Bath Spa and Beyond! Tia Fisher Q&A
By the time Tia Fisher graduated from Bath Spa in 2023, she had already published her first book, a verse novel for teens about county lines drug gangs. Her follow up, Not Going to Plan is due in September 2025.
What brought you to Bath Spa?
Lesley Parr.
She and I met at a Writers & Artists Yearbook do when we hadn't even got agents yet (the do in question was 'How to Snag Yourself an Agent’!), and she told me about this MA she was going to do. Then, over years, she told me how wonderful it was, she'd found her writing family. And when my agent and I were busy wallpapering our houses in my rejections from publishers, I found out that you actually could do this MA without having a BA first - and that was that. Back to school for me! (Ironically, my debut was accepted by my publishers on the induction day, but I've no regrets about publishing and studying in parallel).
What story did you include in the anthology?
Like so many of us, it was born of an exercise set by our tutor in that first 'Ages and Stages' term. We had to paint a character using only their interaction with another character. I wanted to challenge myself, go outside my comfort zone, which was contemporary edgy teen verse. So ... go prose, I thought. Try Middle Grade. And I had the vision of these two 12-year-old boys in shorts, arguing on a WW2 bombsite. Wow! Historical! Then, because I wanted to explore how to write authentic disability in historical fiction, I gave one of the characters dwarfism - and my wonderful, pugnacious Billy and his tender-hearted friend Stan were born. I just fell in love with them and the period they were living through - my parents lived through WW2, so it's always been part of my life, and I really enjoyed researching it.
What happened to that story?
It's being published by Piccadilly Press in 2026 (younger sister of Hot Key Books, who have taken on my two teen verse novels). My route to publication is pretty much the same as anyone else's - try, try, try, again. And work on your craft (hence the MA). And then . . . just get lucky, I think. I wrote three books before I had an agent and five before I had one accepted by a publisher.
What was the best piece of advice you received during your time on the MA?
There were so many good, pithy bits of advice from some wonderful, wonderful tutors ... how about:
"Get behind me, beautifully-turned phrase!" (Finbar Hawkins, meaning, kill that darling)
"Hold on to the golden thread and never let it go." (C.J.Skuse, meaning that you should always stick to your MC arc(s) through every scene.
"Cheeeeeeeeeeeese!" (Finbar Hawkins' cry of delight when he spotted a tempted morsel of intrigue carefully seeded).
Throughout the course, I was always made aware that the publishing world is fickle and capricious. You have to be doing this because you love it: there really can be no other motivation, because there are no guarantees of anything.
Did you write anything on the course that you would like to return to one day?
Also during that first term, I wrote a scene of a middle grade magical realism prose novel . . . maybe one day I might deviate from gritty realism? Who knows!
Crossing the Line is available in paperback from Hot Key Books