AUTHORS INTERVIEWING THEIR CHARACTERS: CLAIRE S. LEWIS

A tense and moving psychological thriller with ideas of victim shaming, and false and recovered memories at its core… 

Celeste has been running from her past for seven years. But now her past has caught up with her. 

For seven years, Celeste has battled her guilt and shame over the tragic events that led to her little brother’s death. Life is almost getting back to normal, with new friends, new dates, a new job training as a florist. But when her high-school boyfriend, Ben, comes back into her life just as she discovers that she has a stalker, she wonders if there’s more to her half-buried memories than she can recall. 

Celeste is determined to expose the truth – but she’s about to find out that when you play with fire, you get burned…

It starts in a nightclub…

It’ll end in a graveyard.

INTERVIEW WITH CELESTE

Claire: Why don’t you start by telling us a little about yourself?  

Celeste: Well, I guess I’m just an ordinary girl, single, twenty-four years old, dark eyes, blonde hair, slim, pretty (at least that’s what my Tinder dates say) sharing a flat in London with my two friends – Anya and Jess and trying to earn enough money to pay the rent. I suppose I’m not that ambitious in a career sense, but I want to make my way in the world and escape my past…and, of course, I’m looking for someone to love… 

Claire: How did you come up with the idea for CelestialHeastones.com?

Celeste: I’m training to be a florist at Seventh Heaven Pimlico and studying digital marketing part-time at a nearby London college. I had to do a marketing project as part of my course, and I came up with this idea for an online grave-tending service – like Interflora – but instead of delivering flowers to the living, I deliver flowers to the dead. I’m not a morbid person or anything, but somehow, I’ve spent a lot of time visiting graveyards in the past few years.

Now I do it for a living – all those people out there, the old, the sick, new mums – who aren’t able or haven’t got the time to visit their loved-ones’ graves – well they can order their memorial flowers online through my website – CelestialHeadstones.com. Then I deliver their flowers to the cemetery, tidy and weed the plot, clean the headstone, arrange the bouquet and email the photographs to my client – all at the click of a button!

Claire: How much do you blame yourself for what happened seven years ago? 

Celeste: Of course, I blame myself. Everyone blamed me and shamed me for what happened that night – Ben, his mother, my mother, my so-called friends, the school, the police, the people at the inquest… They all believed his lies…I believed his lies…At last, seven years on, the smoke is starting to clear from my memories and I’m beginning to grasp at the truth. Still, I’m tortured with guilt for my part in the tragedy…that will never go away…never in a million years…

Claire: Do you believe what you were subjected to in the boathouse was rape?

Celeste: Everyone else seemed to think I was asking for it. Even the girls in my class bad-mouthed me. You should have heard them. ‘She was drunk…’ ‘She was bouncing off the walls…’ ‘She threw herself at him…’ ‘She dragged him off to the boathouse…’ I didn’t dare to tell my story to the police. Victim shaming is a big thing and I had so many reasons to hate myself too. Now I’m older and wiser. I understand I was his victim. He forced himself on me. I never consented to what he did to me. But now I prefer to think of myself as a survivor, not a victim.

Claire: Do you consider yourself a role model for the #MeToo movement?

Celeste: I can’t be a role model for anyone or anything because I don’t think I’m a good person. I believe there are shades of light and dark in all of us. I want to be happy and live at peace with everyone. But male oppression drives me crazy. I’ll do anything to help any woman gain the courage to stand up to abuse at the hands of any man. 

Claire: What are your feelings towards Theo? 

Celeste: He scares me because I don’t know what he’s capable of. But to be honest I can’t help feeling sorry for him. I don’t think he’s a bad person. At the end of the day he’s a kid with communication difficulties and an obsessive personality. It’s my bad luck that he’s fixated on me. Let’s hope neither of us gets hurt.

Claire: Do you think Ben got his just deserts?

Celeste: He only has himself to blame. If he had shown any remorse, if he had made any attempt to reform himself, I might have found it in my heart to forgive him – at least for what he did to me in the boathouse. But I can’t forgive his lies…or the horrible way he treated Mia. That was the final straw. And I can never, ever forgive him for what happened to Tom.

Claire: Any regrets for the way things turned out? 

Celeste: Right now, all I feel is an overwhelming sense of release. But ask me tomorrow and I may feel differently.

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You can read more about Celeste and the secrets of her past life in NO SMOKE WITHOUT FIRE, published on May 7th. Order your copy here:

https://bit.ly/NoSmokeWithoutFire1 (Amazon.co.uk)

https://bit.ly/NoSmokeWithoutFire2 (Amazon.com)

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Claire S Lewis studied Philosophy, French literature and international relations at Oxford and Cambridge universities before starting her career in aviation law with a City law firm in London and later as an in-house lawyer at Virgin Atlantic Airways. More recently, she turned to writing psychological suspense, taking courses at the Faber Academy in London. She is an author with Aria, the digital-first imprint of the British independent publisher, Head of Zeus. No Smoke Without Fire, is her second novel and is published on 7 May 2020. Her debut novel, She’s Mine, came out in March 2019 and the Audible Audiobook of She’s Mine will also be released on 7 May. She lives in the Surrey countryside where she is now in lockdown with her family.

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS

Twitter: @CSLewisWrites

Facebook Author Page: @CSLewisWrites   

Instagram: @cslewiswrites

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Interviews, On Writing