Books / Fiction
Interview: Stefan Mohamed
A year after the publication of the final volume of his award-winning Bitter Sixteen trilogy, Bristol-based writer and performer Stefan Mohamed returns with a fourth novel, Falling Leaves. Julie Fuster finds out more about this modern day fairy tale and what makes its talented author so prolific.
After the success of your Young Adult trilogy, was it hard to start a new novel?
I actually started Falling Leaves back in 2010, and have been working on it on and off since then, so luckily it wasn’t a case of rushing to complete something else after Stanly’s Ghost came out. I certainly feel a bit apprehensive – you always do when releasing something new. And this book is different from the trilogy so I’m crossing my fingers readers will be receptive to something with no superheroes in it, where the closest thing to an action scene is someone running down a hill (sorry, spoilers).
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What made you choose to write for a different readership with the new novel?
It was less a conscious choice, more just story dictating the potential readership. Teenagers can absolutely read this book and hopefully get something out of it, but I think it will resonate more for those who have been through, or are going through, that confusing time in your early 20s when you’re not really sure what you’re doing, or where you’re going, or even who you are! I wasn’t long out of university when I started it, so I was very much in that head space, feeling a bit discombobulated, wondering where the hell I was supposed to go next.
Falling Leaves contains some very surreal events in a very realistic context. What appeals to you about combining fantasy and realism?
I’ll happily read stories that have no fantastical elements – it’s definitely not a deal-breaker! And as a writer, while I wouldn’t say I’d never write something without those elements, I find it a really interesting space to play in, a realistic setting that’s suddenly invaded by the supernatural. It’s fascinating to explore how somebody whose worldview and reactions have been shaped by the real world – as a reader’s will have – would react to something completely fantastical suddenly encroaching on that. In a way it means you have the best of both worlds, the tactile reliability of a recognisable situation combined with the unlimited possibilities of the fantastical.
The protagonist in the new novel is a woman. How did you approach writing from a female point of view?
I was a little concerned about writing from a female perspective, just because I wanted to get it right and not make an embarrassing mess of it. I made sure to get feedback from female friends and fellow writers so it didn’t read like a clumsy male writer doing a bad impression of a girl, and it was fun and interesting to explore things like close friendships between girls, which I think often manifest in very different ways than friendships between men. In terms of building the character, I basically just started with the first scene, and she grew quite naturally from there.
There definitely is this weird tendency for male writers to fixate on physical aspects when writing as women, like women just go through the day constantly comparing the size and shape of their breasts to those of every woman they meet. Which I assume is not how women spend their time. You could be charitable and say it’s the male writer trying to focus on something that women have that they don’t, in order to more fully inhabit the character… except, no, more often than not it’s probably just prurient.
You’re not yet 30 and Falling Leaves is your fourth novel: what makes you so prolific?
I just love writing stories! That’s the boring truth of it, and as long as I keep having ideas I’ll keep writing them down, and hopefully people will keep wanting to publish them. I’m working on something new at the moment, not sure if it will see the light of day or not, every book is a long, winding process. It’s probably the most out-there thing I’ve done, almost absurdist science fiction in a way. Very intrigued to see what people will make of it. Maybe they’ll hate it. Maybe it’ll be the big flop that finishes my career. Who knows? It’s exciting.
Falling Leaves is out now www.saltpublishing.com/products/falling-leaves-9781784631420
Read more: Stefan Mohamed’s Debut Novel
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