Deborah Swift's Blog, page 48

Hitting the Airwaves

This morning I was scheduled to do an interview with Radio Cumbria, and never having done a radio interview before I thought I'd better supply myself with a crib-sheet of names, dates, and reminders. This is because my debut novel, The Lady's Slipper, is just out in paperback, but since writing it I have written and finished a sequel (to be published soon) and I'm nearly at the end of a third. So it is a long while since I was fully immersed in that book.

Last week when I saw The Lady's Slipper on the book table right at the front of a Motorway service station I could hardly believe I had written it. It is actually great to have ceased to worry about it because I am so busy with another. I stood there, a little dumbfounded, looking at all the other wonderful books on the table with it, thinking, "Wow, did I write that?"

But back to the Radio Interview. Fortunately, on Radio nobody can see you, so I didn't have to stress about what to wear or what I looked like. I arrived early of course - I'm one of those people who is early for everything and would rather be 20 minutes early than 1 minute late. I had my reading glasses and hastily-scribbled crib sheets in hand, and was taken up to the studio which seems to be a tiny cupboard of a place in a vast concrete building.

The feeling beforehand was a little like going in for one of those language aural exams at school where you know they are going to ask you lots of questions, and you are terrified you might not understand the question, let alone know the answer.Several well meaning friends had warned me not to say "errm...."! (Sorry, folks)

The interview was conducted remotely - my interviewer was in Carlisle, and I was in Kendal, but I was met by the cheerful Suzie in Kendal who let me in, and wrestled with the technology which was playing up by flashing green lights when it shouldn't and refusing to connect us. Anyway, seeing my pile of notes she gave me this lovely advice before I went on air:

Don't worry. It's their job to make you look good and to keep the interview rolling. They will have researched you and supply you with questions which they know you will have interesting answers for. So relax. You won't need your pieces of paper.

The machinery was still refusing to function so we ended up doing the fifteen minute interview by telephone, but Suzie was right. Being on the phone actually made it easier, like chatting with a friend. Belinda asked interesting questions not just about the book but about other aspects of my writing life and I never once looked at the papers. And it was refreshing to chat about some different aspects, not just "what's the book about?"

I enjoyed it a lot and you can hear it the fifteen minute interview with Belinda Artingstoll on Listen Again here. Scroll almost to the end of her programme and you will find it, just after "Forever in Blue Jeans!"

17th century Aromatherapy

My article on 17th century Aromatherapy can be seen on the Historical Belles and Beaus Blog here

just published Debra Brown meets just published Teresa Bohannon

In these days when e-books and small publishers are making it possible for authors to find their own niche readers, many more books are available to suit many different readers.
Two successful authors who are reaping the benefit of this explosion in publishing are Debra Brown and Teresa Bohannon.
I am delighted to welcome Debra Brown whose book, "The Companion of Lady Holmeshire" was just released this month, interviewing Teresa Bohannon about her just-out Regency Romance, "A Very Merry Chase."


Debra Brown: Your first published novel is a Regency Romance novel, why did you choose this genre?

Teresa Bohannon: Actually, after a somewhat convoluted path, it chose me. Books are the love of my life. Even when I was tiny, I couldn't wait until I could read all by myself. Fortunately, I had a mother who didn't mind reading to me. I started out very early with fairytales, then myths, legends, reference books, encyclopedias, and history--always, even when very young, in search of great heroines and strong female characters.


About age ten or so, I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs, who wrote some truly wonderful action/adventure style females that could darn well save themselves if Tarzan or John Carter didn't happen to be around to do so. Then came Tolkien and epic fantasy, followed by epic romances via the risque Angelique novels written in France in the 1950's. I loved the romance and the adventurous females in these books, but to be honest I scanned or skipped the sex scenes. Then one day I discovered Georgette Heyer and.... "Ta-Dah!" No more skimming required.


Debra: Do you remember the first Regency romance you ever read?


Teresa: That would be Georgette Heyer's 'The Grand Sophy' - strong, willful, witty, matter of factly in charge and most of all, for me, both financially and emotionally independent, i.e. everything I loved in a female character.


