Criminal lawyer and award-winning author Anne Corlett talks to us about her latest book 'The Theatre of Glass and Shadows' and discusses why the legal profession has produced so many distinguished authors.
Anne Corlett has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and has won a number of awards for her short stories, including the H E Bates Award. Armed with her linguistics-related degrees and work experience, Anne became a criminal lawyer, and in 2011 she started her writing career. Her first novel The Space Between The Stars was published in 2017. Anne's latest book The Theatre of Glass and Shadows is published on 23rd May by Black & White Publishing and can also be found on our catalogue.
As a child, I was obsessed with The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle, after taking the animated film out of the local video rental shop – showing my age! I read it over and over – and watched the film over and over. Many years later, my partner tracked down a first edition of the book and gave it to me for my birthday. Many more years later, I was at Worldcon in Dublin and I met Peter Beagle. He signed the book, accepted a copy of my first novel, and we sat in the bar and talked life, writing and everything for an hour. They say never meet your heroes, but I have to disagree. He was wonderful.
I think it probably has to do with the fact that lawyers deal in words, just as writers do. As a lawyer, you’re trying to find the right words to persuade, or to get to the heart of the matter – which is exactly what writers do, albeit for different reasons. I think I might be slightly unusual in that I’m a former criminal lawyer who doesn’t write crime. I dipped a toe in once, but struggled to balance what I know about how the system works with what readers expect – and want – from a fictional portrayal of that world. Screen depictions of trials tend to focus on the Crown Court, but I spent a lot of time in police stations and magistrates’ courts, where everything is a lot more robust and practical than you might expect.
I’m currently waiting for the green light on a new project, so I’m not in my usual routine. When I am working on a draft, I tend to come back from the school drop off and write until lunchtime, when I will usually try to drag myself out for a run. If the writing is going well, I sometimes plough on through to the end of the day – then pay for it with an aching back and a load of admin and jobs that should have been done. I sometimes go and work in a café for a change of scene.
She was fairly well-formed from the start. The idea of survivors being people who were isolated in various ways was there from the very first seeds of the idea. Writing her character felt like stripping away layers to find the hidden vulnerabilities.
It’s set in an alternate version of post-war London, where a vast Theatre District has grown up on the south bank of the Thames. At its heart is an immersive show that has been running for centuries. The identities of the residents are hidden behind the roles they play for life, and no one from outside the district is accepted into their closed world. Over the years, generations of dedicated fans have tried to piece together the stories of the district, and to uncover its secrets, recording their findings on the walls of an old pub in the back streets. The main character, Juliet, is a lonely 19 year-old who has never felt loved or wanted. When she learns that she was born in the Theatre District, she goes there, hoping to uncover the truth about her long-dead mother, and perhaps to finally belong somewhere.
I had the original idea for the book after my first ever visit to an immersive theatre show – Punchdrunk’s The Drowned Man. It was a very strange night! I came away knowing I wanted to write about immersive theatre, but it took quite a long time to work out what story I wanted to tell. I actually started writing it before The Space Between the Stars, and only returned to it later. It went through substantial changes over a number of drafts – Juliet wasn’t even the main character in the original version!
I generally have a specific theme in mind when I start a project – but at some point along the way, I usually realise that I’m actually writing about something quite different. The Theatre of Glass and Shadows was originally supposed to focus on identity, but I think it’s more about the stories we tell ourselves and others, and the way we look for patterns and meaning in the world around us. There’s also a theme running through it that has to do with the need to belong, to be part of something.
I tend to launch straight in, then fall down a lot of research rabbit holes along the way. It was slightly different with The Theatre of Glass and Shadows, where the ‘research’ involved going to a lot of immersive shows, then unpacking them over a glass of wine with fellow audience members!
I have an opening and an outline for something based around the idea that a fairly major part of British history happened very differently. I can’t say any more at the moment!
Probably The Lord of the Rings. There’s so much in there that it would take you a very long time to get too familiar with it to want to read it again.
I have one size 6 foot and one size 3 foot. Shoe shopping is not my favourite pastime.
