Former BBC programme writer and professional magician's assistant Lora Jones talks to us about her debut novel 'The Woman in the Wallpaper' and one of the most terrifying magic tricks she's ever been a part of.
Lora Jones began her career working in the TV industry in London, reading scripts for ITV’s Drama Department, and writing factual programme content and comedy material for the BBC, Channel 4 and others. She also spent over a decade assisting professional TV and stage magicians, and gathering up their secrets.
Passionate about creating and writing original stories, The Woman in the Wallpaper is Lora's first novel. She is also the co-creator/host of The Magician's Wife podcast. The Woman in the Wallpaper was published by Sphere on 20th February. You can also find it on the Suffolk Libraries catalogue.
Both! I was very lucky to always be surrounded by books growing up, as my mum was a primary school teacher, and instilled how important books were in me at an early age. As a result I was always allowed new books, even when money was tight. My mum still tells stories of how I would toddle around with little baskets full of books, and when she was at work my grandmother and I would sit down with a storybook, for which my grandmother would act out all the voices. Her speciality was the Reverend Timms from Postman Pat. As a child I also visited our local library regularly. The staff were lovely, and I still remember the smell of their books, and the unique squeak of the parquet floor as you walked towards the shelves – a sign that a great story wasn’t far away!
I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t been incredibly difficult, which is the case for the majority of published authors. I began The Woman in the Wallpaper back in 2019, and it went through various incarnations (with different titles, protagonists, narrators – and literary agents!) and rejections before I got my publishing deal in 2023. I poured my heart and soul into trying to create a historical novel with a strong hook that was readable without being dry, and with enough pace and intrigue to hopefully keep readers guessing and turning the pages. And when my book went out on submission to publishers, it was bought within twenty-four hours by my UK publisher, and within two working days by my US publisher. It was all totally unexpected. That said, the year and a half that has passed since signing my contracts has been even more of a challenge. For the first five months of editing, I was working twelve hour days and barely leaving the house in order to meet the deadline. It was completely overwhelming. But if readers enjoy the result, then the hard work will have been worth it.
I find I have to treat writing like a job, or I’d never get anything done, so I try to start around 10am and work through until 6-7pm. If I’m drafting out a story, then I aim for a couple of thousand words a day. I’m very fortunate to live in an old farmhouse set into the hillside above the beautiful Dee Valley in North Wales, and my study is at the very end of the house, looking out across the sweep of mountains, aqueduct and castle, so it’s very peaceful, and we’re treated to spectacular seasonal views. I don’t always write in there though, as I like a change of scene, so will relocate to other rooms from time to time. Sometimes I write on my laptop by the log burner and on other days I commandeer the spare desk in my husband’s study. Luckily he doesn’t mind sharing! Like many writers, my favourite part of the process is editing, shaping the story into the best finished product it can be for a reader’s enjoyment.
The Woman in the Wallpaper is a dark, sweeping mystery about three women, set against the turmoil of the French Revolution. When one of those women moves into a house and is surrounded by unsettling wallpaper, she becomes aware that the scenes on it appear to be mirroring her own life – but do they echo her past or predict her future? That’s the key hook of the novel. It’s set at a wallpaper factory outside Paris in the late 18th century, and told in the three first-person voices of Sofi (a headstrong factory worker), her sister Lara (an even-tempered lady’s maid) and Hortense (the spoilt and spiteful daughter of a Versailles aristocrat). I very much hope it’s a novel in shades of grey rather than black and white, since I didn’t want to write a story of a villainous aristocracy versus a noble working-class, as I think life is rarely that clear-cut. It’s a tale of perception, generational patterns and change, and you can expect some creepy intrigue, French Revolutionary action, and the antics of a characterful little dog. I very much hope readers will find it humorous, too, as it was my main aim to write a novel that would entertain. That was extremely important to me.
A couple of things. Firstly, I was always obsessed with the surface pattern design known as ‘Toile de Jouy’ – which is made up of lots of little scenes or vignettes. It was created at the Oberkampf factory outside Paris between 1760 and 1818, which overlapped with the French Revolution. And so the fictional factory in my book, run by the enigmatic Oberst family, is based on the real-life Oberkampf factory. My husband’s a professional stage and TV magician, and so I’m obsessed with seemingly impossible happenings, and the causes and effects that might lie behind them. I wanted a seemingly impossible happening to be the main crux of the story, and knew I wanted to write a mystery in which figures in a flat image appear to be changing and moving. When I was quite young I watched the ‘90s adaptation of The Witches by Roald Dahl, and the painting of the Goose Girl, in which the figure of the girl seems to move about, always stuck with me. I find the concept of a person ‘trapped’ within a painting or image both strangely alluring and slightly disturbing, and so this became the core idea at the heart of the book.
