The interview reproduced below was conducted early in Lauren's career by Roadworks editor Trevor Denyer when Lauren was the featured writer and artist in issue 9 of the magazine.

1) Tell me about how and why you started writing?

I've always written. It's not something I consciously decided to do. I had a very lonely childhood and invented worlds full of wonderful creatures and happenings to keep me company. I usually kept them in my head but when I went to school I began to write them down. The older I grew the weirder my tales became and by the time I reached grammar school I think I was confusing a lot of teachers. I started writing 'grown up' stories when I was fifteen. I plotted my first novel at that age and wrote it in a three-week spurt when I was eighteen. It was appalling but it was an achievement! I dabbled on and off for a long time, but circumstances kept me from pursuing it with any seriousness. It's only in the last three years that I've managed to write as much as I want. My stories are my way of dealing with the world and my experiences, by writing them down I hope to make sense of them.

2) What inspires you to write the kind of stories you write?

Lots of things inspire me, dreams, nature, music, life and all it contains - if ever I feel tired or sad I wander off and sit under a tree or by the sea and it soon sorts me out and tells me not to feel so flaming sorry for myself! A lot of my ideas come to me when I'm out walking or just sitting under the sky. It gives my mind time to wander. Another of my inspirations is the human mind and the many realities it conjures up for itself. I like to look in all the nasty dark recesses that no one much likes to think about. I like dragging what lives there out into the daylight so I can see what it looks like.

Intellectually my work revolves around the books I read. I've been studying for years, just about anything I can get my hands on, though I always seem to return to subjects of a mystical nature and I also like reading theories that rock boats and generally annoy orthodox types.

3) Can you give me some background on the three stories that appear in this issue of 'Roadworks'? (Projection, Giver Taker and Destroy Me)

Projection started out as a title, nothing more. From that I started thinking of the way the night seems to hold so many of our fears, about the instinctive panic that comes over us when faced with an unknown darkness. What reason do we have for it? Is it evolutionary, biological, psychological? Is there something out there that we should be afraid of? Can our fears become so powerful that they take physical form and destroy us? The story just came from that.

Giver, Taker started with a single image and feeling I remembered from a dream. It was an image of a young woman's face. She was smiling, but she didn't know she was smiling and I found that intriguing. What makes us aware of our feelings? What would it be like to have no self-awareness? I wanted to see how one disturbed mind would interact with another, how awareness would change, how their realities would change. I don't know if I succeeded but it was an interesting experiment,

Destroy Me was written in a two-hour burst of manic depression when I was well and truly annoyed with the world and everyone in it. I was angry at how everyone took life so much for granted, that no one is ever satisfied with anything they have. Hmm, really there is no excuse or explanation; it's just straight from my soul to the unsuspecting public!

4) What, would you say, are the hurdles that a new writer has to overcome, and how have you dealt with them?

I'm not altogether sure I have dealt with them. Sometimes I still very much feel like I'm battering at a door for which I have no key. I have terrible doubts about my work, sometimes I think it's abysmal, unoriginal tripe and I should go stack shelves for a living or something. I think this is the biggest hurdle, to keep going despite self-doubt and rejection. When you're struggling to make a name for yourself each rejection seems like a personal attack and it's so easy to give in.

5) To what extent does the 'market' have a bearing upon what you write?

None at all, I have to say. Probably if it did I'd be far more widely published now! I usually write whatever I want. I know a lot of writers say you should research your market and tailor your work to fit but I can't do that, it feels too much like selling my artistic soul (whatever that is!) All my work is personal. Sometimes it finds a home, sometimes it doesn't. I can't write to order unless something inspires me.

A lot of editors reject my work because they say they want more explanation, sometimes they're right and I have been a little too vague, but a lot of the time I feel that more explanation would ruin the story. Mystery is there to intrigue us, to make us think. So many old tales, myths, legends, they don't explain everything, the meaning is there, but it has to be teased out, it has to be worked for and when you finally understand it's like a ray of light in your mind, it changes you and that's why I won't change my work for anyone.

6) You are also into photography. Tell me about that side of things.

My photography is just another way of getting out all the stuff that's in my head. Landscapes are my favourite subject - I like being out in the country so the two go well together, although lugging several kilos of camera gear around with you everywhere you go can be a real pain at times! I also use a computer in my photography because sometimes a simple, straightforward image can be boring and I like to use my creative side whenever I can. You can achieve so much with a little experimentation, adding colours and textures, blending shapes together. I try to make my pictures a part of me, to make them less a photograph and more a picture, to tell a story or create a mood.

7) Both your writing and photographic work are very atmospheric. In your writing, how do you balance this against, say, plot or characterisation?

I'm glad you think my writing is atmospheric, that's all I ask from my work really. I see such wonderful things in my head and words can be so poetic, I use them like paint, I make images with them, I want people to see what I see and feel what I feel, I want them to be there, I want them to be moved. If you read a story and it doesn't move you or make you think, then it's failed and that's really sad. I don't think about my writing much, I just do it. I start out with the vaguest of ideas; very often I won't know what's going to happen till it happens. My characters become a part of me, I know and think and believe as they do, they grow along with the plot, each directs the other, it just kind of flows, I don't know how else to describe it, it's never been difficult for me. Everything grows out of everything else, it balances itself and the less I plan the better it is.

8) To what extent do your own beliefs figure in your stories?

I have so many. I can believe anything if the story needs me to. Really, I'm still so young, I don't know myself or the world, I'm still sorting through all those mysteries I mentioned above. I believe that everything is alive and what you do to the smallest bug or the most innocuous twig you do to yourself. I believe that pain and happiness are equally important in our lives. I believe that nothing is as it seems and anything is possible. I believe that there are a lot of truths and no one has the sole corner on salvation. Maybe when I'm a hundred years old I'll have written enough stories to sit back and smile an annoying and enigmatic smile at all the scuttling youngsters, for now I'm still learning.

The following links will take you to further interviews hosted on external SF and fantasy sites that have featured Lauren and her work in the past.

The Infinity Plus Interview :: The SFF World Interview :: The Eternal Night Interview