From Travel Tales To Thrilling Fiction
Alison Ripley Cubitt discusses her journey as a multi-genre author, her collaborative writing process, and how her global experiences and media background shape her compelling narratives.
Alison Ripley Cubitt is a literary force whose remarkable journey through the realms of storytelling has captivated readers across the globe. From her early days as a prize-winning young writer in New Zealand to her illustrious career spanning continents and genres, Alison’s work is a testament to her boundless creativity and dedication to the craft. Whether she’s unearthing poignant family histories in her memoirs, weaving suspenseful narratives in her thrillers, or sharing humorous and heartfelt travel tales, Alison’s writing resonates with authenticity, wit, and a profound understanding of the human experience.
Her latest book, The Accidental Plus One: Travel Tales from a Trailing Spouse, is a delightful addition to her impressive bibliography, which includes nine published works. Alison’s ability to transform real-life adventures into engaging narratives is matched only by her talent for crafting compelling fiction, as seen in her co-authored thrillers Revolution Earth and Nighthawks, written under the pseudonym Lambert Nagle. Her collaborative approach to storytelling, alongside Sean Cubitt, has brought to life gripping tales that keep readers on the edge of their seats.
With a background in television production for industry giants like the BBC and Walt Disney, Alison’s mastery of narrative structure and character development is evident in every page she writes. Her versatility as a multi-genre author, spanning memoir, travel, and thriller, is a rare gift, and her passion for research and storytelling shines through in each of her works. It is an honour to feature Alison Ripley Cubitt in this issue of Reader’s House, where she shares her insights, inspirations, and the stories behind her extraordinary career.
“Alison Ripley Cubitt is a literary powerhouse whose versatility, creativity, and storytelling brilliance captivate readers across genres.“
Your memoir, Castles in the Air, offers an honest account of exploring your mother’s past. What motivated you to delve into such personal family history, and how did the process of writing this memoir impact your understanding of your own identity?
In 2010, I took a break from packing for a long-haul move and sat down with some family papers I’d inherited, including a 1937 ship’s log. At 40, my grandfather had uprooted his Irish-born wife and 11-year-old daughter from England to start a mysterious new job in Hong Kong.
I abandoned the packing and kept reading. From Hong Kong the family were sent to Singapore in 1939 and then onto Ceylon, (Sri Lanka), East Africa, back to Ceylon, only returning to England in mid 1945. I had more questions than I had answers.
Woven into this puzzle was the story of a 15-year-old schoolgirl who longed to go to university when war upended her future. To pass the time as there was no more school, the lively teenager wrote about her fellow passengers and their irritating habits when stuck on board an evacuation ship. As well as my mother’s journal, I found the draft of a memoir and letters written to someone she had a crush on.
My plan was to write an intergenerational memoir, telling the story of an ordinary young woman caught up in extraordinary times, as well as the story of our mother and daughter relationship. After working out the structure, I realised that this was the story that I had to tell. And I had to do it then.
I discovered that by writing about the past and preserving it for the future, I could get on with the next chapter in my life.
In The Accidental Plus: Travel Tales from a Trailing Spouse, you share humorous and heart-warming stories from your travels. How have these global experiences influenced your storytelling, and what challenges did you face in adapting real-life adventures into engaging narratives?
I wrote the blurb while I was working on my first draft and framed it as a book about my travels accompanying my Other Half on work-related jaunts. Every story had to entertain and have a point. If the stories didn’t meet the brief, I cut them as I knew that if I didn’t, my editor would! I use dialogue to engage my readers, which I learnt not so much from my travels as I did as a student at film school. Dialogue is real life without the boring bits. I write dialogue in fragments, reflecting the way people actually speak, rather than in complete sentences, which can come across as stilted and unrealistic.
Collaborating with Sean Cubitt under the pseudonym Lambert Nagle, you’ve co-authored thrillers like Revolution Earth and Nighthawks. Can you describe your collaborative writing process and how co-authoring has enriched your approach to crafting suspenseful stories?
To make our creative collaboration work as co-writers of genre fiction, we had to give up the desire for solo authorship. Advice on a draft of Revolution Earth from an Australian agent was to forgo the literary fiction end of the thriller genre and aim for something more commercial.
One bonus of co-authoring is that there are none of the feelings of solitude and isolation that some writers’ experience when there is someone there to share the joys and frustrations of a writing life.
“By writing about the past and preserving it for the future, I could get on with the next chapter in my life.”
If sitting and putting words one after another requires concentration, co-writing means talking through every aspect, from the plot and characters to the world of the story and the themes we want to bring to life.
We do our best thinking away from the writing desk. Both of us enjoy walking, and whether it is in the bridleways of Hampshire or the back alleys of Rome, we’re always making notes, sharing ideas, and developing new events, dialogue or story arcs.
Critiquing each other is integral to the collaboration. Sharing the load means sacrificing your ego to the goal of making the best book we can, and getting the job completed. There’s little space for writers’ block when you work as a team.
With a background in television production, including work with the BBC and Walt Disney, how has your experience in the media industry influenced your writing, particularly in terms of narrative structure and character development?
I was hired at Buena Vista Productions (part of Walt Disney) because my boss liked my MA graduation film and the subsequent one I’d written, which was acquired by a European broadcaster. I’d already had some success with narrative structure and character development, but I learnt at Disney that the documentaries I made there had to have a similar narrative structure to fiction. I also learnt to take criticism and rewrite to tight deadlines as there were two layers of gatekeepers who had to approve my programmes, one in London and the other in Los Angeles and they often had differing opinions! As I worked on The Making of Toy Story I got interested in Pixar’s method of storytelling, which I still use, even when outlining memoirs.
As a multi-genre author, you’ve written across memoir, travel, and thriller genres. What drives you to explore such diverse genres, and how do you navigate the distinct challenges each presents in terms of research, writing style, and audience engagement?
I like to flip between genres as I get bored and love new challenges. My first love was fiction, but apart from the book I wrote as a child, I’d only written short stories before I got interested in telling film stories and writing screenplays. Because I enjoy research, I always think about the genre I’m writing and modify the amount I do accordingly. For the comic memoirs, it’s more about fun facts, and for the fiction, it’s more in-depth, especially when creating a sense of place, often involving primary research. I recently went on a field trip to where the next Lambert Nagle thriller is set.
My comic memoirs are shorter books of around 60,000 words, while the fiction books are longer. But common to both the memoirs and the thrillers is that before I write the book, I spend weeks outlining the story structure, which I condense into one page and keep at hand while writing. When I’m tempted to go off on tangents, I’m reminded about the story and that keeps me focused.