Debra: Which Regency romance authors have most influenced you in your love for the Regency period?


Teresa: Georgette Heyer, Dame Barbara Cartland, Jane Austen and actually just about every Regency that was written in the seventies and early eighties. I literally devoured every one that I could get my hands on, and especially Claudette Williams and all the authors of Coventry series. I remember they had lovely white covers graced with gorgeous paintings of couples in Regency dress.


Debra:Could you tell us a little about how you researched the Regency era for A Very Merry Chase?


Teresa:I originally wrote A Very Merry Chase 35 years ago, and believe me that was a whole different world from research and writing these days--especially in small town America. I remember filling several legal pads with every historical, social, and cultural detail I could glean from the Regency novels I was reading. Fortunately, there were a two public libraries and a decent sized University library near by that I could visit. Their early 19th century collections were abysmally small, of course. So I had the public librarians borrow several titles for me from libraries in large cities to read locally. I wasn't a student at the University at that point, so there wasn't anything they could do to help me, other than look the other way while I sat there for hours on end reading. One of the big problems I encountered, even at the public libraries, was the fact that most of the books I needed to read were considered reference books and could not be checked out, so I had to read them on site. I suppose looking back on it, that the librarians I actually spoke with were amused, here I was a scrawny little old country girl with just a high school diploma, dreaming of writing books about the early 19th century British Aristocracy; but as best I can recall they were all very kind and none of them laughed at me or told me I couldn't do it.


Debra:Are there any Regency era historical figures who particularly intrigue you?


Teresa: Although this was at a time when women authors such as Jane Austen, Fanny Burney, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Maria Edgeworth were starting to emerge, my favorite Regency figure is still probably Emma, Lady Hamilton. Her history is tragically sad, but fascinating, and epitomizes so much of women's history. She was literally a cultural icon and Supermodel of her day yet she died alone and in poverty, mainly because she was a woman and, in the end, powerless in a man's world.


My BA and MA are both in history, and although the university I attended didn't have a women's studies concentration per se, I personally concentrated on women's history in my research for each of my classes. To me, Emma Hamilton personifies the harsh way that the majority of women have been treated throughout history, and while this was particularly true when physical strength ruled the day allowing the males to build a power base for themselves and their heirs that generally excluded women, it really wasn't much better as time marched on and we supposedly became more civilized. Traditionally men have set the rules, and most women were punished harshly if they attempted to step outside their socially acceptable niche--particularly when their looks faded, and they were no longer perceived as desirable by the men who held the power. And that in a nutshell is pretty much what happened to Lady Hamilton.


Debra: What inspired you to write A Very Merry Chase?


Teresa: I wanted to be an author more than anything in the world. At the time I originally wrote AVMC, I was young and bright but also uneducated by the standards of the publishing world. I dreamed of writing and becoming financially independent, and I suppose, becoming the same sort of strong, self-reliant woman that I so admired in the books I read. The choice of Regencies was almost a given since they were the traditionally female genre that I most enjoyed reading at the time, and to this day, when I just want to sit back and relax and read for sheer entertainment, I love nothing better than a simple pleasures of a Regency Romance. However, let me state, for the record, that I would hate living in the real Regency era, even if I were incredibly, independently wealthy and could afford all the luxuries the period had to offer. The Regency Romance era that so many readers love, is as much a fantasy as anything ever written by Tolkien or H.G. Wells. In reality, the Regency, as was much of history, was dirty, smelly and uncomfortable, and it was a particularly harsh existence for women--even those in the upper classes whose sole responsibility was to provide an heir and a spare.


Debra: Tell us a little bit about A Very Merry Chase?


Teresa: A Very Merry Chase is a mostly light-hearted tale with just the tiniest taste of Napoleonic era intrigue. The heroine is the Right Honorable, Lady Sabrina St. Clair, who is wealthy, beautiful, and most independently minded, and who also happens to be on the verge of becoming--according to her less generous peers--an old-maid, or in the vernacular of the times, an ape-leader or antidote. Sabrina is anachronistic in that she does some things that no well-bred lady of the Regency era would ever dream of doing; but she's not particularly blatant about it. For Sabrina, the rebellion is more passive-aggressive in style, manifested, much the same those most women actually living in the Regency (or any other historical era).


