Speaker 1: Hello and good morning. How are you doing today.
Speaker 2: I'm very good Errold, thank you for having me on
the show.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm very excited to share a conversation with you
because there's so much that we have in common as
creative minds. But let's begin it off by I want
readers to know how you pronounce your name.
Speaker 2: My name is Moira Buffini.
Speaker 1: I love it. Ooh, that in itself has got a
point vibe to It's.
Speaker 2: It's Irish Italian, so yeah, you can make of it
what you will.
Speaker 1: It's moiraf I just want I want listeners to be
able to go into a local bookstore and I want
them to call your name out personally, so that people
know what it is and they're not going to be
standing there at customer service going I don't know who
are you talking about. So now that we're I it's
so important that name on that book.
Speaker 2: It is indeed it is. Indeed, I've had it pronounced
many different ways. Moira, Moira will do.
Speaker 1: I love it in bringing the book together. Where I'm
super fascinated here is that you're setting free a debut novel.
I mean, it's like you've got to give yourself permission
as a creative soul, knowing that there are other people
out here in the real world whose books are hidden
underneath their beds, are in addicts. How did you give
yourself that permission to write?
Speaker 2: I think it's a story I've wanted to write for
such a long time, literally decades, and I'm by You know,
my real profession is I'm a screenwriter and a playwright.
So I've written creatively all my life. When Lockdown hit,
all my work vanished overnight. I had a play and
rehearsal that was never going to happen, you know, So
all my works vanished, and I thought, well, why don't
I just write this story that's been bugging me for
all these years? And I began to write it in prose,
and I loved I just found I was absolutely loving it.
Every day I would get up and and enjoy writing
it prode. I think the difference is with the play,
you're writing for a big audience. With screenwriting, you're writing
for a massive audience. And with a novel, it felt
the whole time like I was just writing for one person,
and I really loved it. I thought the intimacy of
that was so nice and so refreshing.
Speaker 1: That's how they teach us in radio. It is the
power of one on one. There's only one person that
you're sharing a conversation with. Don't talk to them, talk
with them. And that's what I feel inside your story here,
is that you are You're sharing a story with me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hope that is how it feels, because that's
how it was to write no I loved it and
I learned a lot. The great thing about the other
great thing about writing a novel is you know, when
you're writing for the screen, everybody keeps telling me to
cut all the time, that keeps saying shorter, we need
it shorter. You can't have that scene. That scene's got
to be a page shorter. And this people were telling me.
My editors were kept telling me to more right, more right,
more fill in the colors. What's she's thinking here? What
does this look like? Tell us what else he says?
You know, all this kind of stuff, And I love that.
I just love being able to be expansive like that,
which you can't really do in drama because it's very
very distilled, you know. So the novel was a real joy.
Speaker 1: So being that playwright and that screenwriter you know, you know,
you get to see moving objects when you were writing,
did you envision those those characters Elsa and Nightingale? Were
they moving through your imagination as well?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean I think that's what years of writing
for the screen has taught me is just how to
I just think visually and I saw them and that
was so great. Building the world as well. I mean,
this is a story that set thousands of years in
the future, so you're kind of building a society from scratch.
You're building, you know, I started by building a village
and then I, Okay, I'm gonna this other character hearing
in the capital city. What does that look like? What's
that society like? What? You know? So you're really building
layer by layer. It's like painting a huge landscape, you know,
and you sort of think, Okay, what's their level of technology,
what's their religion, what's the economy? Like? What are the
gender politics here? Are they are they? Are they? Are
they kind of equals? Or is there you know, what's
going on with gender politics? So there's all this kind
of stuff to to think of. And of course the
society I drew is a society at war, So then
you have to color in who's the enemy, what's their society? Like,
how are they? You know, who's gonna who's gonna draw
us into that world? So it is like painting a huge,
huge canvas. And and I did it layer by layer,
just just I mean, you know, day by day, layer
by layer, coloring in a little bit more and thinking
everything through.
Speaker 1: I love the way that you're asking yourself questions. I
call that defragging, you know. I asked the questions and
then I question the answers because it really does bring
the paragraphs together and it gives them more of a
substance or purpose. And you do that perfectly so much
in song Light.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's not
a story. I sat down and planned the whole structure
off before I started writing, And in a way, I
think that's quite good because I kept asking questions all
the way through it, the big one of course, being
what happens next? You know, And I didn't know. I
was really excited. I was on the edge of my
seat what would happen next? You know, So it was
it was like it was like a journey through the unknown,
really into into this world, into this into this into
this story. Of two young girls who are trying to
keep each other alive, you know, one in the one
in the village and one with one in the city,
communicating by telepathy, and they're both in these kind of
perilous situations trying to keep each other alive. And I
didn't know what was going to happen next. And I
think I think that that that that questioning, I think
that's such a key tool of any creative writer, is
just keep asking the questions. If you know all the answers,
it's less interesting somehow the way that.
