Climate Change

Let’s start with an introduction: Who is Vicki Jarrett?

Do other people have coherent answers when asked who they are? I’m not one of those people. As a massive over-thinker, questions like that can create sink holes in my brain that’ll take me weeks to crawl out of so, sorry, but I’ll pass on that one.

Your new novel, Always North, was recently published by Unsung Stories. It looks really interesting: How would you introduce it to a potential reader?

Always North is about complicity, accountability and our messed-up environment, about what constitutes mind and memory, and how wrong we might be about the way time works. It’s set over two time frames and settings: an oil survey vessel in the Arctic Ocean in 2025 and the Scottish Highlands in 2045. It’s been called ‘psychological scifi’ and ‘speculative literary fiction’ but I’m happy for readers to decide what they think it is. Continue reading →

Let’s start with an introduction: Who is Trevor Hoyle?

I was born in Lancashire, where I still live. Early on I worked as an actor in television and theatre, and for a while I wrote and presented an arts and entertainment digest programme for Granada Television.

Since the mid-seventies, I’ve published more than 20 novels — mainstream, thrillers, science fiction — as well as many short stories (and even won the Transatlantic Review prize). I’ve also written for BBC Radio, winning the Radio Times Drama Award. Writing Randle’s Scandals, a radio play about rude Wigan comedian Frank Randle, was a real labour of love – for which Keith Clifford, the actor in the title role, won the Sony Award.

Your new novel, The Last Gasp, will be published by Jo Fletcher Books in April. It looks rather interesting: How would you introduce it to a potential reader?

The novel is a 21st-century prophesy of a world running out of oxygen. This isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem. The way we’re mistreating the environment, pouring millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we’re creating our own disaster scenario which is threatening us all. The main character is a British marine biologist, Gavin Chase, and the story takes us from the present day to thirty years into the future, and depicts the very real possibility that we could be literally gasping for breath – hence the title. Continue reading →