'Writing is my thing'

 

Cookham mum Lara Cory and her family are from Sydney. They moved to London in 2011, and since then Maidenhead

and then Cookham, to give their children a life of travel
and cultural experience. 'We love it here,' Lara says.
'And feel grateful every day that we ended up – quite serendipitously – in Cookham.' Lara has just published her first book, Animal Music. Here's what she had to tell me about it...

 

 

'I never had a clear goal in mind in terms of my career. I dabbled in hospitality and marketing, and finally finished my Communications degree – to which
I went to the ceremony still breastfeeding my second son. (I remember I had to top him up just before I went out to collect my certificate. I was really stressed out about it.)

   'Before I had kids, I bought and ran a cafe for about two years, then I went
to work for our family business (industrial gases) and then I temped as an executive PA for a while. When I had kids I gave up work to become a
full-time mum.

   'It wasn't until 2008 that I started writing and realised it was my thing: it
was one of the most satisfying endeavours and pleasures of my life. And I haven't stopped since. I'd heard the adage: 'Write what you know,' so I started blogging about food. My blog Feedingtimeblog.com is still going strong! Then
I started contributing to arts sites, writing about art, then I moved on to writing about music (I'm a classically trained pianist), which is how I found Tobias Fischer, my colleague at 15questions.net and co-author of my first book, Animal Music.   

   'I think I've got to where I have through hard work and making mistakes. Recently, I've become enchanted with the idea that I might be good at writing for screen/stage. I took a course in London and since then I've had some luck with my fiction work. I got a short story published, won a place on a screen-writing workshop and my short script was recently performed in a new writer's night for East End Literary Salon. 

   'My new book is called Animal Music: Sound and Song in the Natural World.'
It came from Tobias' desire to create a series of ebooks for 15Questions.net. We were going to self-publish and write about themes in music. Animals and music was the first book we wrote. I'm a big fan of Strange Attractor Press and their journals, and because our book had a similar anthology format, I thought I'd pitch our book to Mark Pilkington the publisher. He said yes straight away. 
I have big respect for Mark, so it's been a thrill to work with him. 

   'The book is about the idea that animals possess a rich emotional sentience, like humans, and that they make "music" for pleasure as well as for biological reasons, like we do. We come at the debate from a musical perspective, and we interview field recordists and experts, and look at the way animals communicate in sophisticated ways that we're only just beginning to understand. It's been a fascinating learning experience.

   'I'm now in the process of pitching the book as a documentary with a consultant who is helping me. I'm also aiming to complete a collection of
short stories and turn one of them into a short film with a US illustrator
called Travis Bone, who designed the cover of Animal Music for us. I'm
looking for an animator to collaborate with us. So watch this space.'

 

 

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