The story opens with Sabrina's traveling coach being stopped by highwaymen as she journeys to London for the season. The hero of the story is Brenton, Lord Branderly, Duke of Brensted, an unusually tall gentleman, who, after spending most of his adult life wandering the world, has returned to England in search of a bride and heirs. They meet under rather unusual circumstances, clash repeatedly and eventually fall in love--she reluctantly, he determinedly--against a comfortably Regency backdrop of witty repartee, beaux, belles,dancing, mishaps, mayhem and misunderstandings.

Debra:What project are you working on next?

Teresa: I actually just released an illustrated version of Jane Austen's The Widow's Tale, otherwise known as Love and Freindship(sic), which I compiled from period sources. However, now that project is out of the way and A Very Merry Chase is finally published, I'm free to revise, finish and publish some of the other books I've written. My next release will be a paranormal romance that I started approximately 25 years ago. It actually began life as a series of short stories about a trio of reoccurring characters moving through time together. Over the years it has been written, rewritten, tweaked and edited more times than I care to count; but somehow I just couldn't make myself write that final chapter until last December--and I still don't have a title for it! And then after that I have a children's fairytale that I have an artist working on illustrating, a short story collection I need to edit and publish, a horror novel I need to fish, and about a dozen Regency Romance novels floating around in my head that I need to write.
Very many thanks to Teresa and Debra for this interview, you can purchase A Very Merry Chase here.

Two great entertaining books - 'The Mesmerist' and 'Darcy and Fitzwilliam'

The Mesmerist by Barbara Ewing
I borrowed this book from the library, knowing nothing about Barbara Ewing, but just liking the sound of the story. And I have discovered a great popular writer, who I see has just published another book, The Circus of Ghosts. Obviously lots of other people know how great she is, because it is currently sitting in the number one slot in Smith's. So yes, I have bought that one too.
The Mesmerist has been brilliantly researched and gives insights into the Victorian craze for mesmerism with its then scandalous and salacious overtones of being able to affect another person through the use of healing hands. This area of human capacity is still mysterious even today, and indeed is mysterious to Cordelia, the mesmerist of the title. Ewing does a great job of exploring the intricacies of how it might feel to mesmerize - or be mesmerized.
The book also has a great forward-moving rags to riches plot with many twists, which is based around the struggle of women for respectability in professional life, and how they might seize responsibility in a man's world. I can't say much more about it, or it will spoil the unfolding story.
The main characters are women who are seen at all stages of life, from very young to the dementia of old age, all of whom are interestingly drawn and leap vividly to life off the page. There is murder, a riveting court case, and all the fun of the theatre. Very highly recommended.
Darcy and Fitzwilliam by Karen Wasylowski
I am not a particularly fanatical Austen fan, certainly not a purist, but I do like the wit of Jane Austen, and so was ready to embrace the tale of Darcy and his cousin with open arms. I was not disappointed. What impressed me most about this book was that it was the feel of Austen, but updated. It is very difficult to be funny in an Austen-esque way and still be fresh. Too often the humour doesn't properly succeed. But the impact that Austen must have had in her day is all here, in this laugh-out-loud romp through Darcy's post wedding adventures, and those of his irrepressible "brother".
I was unprepared for just how funny the book would be. The scene where Lizzie is giving birth, with Amanda's small, curious, stiffly-educated son looking on, is hilarious, and had my husband wondering why I was laughing so much. Even the servants have been wittily expanded, and the book is funny because it is so well-observed. It pokes fun at regency attitudes to women, and gently lampoons the mores and morals of the time. There is also a sense in which the English themselves are satirized, and this is refreshing, but not at all offensive.
After the initial forty or so pages of set-up the book fairly sweeps along with misunderstandings aplenty, and it is no slight volume. The characters have to be impeccably constructed for the situation comedy to work, and Karen Wasylowski has done this thoroughly, also the research on her period and The Peninsula War gives the reader just the right amount of setting.A great read, that works whether you have read any Austen or not.

