Amateur drama
I joined an amateur drama society at the age of 14 and stayed for the best part of three decades. Nothing beats working with a group of likeminded people to captivate and entertain an audience. It’s an all-consuming hobby and those who do it are driven and passionate. Over the years I had every job from sweeping the floor to acting and directing. The productions we staged included Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, Agatha Christie’s The Hollow and the play that features in The Appeal, Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. I even met my partner when I was cast as his wife in Alan Ayckbourn’s Confusions… it’s been a huge influence on my life.
Email communications
I love emails. In-depth communications delivered instantly to the recipient’s eyes. They really are my comms of choice and changed my working life when they arrived in the early 2000s. Suddenly, I didn’t have to struggle to speak on the phone any more. Emails became the main way we conducted our work and personal lives for years, right up until new tech like WhatsApp made shorter, faster communications the norm. Part of me still longs for the early days of email.
Medical appeals
There’s been a proliferation in recent years of online crowdfunding appeals for medical treatment… but I’m fascinated by the few, high-profile cases where the whole thing has been a cynical con. Just what motivates someone to pretend they or their child are ill? It’s morally reprehensible from every angle, but one of the worst aspects is the doubt and scrutiny it throws on genuine appeals. I wanted to play with this in The Appeal.
Social hierarchies
Hierarchies seem inevitable in human society. Wherever you get more than one person, you have a sliding balance of power from top to bottom. Our position in the hierarchy changes from place to place and time to time. I’m convinced this is why it is so unnerving when two of our worlds collide. In The Appeal two characters find themselves thrust into a well-established small-town social circle, where they are befriended by someone also consigned to the bottom rungs of the popularity ladder.
Friendship
We have a rosy view of friendship, but it means different things to different people. Some choose friends based on their usefulness and will promptly side-line them as soon as they are no longer needed. I think most of us have found ourselves in friendships that have an imbalance somewhere. In The Appeal there are characters who enjoy a strong network of lifelong friends and family around them. They are free to reject outright anyone they don’t much care for. Others are socially isolated and simply don’t have that luxury. It’s a fun situation to play with.
Janice Hallett is a former magazine editor, award-winning journalist, and government communications writer. She wrote articles and speeches for, among others, the Cabinet Office, Home Office, and Department for International Development. Her enthusiasm for travel has taken her around the world several times, from Madagascar to the Galapagos, Guatemala to Zimbabwe, Japan, Russia, and South Korea. A playwright and screenwriter, she penned the feminist Shakespearean stage comedy NetherBard and cowrote the feature film Retreat. The Appeal is her first novel.