Speaker 1: You use the telepathy though, see, because I'm always believed
that we do that and we just don't know it,
that we are always speaking with somebody that is in
a distant place, and then all of a sudden we
think it's our brilliant idea, but maybe it was somebody
else that happened to transfer it to us. So I mean,
you you really do open up a conversation piece here.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's funny how many how how we
all certainly me anyway, I can't really speak for everyone here,
but I've always been drawn to stories about telepathy, and
I think perhaps you know it's to do with our
child of imagination. It's when we're not with our friends,
we are still imagining that we are, you know, and
and we kind of lose that as we grow up,
we grow into adulthood, and we sort of, you know,
lose a big piece of that imaginative play. But I
think it's still there in us really, as is our
imagination of being outside of our body. We all imagine
that all the time, and I think we certainly dream it,
you know. So so I think this sort of this
sort of business of telepathy, it calls on stuff that's
all there in our imagination, in our creativity, in our
subconscious and it just kind of gives it a name,
and I think it makes it sort of makes it
makes us all we can all imagine. This is one
special power we can all imagine that we have.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's so fascinating about about your book,
song Like is the fact that you are very much
up to date and in touch with who your reader
is and what they're thinking about. Because reproductive freedom is
something that is spoken about inside this book. They're talking
about it. Their parents may not be talking about it
with them, but they're talking about it inside their tight circles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the book is that the dystopia in
the book is very down on women and girls, and
women and girls a little like the not too far
distant past and the very frightening possible future do not
have agency over their own lives and their own bodies.
And this book sort of examined that and kind of
puts us in the shoes of girls who don't have
the freedom that we have enjoyed. And you know, I
wrote it for my young self and for my daughter
and her friends, and you know, because it's these these
are things we have. These are freedoms we've struggled to get,
and I think we need to, you know, hold on
to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, in putting this book together, you made the
decision to create a trilogy. I'm a show prep freak.
I mean, if I knew that I was going to
be writing a trilogy, I mean I would go I'd
freak out. How how are you planning this book out?
Or this story?
Speaker 2: By bit it just keeps growing on me. I didn't
like I say, I didn't start from the beginning thinking
this is going to be a trilogy. I just got
to the end of I just thought this is more
than one book. I got halfway through book one, I
thought this is more than one book, you know, and
then I sort of thought, well, it's it's got to
be three. It's got to be a beginning, a middle,
and an end. And I've got to I've written book
too now and I'm beginning to sort of look into
planning out books read and it's definitely there is life
in this world. There's a lot. There's a lot going on.
You know.
Speaker 1: What's really interesting though, is that because I am a
book author and writing those books, so many times people
will ask us about our own personal lives and what
are our memories? And when you're when you're locked in
in writing books and stories, that's our memories, and so
many people don't tap into that, which is why I
love talking with authors, because I hear your voice, I
hear your passion, and man, I wish listeners could just
really pick up on it as they read the story
so they too can be inspired to write.
Speaker 2: Yes, I hope so too. I think that's the wonderful
thing about writing for a younger audience as well, is
that I was really inspired by the books I read
at that age, you know, and I think they're the
best audience in the world that young people are so bright,
they are so open, and they're hungry for knowledge. They're
hungry for everything, so knowledge for experience. And I think
younger readers love YA for that reason. And I think
older readers love YA because it taps us back into
our own right of package, you know, which which really
isn't very far from any of us. You know.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, because I'm glad that you brought that up
about adult readers reading YA books. And the reason why
is because I'm a true believer that love is ageless
and the fact that you've got a book like this
it allows older people to say, I'm going to step
into the story and I'm going to go through the experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think, you know, I mean to be fair,
the older people I know who've read the book have
really loved it. And I think I'm a secret reader
of YA. I never stopped reading it, and I think
a lot of adults are the same. You know that
It's just it's just a really wonderful genre for let's
to your imagination free and and for talking, you know,
giving us all of prism to look at our world,
but through a really imaginative creative, sort of sort of landscape.
Speaker 1: Wow, you've got to come back to the show in
the future, especially when you're ready to pop that second
book out, because I want to continue this story with you.
Speaker 2: Oh, i'd love to. I'd really love to. Thank thank
you so much for having me on.
Speaker 1: Will you be brilliant today? Okay, thank you