Kate Mosss

Source: Speak Up
Language level: Advanced
Speaker: Justin Redcliffe
Standard:British accent





What do a best-selling author and a world-famous supermodel have in common? They both share the same name. Well, almost. The writer Kate Mosse is known for writing hefty historical thrillers which are read by millions: Labyrinth, set in Carcassonne, in Southwest France, took readers on a quest for the Holy Grail.

It enjoyed huge commercial success and comparisons were made with Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. It has been translated into 37 languages.

Some have criticized Sepulcher, Mosse’s latest novel, for being too close to Labyrinth –it’s also epic in length, with the same French location and a similar narrative style – but the book’s selling well. There’s even talk of making movies of both novels. When Kate Mosses met with Speak Up, we asked her whether having such a glamorous namesake ever presented a ´problem:

TAXI!

Kate Mosse

(Standard: English accent):

It’s completely fine. It’s a funny thing because obviously there are very few similarities between a novelist and a supermodel, but it’s actually people remember your name. she’s a very accomplished and rather beautiful young woman; it’s not as if I share a name with someone who is a maniac or evil, or terrible, so I mean I think I can imagine if you had a difficult name, it would be slightly different, but it means people do remember it and it gives quite a lot of opportunity for jokes, really, you know, cab drivers arrive and their poor faces fall because you know. I’m older, shorter, you know, more tired, no doubt than she is, but actually it’s just fine.

THE WRITING PROCESS

Labyrinth wasn’t Kate Mosse’s first published book, but it was the first one to achieve bestseller book, but it was the first one to achieve bestseller status. We asked her whether this (had) made writing Sepulchre easier or harder:

Kate Mosse:

The challenges were different. With Labyrinth, I was writing entirely for myself. There was no expectation and it felt like the only thing that mattered was the text ant the story and was I getting it right. With Sepulchre, because I had been so extraordinary lucky with Labyrinth, and I knew I had millions of readers, I did feel this awful sense of fear about letting fans down. Before Labyrinth I didn’t have any fans: I mean, people had read my books, but in a very modest way! So, with Sepulchre, to start with, I had the sense that I was looking beyond the book, to the readers. And that’s no way to write a book, but once I’d got rid of that feeling, and I just…concentrating simply on writing the book again, you know, putting one foot in front of the other, finishing this chapter, then the experience became very similar to writing Labyrinth, actually. So, it’s not as simple as “Is one harder than the other?” they both have challenges and writing a book that you care about will always have a challenge…I now understand that it won’t ever get any easier. It will always be hard work, which is, of course, right because you don’t get anything back, if you haven’t put stuff in really!