Ali Bacon's Blog

Fanny Stevenson Barges In: #BeyondtheBook #TheAbsentHeart

This article is the third in my newsletter series ‘Beyond the Book’. If you’d like to read future issues as they come out, please sign up here.

When Louis Stevenson met Fanny Osbourne, as she then was, she was emotionally fragile, distancing herself from a philandering husband and mourning the death of a child. However, the woman we see in biographies and letters is robust and determined. In early versions of The Absent Heart, she didn’t make much of an entrance until close to the end...

Sidney Colvin: an unlikely hero #BeyondtheBook #TheAbsentHeart

Adapted from my my Beyond the Book newsletter of September 2024. Sign up for future issues here.

If Frances Sitwell is my heroine, who is the hero? It would be easy to argue for Louis Stevenson (who has a way of taking centre stage even when he isn’t present!) but chief contender for male lead must surely be the third member of that curious love triangle, Sidney Colvin, Frances’s ‘companion’ for most of her life, also R.L.S.’s friend and literary mentor.

Sir Sidney ColvinLady Colv...

The Absent Heart takes off in #Bristol #booklaunch #historicalfiction

A Brilliant day in Bristol

As in all the best stories from my childhood, the day of my book launch dawned bright and clear, so much so that as we walked down Park Street I worried guests might have chosen to head for the beach rather than the book launch. However my fears proved groundless as the room was soon filling up with friends and fellow writers while Linen Press intern Rosie Pundick, my interviewer Mike Manson and helpful staff from Bristol Folk House soon had things perfe...

Meet me in 2025

If you can be at any of these events, please come and say hello!

Info /booking on my Meet the Author page.

Letters in fiction: Robert Harris, Gill Hornby and me!

The Absent Heart is very much a novel about letters and how they defined Frances Sitwell’s relationship with Robert Louis Stevenson, but it’s not a novel of letters. I’m actually quite a fan of the epistolary novel and, with all of the R.L.S.’s letters to my heroine at my disposal, I could have gone down that road. But these letters are published and have been for many years. They are well-known, if only by the cognoscenti, and even if I had sought permission to use them (the main edition i...

Frances Sitwell: An Elusive Heroine #BeyondTheBook

Beyond the Book is series of articles I began publishing monthly in August 2024 to subscribers. I’m republishing the first issue here today. To receive future issues as they appear and a bonus chapter, sign up here.

An elusive heroine

I think most writers would agree we don’t usually choose our characters, they choose us! This was certainly the case with In the Blink of an Eye, where I found the story of early photographer D.O. Hill so compelling I couldn’t resist the challenge of making ...

Not one but two book launches in November! #QuiteWeird @clevedonlitfest #Skeins #Bristol @LinenPressBooks

October and November are turning out to be very busy months, first of all with preparations for the Clevedon Celebration of the Book, and soon after that, the launch of Skeins, a Linen Press short story anthology  which is out now.

I’ve been posting madly about everything Just Write Bristol are up to at Clevedon, but for us the most exciting thing is the launch of a new anthology called Quite Weird, a selection of quirky, amusing or weird short stories and flash fiction.

Quite Weird wil...

Two similar covers, two very different books. The power (or pestilence) of genre.

There’s nothing guaranteed to get an author worked up as a chat about book covers. We all have quite fixed ideas of how our book should look but sometimes a publisher thinks differently and we bow to their knowledge of the market. They usually do know best!

As a reader too, I’m increasingly aware of the impact of a cover, or a cover and title together. As a native of Fife, I could never have resisted Evie Wylde’s The Bass Rock despite knowing nothing about it until I wandered into a book...

Small changes, big difference. Editing and loving it! #histfic @linenpressbooks

It’s been quite a few years since I started writing The Absent Heart (and two years since I visited RLS’s former home!) and the vast proportion of the hours I’ve spent with it have been in rewriting, but then as Robert Graves said, ‘There is no such thing as good writing, only good rewriting’, an opinion echoed by many ‘greats’ including Hemingway and Updike. However there comes a point with any book when editing begins to feel fruitless, pointless tinkering with a something that is basicall...

NEWS! ‘The Absent Heart’ to be published by Linen Press.

I’m thrilled to announce that my latest historical novel, The Absent Heart, the story of Frances Sitwell, enigmatic muse to Victorian Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson will be published early in 2025 by Linen Press.

Followers will know this book has been a while in the writing and rewriting and I’m delighted it has found a home and to be working again with Linen Press who published In the Blink of an Eye.

Much excitement – and some work! – to come. But soon I’ll be showing off my ...