Clio Gray is the award-winning author of The Juggler’s Box, a compelling multi-plot historical crime adventure whisking readers into the heart of the Napoleonic Wars. To celebrate The Juggler’s Box, What We Reading sat down with Clio to talk about everything from her early influences, her love for Whirligig, to her hopes for the future!
Thanks for speaking with us, Clio! First off, tell us a bit about yourself and what led you to the world of writing.
I’ve always loved books and found delight in them. I spoke to my mother a few years ago about one I remembered from when I was young, about a boy who fell into his goldfish bowl. She was astonished – that’s the first book you ever owned! A gift for your 3rd birthday! So there it began.
I wrote some rather disturbing stories (mostly because I was by then reading Alfred Hitchcock’s Solve Your Own Mystery Series) which had my primary school teachers a little alarmed, and I guess that puzzle-solving fascination has stayed with me, given what I now write.
Add to that that I have spent 35 years working in the Public Library Service and you will gather that I spend my entire life either reading, writing, or recommending books.
And my house is filled to the gunwales with them, including tottering on the staircase and in the loo!
Talk to us about The Juggler’s Box. What is it about, and how was the process of bringing it to life?
It’s a weaving together of several plot strands:
A body is found in a Salt Hedge, Bookfinder Ruan Peat is on the case; Hela has escaped from a bitter life in Norway with the promise of raising a revolution and leaving her imprint on the world; Greta Finnerty is escorting a dead English Office through enemy ranks with vital information to stop Napoleonic incursion into the Lowlands.
It all began with my sister sending me photographs of a Salt Hedge she’d been visiting in Germany – which was huge and hugely impressive and about which I wanted to learn more.
At the same time I’d been reading about a Russian Manuscript called The Song of Igor’s Campaign, the single extant copy of which went missing during the Napoleonic Wars.
And I’d not long dug out a short story I wrote years ago about Hela living in the hell that was Vettie’s Giel in Norway.
And from this, the book grew and took on life.
What is the number one goal you want your work to have with readers?
I want to bring quirky twists of history back into the light, and for readers to care about the characters I’ve caused to stumble into them.
What do you think makes you stand out as an author?
I’m a little off-kilter, genre-wise, neither properly one thing nor another. Instead, I like to take readers to places, situations and oddities they might never before have encountered. Like Salt Hedges, ancient Russian Battles, and songs that have brought about revolutions
What would you say has been your biggest success so far?
The Anatomist’s Dream was nominated for the Man Booker and long-listed for the Baileys, although without winning the Harry Bowling Award and the Scotsman/Orange years ago I may never have gotten properly started
If you could go back in time to one book you read for the first time, what would it be and why?
I think it would have to be Whirligig, about a little goblin who leaps out of a fire and takes a couple of children back with him through the prehistoric ages. It was the sheer amazement at how a single book could transport you so readily from one reality to another. Of course, it’s happened many times since, but that initial point of revelation was a pure and ecstatic joy.
And the fact that it had been equally beloved by my mother when she was a child makes it all the more special. And I mean the actual physical book, which I still have, kept together with a piece of tattered string to stop it falling to bits!
What’s one tip you would give your younger self if you had the opportunity?
Use five words where you initially used ten. Don’t keep stuff in just because it sounds pretty. Be ruthless! And don’t give up.
And finally, what do you hope the future holds for you and your writing?
Merely to be able to keep on doing it. It’s a rare privilege.
Check out all of Clio’s work by following her on her website, Amazon or Twitter/X
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
