Interviewing E M Harding
Last week I was very impressed by https://www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2019/11/15/moon-sitting-by-e-m-harding so I am very pleased to say I was lucky to be able to get an interview with the writer. Definitely a novella you should pick up!
Helloooo!!
Thank you for writing such a great and surprising story! If you were book tempting Moon-sitting how would you describe it?
Hmm…well, I can’t confess to be a great book-tempter (I think that trophy goes to you), but my normal pitch is something like:
Moon-Sitting is an adult sci-fi with a moody atmosphere and a pinch of wit. It’s about three folks, far from home, charged with monitoring a giant sphere that killed most of the population of their planet. It’s also the story of what happens when just watching is no longer good enough.
How did I do? (I award five womble stars)
So where did the idea for the story come from?
I’m going to be really annoying and say that I don’t really know. This is one of those stories where the opening visual came first, and up until today I thought that image was a result of some of the artwork I’ve seen floating around. However, I’ve just realised that the moon falling into the ocean is an idea I’ve had for far longer than I thought. My hard drive tells me the oldest document I have with this opening image was last updated in 2013, but the pictures I’ve been “collating” only go back to 2017. Basically, I have no idea where that initial spark came from, but I clearly kept it well fed, for it to have survived for so long.
The rest of Moon-Sitting started when I came across that old file during my MA dissertation and began fiddling around with the concept again. First it was just toying with the opening lines in my head, twiddling with them until I knew them by heart. Then I jotted it into a phone memo, feeling out Lucky’s voice. After that, I needed to see where it would go, and quickly discovered that Lucky is the kind of character that does not stop. She was incredibly easy to write, but that also meant she drove the conversation down a lot of rambling roads. Before I even finished the first draft I knew I was going to have to rewrite half of it. A lot of ideas changed through redrafting and conversations with friends over logic, aliens, and whether it’s physically possible for a lighthouse to stay standing after an enormous sphere caused a disaster that swept everything else away.
Moon-Sitting is a collection of ideas formed over a year spent exploring, writing and living at the edge of my own Infinity (that’s a very pretentious way of saying Wales). It’s a book that came out of a bit of madness and caused a bit of madness, but seeing it in the flesh brings me joy.
I really enjoyed your approach to reveals as the story progressed. Do you enjoy surprising the reader?
Absolutely! During my BA I picked up a free copy of The End of the Affair by Graham Greene and fell in love with the story-telling. It non-linear and packed with mystery, which slowly unravels as the main character gains a fuller picture of the woman he once loved. I decided that’s how I wanted to write fiction, and I’ve never looked back. It’s tricky, but it’s also incredibly satisfying. It’s like I’m not just telling you a story, I’m giving you a puzzle to solve, and you cannot imagine how happy it makes me when people not only solve the puzzle, but excitedly ask a million questions about all the little things they went through to get there.
What are your thoughts on the story being labelled ‘hopepunk’?
Honestly, it’s not a word I’d heard of before your review, but when I looked it up, I found it really interesting. I love that someone read Moon-Sitting and found it hopeful in some way. I love that the thing you took from the story was Lucky’s sense of “humanity” over everything else.
Personally, by the time I’d written the fifth version of the ending, I was cracking jokes about making it a choose-your-own-adventure and creating the darkest time line. Some folks wanted me to add an epilogue onto Moon-Sitting, and be more definite about what happened after, but I wanted to deliberately leave it ambiguous. At the time I didn’t know what would happen post the end scene, and I didn’t want to think about it.
Now I’ve thought about it. Now I know what happens. And what I can say without being horrendously spoilery is that … if there’s one thing I love, it’s characters who fly in the face of adversity. And I think that’s pretty hopeful and pretty punk.
Do you like to write in silence or is there a soundtrack for Moon-sitting?
So I pretty much always write with music, unless I’m really struggling to wrap my head around a scene. I have a mammoth playlist of 400 odd songs on Youtube. However, when Moon-Sitting was getting ready for launch, I took some of my favourites, added a few newbies for flavour, and created the official Moon-Sitting soundtrack. I’m really into music that combines different genres, or just has some nice electro attitude. You’ll see some of the artwork I’ve been “collating” in this playlist; if you spot the common theme in the thumbnails you get bonus points. You’ll also find Rocket Girl (ft Betty Who) by Lemaitre in the list, and if that song isn’t Lucky’s get hyped jam, then I don’t know what is.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXoDeYxWNzJAXt_bcxU3VDjT7_1a3NiGI
What is the Writeryjig Clubamabob and how did it help the writing?
The Writeryjig Clubamabob is a writing group that I set up with a friend about two and a half years ago. We base the sessions on how creative writing seminars used to work at the University of Birmingham: small group, half of which submit a week before the session, everyone reads and critiques. I love the structure because it means you’ve got x number of people to help filter out what’s opinion from what really needs to change.
Moon-Sitting’s opening sections have been on the cutting table at Clubamabob twice. In its earliest form, it sparked a very loud argument over whether or not it was set on Earth. The second time, I got a dinosaur sticker for how much I’d improved it. Beyond the group sessions, though, I’ve relied heavily on some of the members to help me edit and proof Moon-Sitting. I’ve been very lucky in that I’ve managed to surround myself with folks who have a variety of expertise: everything from hard core grammar to being able to calculate the size of a sphere based on the volume and capacity of the Enterprise. I do not math well.
Where can we find you?
My usual hang is Twitter (@EM_Writing), but I can also be found on Instagram (@EM0rt) and Facebook (@EMHardingWrites). In addition, I run a blog over at www.emmort.wordpress.com, where you can get a bit more insight into on-going projects, find some short stories, and check out my reading recommendations.
As you can see, I’m really consistent in naming things. It makes me incredibly easy to find.