Hortense, by a country mile! She’s dismissive and cynical, brittle and insecure, and worryingly also the character I found by far the easiest to write and get inside the head of! I think it’s because we’re hearing her unfiltered thoughts in the novel a lot of the time, so obviously that’s always lots of fun – and very freeing! – when you’re writing an antagonist. It was also really important to me to try and make the book funny, as life is all about light and dark, and navigating the tightrope between tragedy and comedy, and I personally find that overly-serious fiction often falls flat. A lot of the comedy in the book comes from Hortense’s sections. In addition, I’m a big animal lover, so enjoyed giving her a little Pomeranian dog called Pépin, her pride and joy!
Thank you for asking this. Wallpaper That Changes is a series of optical illusion designs that I drew myself. They’re all scenes taken from The Woman in the Wallpaper, and can be looked at both the right way up and upside down, to give two totally different views of the same image; which ties into the themes of the book and each character viewing the wallpaper very differently. So, for example, there’s one design that is either a woman flying a kite or an 18th century noblewoman, depending upon which way you look at it. Since writing this novel, as wars have waged and our climate continues to collapse, I’ve become keenly aware that I’m not exactly changing the world with what I’m doing, to the point I’ve actually found it quite depressing over the past few years. So I really wanted to try and make some small difference with The Woman in the Wallpaper, and set up an initiative that supported a charity linked to the book.
When I was writing the novel, it struck me that nothing much has changed between the working people who were struggling to put food in their mouths during the French Revolution, and the sections of society today who are reliant on food banks to survive. So my ‘Wallpaper That Changes’ designs can be purchased across a range of items – from tote bags to fridge magnets to actual wallpaper – with 100% of all profits going straight to the Trussell Trust, an anti-poverty charity. The initiative is called Wallpaper That Changes as the design both changes depending on which way you look at it and also I very much hope that any money raised will bring about some positive difference, or change, to the lives of others.
I was blown away by In Memoriam by Alice Winn last year. I am utterly fascinated by the First World War and the catastrophic change it wrecked on the world, and In Memoriam was a story masterfully told. I still dream about Gaunt and Ellwood – and, weirdly, being Ellwood(?!) – a year after reading it, which has never happened with a book before. I’m excited to read her next one. I just finished Tiger by Polly Clark and thought it was brilliant. I think novels like this, that combine a great story with some element of our current awareness of the natural world and eco-anxiety, are going to become more widely-read over the coming years. Tania James did this beautifully in Loot and The Tusk That Did The Damage. Like many others, I adore Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series. I think he writes character and humanity so well, and draws the most from each scene, making every interaction between his characters engaging, moving and never boring. I also hugely admire L. J. Ross, both as a commercial writer and an outstanding businesswoman.
Good question! I would really love to write fiction in series, in particular a series about stage magic, as well as series set against the First World War and Old Hollywood. I’m certainly not short of ideas, but the trouble these days is finding a publisher who is willing to nurture your career long-term, rather than just wanting you to produce a specific story they believe might sell to the very small percentage of the market they are most aware of in that moment. Over the last six months or so I’ve been working on a novel that I’ve wanted to write for a good few years, so it’ll be exciting to see where that goes. I also regularly write short stories and narratives for my podcast The Magician’s Wife. The concept of the show is that, in each episode, myself and my husband examine a seemingly impossible real-life mystery and – just like a ‘how to’ conjuring book – try to work out the Method and Effect behind it. Every episode includes original narrative sections that I write, which are then dramatised, complete with a musical score and atmospheric sound effects!
I once put my head inside a guillotine. It was a prop for a stage magic illusion, but was nevertheless terrifying. I can only imagine how petrified those who were executed by guillotine in the French Revolution might have been. I’m hoping to take a guillotine along to entertain readers at some of the upcoming events for my novel, but don’t tell my publisher.
