Ruth Jones Q & A

1. Us Three follows the many highs and lows in Lana, Catrin and Judith’s friendship over the years. Did you have a clear idea of where their story would go when you started writing?

   Not really, if I’m honest! I knew I wanted to write about female friendship and I knew I wanted the friends to be very different personalities with a strong shared bond that would need to be challenged in some way – I guess that was my starting point. I also wanted to be able to show how they’d grown from teenagers into young women into older women and what happened to them en route, so splitting the book into three parts gave me the chance to explore their lives at these three different stages. Although Lana, Judith and Catrin get older in the book, they never quite lose that childhood dynamic – so who they are in their fifties is still rooted in who they were as teenagers. I share this with my own friends and I find it compelling.

2. Much of Us Three is set in Coed Celyn, a fictional town in Wales. How important was it for you to capture this sense of place and heritage in the book?

   Oh, I really wanted to write something Welsh for my second novel. The Welsh humour and voice and culture are so rich and earthy and they’re what I know. I made the town of Coed Celyn a fictional place because I didn’t want to set the story anywhere real – if it had been set in the Valleys it would have been impossible and irresponsible to avoid mentioning the Miners’ Strike and its devastation in the eighties, so I chose to make the setting fictional but still Welsh. I suppose in my head there were traces of my own upbringing in a small Welsh town at that time – some of the high-street names were nicked from my childhood – but more than anything the novel was a love letter to the female friendship I’ve enjoyed and been blessed by over the years, in particular my friends in Wales.

3. The scenes set during the girls’ Big Trip are wonderfully nostalgic and evocative. How do you go about researching your novels?

   Well, I’ll confess here and now that I’ve never been to Cyprus. But a dear friend of mine from uni and his wife are both British Greek and Cypriot so I was able to ask them questions about the two places – food was particularly important. There were dishes I’d never heard of, like mahalepi and glyka. And I discovered that halloumi is more of a Cypriot food than a Greek island one. I’m really chuffed that people loved the Cyprus and Greece chapters and the sunshine inherent in them. I did actually go to Crete with my sister in the early nineties, though we never walked the Samaria Gorge (to my regret), and researching that – watching people’s videos of the trek online – was really inspiring. And as well as that, two of my close friends from home went island-hopping in the eighties, so I grilled them about their experiences. In the first draft there was MASSES of stuff about island-hopping, and even interrailing AFTER the island-hopping! But I think I’d reached the word count of a full novel before they’d even come home! So a lot had to go, I’m afraid, but it was a very enjoyable journey.

4. You are a screenwriter and actor as well as an author. Do you think that your background in film and television has influenced your novels? Where do you find your inspiration when writing?

   I think being an actress, and having written scripts for screen, means I probably have a good handle on dialogue and how a scene would play out, and I think this helps. Also, it’s been useful in the creation of characters, because I imagine playing them or how they would come across on screen. I didn’t record the audiobook for Never Greener because I was too embarrassed to read out the sex scenes in case my mother ever listened (thank you to Sharon Small, who did an excellent job!) – but I did record the audiobook for Us Three, and I think because of my being an actress the experience was doubly enjoyable and it really brought the book to life for me. So it’s certainly been a benefit to my novel writing in lots of ways to have a background in acting and screenwriting. In terms of inspiration – gosh, I really don’t know where it comes from. All I know is that it usually finds its root in relationships, rather than a ‘hook’ of some kind or a plot-driven idea. I wish sometimes that I could be more plot-driven – but maybe that will come with time.

5. After the runaway success of Never Greener, what was your experience of writing a second novel like?

   It was completely different. Never Greener had originally been a screenplay, so I had the story all in place (albeit not exactly the same, but in general). So the structure was quite straightforward for me. But with Us Three, I really was starting from scratch. I realized that, like with my screenwriting, I tend to start with the characters and let the story unfold from them. So it took me longer to find out what the narrative drive would be in Us Three. Also, when I conceived Never Greener, I was about twenty years younger than I am now, and I realized that as we grow and change, our writing does too – I think there’s maybe more heart in Us Three, it’s a gentler story in some ways and not so hedonistic. There are definitely similarities between the two actresses in the novels – Kate Andrews and Lana Lloyd – but Lana is a gentler soul and more comedic than Kate. You have to love your characters though – even if they’re not very nice.

6. Where do you think your writing will take you next? Do you have any plans for another book?

   Yes, I’m currently writing book number three, Love Untold, and really enjoying myself. I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s about four women (my husband asked me if I was going to call this one Us Four ☺) and they’re Welsh, but they’re from very different generations and they each have a secret.