Doodle Day

Welcome to she-writers from the blog hop. How do you doodle!You can find out more about the blog hop here.


Thinking Time
As a writer I often feel I need some thinking time. It is tempting to launch in to the writing with a feeling that only physical writing is what matters. And we are told to write, write, write. But this can be a little unbalanced if it is not preceded by some thinking time. I don't even mean the "Let's work out the plot" thinking which feels like hard graft, but I mean the free-form flow of thought which is the writer's equivalent of doodling. The doodle on the left is from www.doodlerblog.com
I love to doodle down my ideas around my novel. These can be vague atmospheres, things I am interested in, images I'd like to include. Some of my thoughts seem random, but often I find that there is some sense in my nonsense. Did any of you make this sort of doodles around people's names when you were at school? (Go on, admit it!) I use this idea sometimes to work around a concept or character in my writing.
The more professional doodle on the right shows how you might like to use word and image together, it is from this blog. Do you doodle? Happy Doodling!

A Writing Saint

The village where I live has a fantastic flower festival every year, where various individuals and organisations dress the church with floral tributes. The theme this year was "For All the Saints" and there were 17 displays in all. Each had a picture of the Saint and a depiction of their attributes in flowers. There were the obvious ones, like Francis of Assisi, complete with birds flocking around him, and the less obvious like St Bernard Mizeki who was murdered in Africa as late as 1896 in a tribal uprising. The amount of work that had gone into these displays was awe-inpiring.
But of course my favourite was Saint Luke, who is believed to have written Acts as well as his own Gospel. I can imagine him sitting there with his blank sheet and writer's block, and thinking what can I blog about today?! He was a physician before he became a great friend of St.Paul and was convinced by him of his faith. Thus he is the patron saint of physicians, and also of all creative artists including writers.
Whoever made his display had done it beautifully and included some healing herbs such as digitalis (foxglove) and his writing implements.

Also beautiful was the tumbling ivy in a swathe around the pulpit. What you will be unable to experience from my pictures is the scent and light. So many flowers gave off a wonderful aroma in the church, and the light pouring through the stained glass was breathtaking.

Books on the Move

I'm privileged to have a mobile library that visits our village once a fortnight. Originally set up to visit care homes and sheltered housing for the elderly in our area, it also stops at several villages including ours.
The driver, Gerry, who has won an award for the best mobile librarian, told us this week that because of restructuring, the service will be stopping for slightly less time in future, so we will have to be quick if we want to change our books. It is quite a skill being able to drive this monster down our country lanes, and then still be able to have a conversation about books. The library service is not just about access to books, but about the expertise of the librarians who can help you to find just the title you need.
Last week I nearly forgot it was 'library day' and my husband had to yell, "The library's here!" and I had to hurry up the road to catch it before it left. Inside the van it can be a squash working round the other people who are also returning books or browsing. Evidence of its visits to Care Homes is in the big selection of Large Print books on the shelves. Apparently there are Large Print reading groups in some of the homes.
Magna Books - large is beautiful
The Lady's Slipper is being published by Magna Books in large print. Last week I passed through the small Yorkshire village of Long Preston where they are based and stopped to take this pic. Long Preston has a lovely village green with a maypole, and an old-fashioned inn. The stone building on the left houses this publisher. Through the windows I could see cardboard boxes of books - I hope mine's in one of them and that soon it will be gracing the shelves of our mobile library and available to borrow at all the care homes the big yellow van visits. And I hope with the advent of ebooks large print companies such as Magna will find a way to continue to survive.

The Book of Fires by Jane Borodale

Agnes Trussel has a secret, she is pregnant and on the run. Fortunately for her she loses her way and never gets to stay with the enigmatic beauty she meets on the coach to London. Just as well, for Lettice Talbot is a courtesan and comes to a bad end. Instead Agnes finds herself inadvertently apprenticed to a firework maker, which takes her on a parallel but very different path.
The plot is not a fast paced one, but this does not matter because the 18th century is beautifully evoked - from the Trussel's rural farm where they eke out an existence, to the descriptions of the intricacies of pyrotechny. The novel seems to have been painstakingly researched, and the research is a big part of the book. The set pieces of slaughtering and curing a pig, and of creating fireworks, though long, are fascinating to read.
The relationships are finely drawn, particularly that of Blacklock the firework maker and Agnes, whose shyness and misunderstanding of each other ring painfully true. None of the characters are obviously likeable, but that makes them all the more human and interesting.
The novel takes place over the nine months that it takes Agnes to deliver her child, and the passage of time is so skilfully done it feels real. I borrowed this book from the library, but I shall be buying Jane Borodale's next because the quality of the writing in this novel is outstanding.

