compost bin
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 3 August 2023
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Fiona Valpy is a historical fiction author who has sold millions of books, her work has been translated into more than 30 languages, and she's always up for a challenge.
Her new novel, 'The Cypress Maze', is inspired by the true story of Iris Origo. An English-born woman in Italy, she sheltered refugee children and helped prisoners of war escape during World War II. It's a dual timeline novel, set across 1943 and 2015. We chat about the extensive research that goes into historical fiction, how she keeps track of it all, and why that's led to a filing system overhaul.
Fiona writes for different publishers, doing different things, and we chat about the added pressure that heaps on her writing, and why she's always peering into her compost bin to see which ideas are ready to go.
You can hear how she balances fictional plot with factual history, and how much her visual style utterly absorbs her while she's writing.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome along to a brand new episode of writers routine. |
| 0:12.0 | This week we're chatting to Fiona Valpi. |
| 0:14.9 | She's a historical fiction author. |
| 0:16.9 | The new one is The Cypress Maze. |
| 0:19.6 | We chat about how daunting she finds the lead up to a big bit of writing. |
| 0:24.0 | Is it the same as other work? |
| 0:26.0 | Maybe when you've got a huge meeting coming up. |
| 0:28.8 | Also, when she looks to the compost bin to see what her next novel might be |
| 0:33.4 | and why she likes to challenge herself by changing style and pace. |
| 0:38.1 | I do love a challenge and I think it's good for us to be challenged in life |
| 0:42.4 | because that forces growth but it also keeps us interested and it keeps us sharp |
| 0:48.9 | and it stops us from just sort of taking for granted the knowledge that perhaps we've |
| 0:56.0 | built up through previous research. |
| 0:59.0 | Where my writing started was with a move to France from Scotland. |
| 1:05.0 | And that in itself was a big leap into a new life, living the dream, all of that stuff. And it was there |
| 1:13.3 | that I really found I had the time and then also importantly the inspiration to begin writing. |
| 1:25.6 | Yes, welcome along to the show. This is writer's' Routine where we take a look through an author's |
| 1:30.1 | working day. This week, it's Fiona Valpi on the show. She has sold millions of books. Her work |
| 1:36.6 | has been translated into more than 30 languages, and the new one is The Cyprus Maze maze inspired by the story of English-born Iris |
| 1:46.8 | O'rigo who during World War II sheltered refugee children and helped many Allied prisoners |
| 1:52.4 | of war escape. Now it's dual timeline set across 1943 and 2015 and we talk about the extensive |
| 1:58.9 | research that goes into a historical novel like this, |
... |
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