Art and The Landscape

One of my most long-standing friends had an exhibition of her paintings over the weekend. Laney and I go back a long way - right back to our teens when we were at the same Art College doing a Foundation Course, and we have stayed in touch ever since despite lengthening distances and changing life circumstances.
Laney is a painter and printmaker who makes landscapes in mixed media and is particularly interested in ancient rocks and trees, and in uncovering evidence of man's early spirituality through her work. She paints with chalk and charcoal and wash, I paint my landscapes with nouns, adjectives and verbs. There is a commonality in what we do, which has helped cement our friendship. So it was a real pleasure for me to drive over to her "Open Studio" to see her some of her work displayed in her studio and house. Only then did I realise what a body of work and what a superb collection her recent work is. Of course she had sold seventeen of her paintings by the time I got there, and eighteen by the time I left!
As creative people we need these times to take stock of what we've achieved. A pause to reflect.
For a writer, it might be seeing your work roll out of the printer, or a book on a shelf. For an artist, the chance to see all your work in one place is a marker of what you've achieved and a visual snapshot of your current approach to life.

For me, seeing Laney's approach, which is to find interest and beauty in the every day landscape where she walks her dogs, made me pause and look again at the landscape, see new things I might not have seen before. And I realised that writing is an essentially visual endeavour. The pictures are everything. And words are a plastic medium we can manipulate in all sorts of different ways. But both writing and painting require that we really look, pay attention, and find new ways to express what is hidden beneath plain view.
If you want to see more of Laney's work you can go to her website

Writing to me is......

Welcome to all those on the blog hop from http://www.blogaliciousblogs.blogspot.com/.

Writing to me is......
my entertainment, my way to explore subconscious ideas, my urge to tell a rattling good story.
I love a good drama. I'm a particular fan of BBC costume dramas, particularly the adaptations of Dickens and Jane Austen, and I love the cinema. I like big films with epic ideas. Favourite films include The Shawshank Redemption and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

To me, writing is like running my own film in my head. You might think this would mean I'm in complete control of my ideas, with everything all neatly planned out to follow a well tied-up plot. But no. I quite often surprise myself, and that is the joy of it, the entertainment factor.

The novel I am working on right now had a character, Zachary, who was supposed to die in chapter two, but in fact he has gone on to become one of the main protagonists. He has a cunning criminal mind, and unsurprisingly I suppose, he has managed to cheat his own death. I am only just beginning to explore and get to know him in this first draft. At the end of it I will know him better and be able to go back and re-write him as a more credible and three-dimensional character.

Often the ideas I am exploring don't come out until the end of the first draft. There is a sort of "aha!" moment then, when I suddenly think, "so that's what I'm really interested in exploring!" Then I'll go back and look at those themes in more depth. My second novel, The Gilded Lily, as well as being an adventure about two girls on the run in Restoration London, (see the lovely engraving) is about the nature of stories themselves - our own, and how we tell them. And what difference the stories people tell about us make to our lives. I didn't know until I finished the book and read it as a reader instead of a writer that storytelling itself was the idea that motivated the story. So that's the subconscious element.
The third thing writing is to me - telling a good story - is because I love to read. My house is weighed down with books. No chance of a Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz for me, the house is just too heavy! I always loved it as a child when a story really gripped me and would not let go, so when I'm writing I'm looking for that same effect. And when I'm hooked into my writing I know my readers might get hooked too.
Even my cat loves to read (well, my book anyway!) I think most writers are readers first and writers second. So I am looking forward to reading the other posts on this blog hop. And for readers who have stopped by, nice to have you here.