Julia Kelly's Blog, page 6

Podcast: You’re Never Going to Read This Is Back!

Long-term readers will know that I’ve hosted a podcast with my sister, the talented BookTuber Justine from I Should Read That, since 2018. We took a little hiatus, but now I’m very happy to say...we’re back!

In our return episode, we talk about how our book reading and buying habits have changed in the pandemic. Plus we’re back to our old ways, recommending a book to each other each. (Even though Justine never reads my recommendations…)

You can listen to the podcast by subscribing to You’re Never Going to Read This on your podcast app of choice, or by going to yourenevergoingtoreadthis.com. 

And don’t forget, you can always keep up to date with the latest about my books as well as behind-the-scenes exclusives by signing up for my newsletter: https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/i4g2n8

Lessons from the Past...Indulging a Sweet Tooth During the War

When I started hearing stories about shortages of baking staples like flour and yeast due to high demand, I couldn’t help thinking about all of the WWII rationing recipes I’ve read as part of my research. Rationing seriously restricted the ability of people in Britain to get access to certain basic ingredients like white flour, butter, and sugar. 

The Stork Margarine Cookery Service’s excellent set of pamphlets has an entire group of recipes meant to satisfy your sweet tooth on rations. It does begin with an explanation of making dripping, so be warned that it might not be the heart-healthiest group of recipes in the world.

Enjoy these sweet treats!

Ginger Fruit Cake

12 oz self-rising flour

3 reconstituted dried eggs

2 tblsp jam

4oz prunes, weighed before stoning

2-3 oz dripping, cooked fat, or margarine

2 heaped tsps ground ginger

1 heaped tsp Mixed spice

½ bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp salt

¼ pint water

Sieve the flour, salt, ginger, space into a bowl. Stone and chop prunes, and put into a saucepan with the fat, jam, and water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 3 minutes. Cool, make a well in the flour. Pour in. Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the reconstituted egg. Add the flour, mix quickly, put into a cake tin lined with greasepaper and brushed with melted fat, and bake for 1 ¼ hours in a moderately hot oven.

Oatmeal Scones

4 oz oatmeal

4 oz self-raising flour

1 oz dripping, cooking fat, or margarine

¼ tsp salt

Water to mix

Sieve the flour and salt together. Add the oatmeal. Rub in the fat and mix to a fairly soft doub with about 1 pint of cold water. On a floured board, knead and roll out to ¼ inch thick and cut into small shapes. Place on a greased baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes in a hot oven.

Virtual Reader Event: Our View from Here

As difficult as the pandemic has been, one of the things I’ve been heartened to see is the way that authors and readers have been reaching out virtually. 

I was thrilled to round out the month of April with the incredible historical fiction authors Genevieve Graham, Kristin Harmel, Jennifer Robson, Roxanne Veletzos, and Ellen Keith as part of the Our View from Here Facebook Live reader event! We opened the floor to questions from readers, and they asked plenty! 

If you missed the event, you’re in luck. It’s recorded and available to watch here:

I’ll be doing more events like Our View from Here, so be sure to like my Facebook page to be sure you don’t miss out!

Lessons from the Past...Tea Time During War

When I started hearing stories about shortages of baking staples like flour and yeast due to high demand, I couldn’t help thinking about all of the WWII rationing recipes I’ve read as part of my research. Rationing serious restricted the ability of people in Britain to get access to certain basic ingredients like white flour, butter, and sugar. 

I’ve done a little dive into my research files, and found a gem of a pamphlet from the Stork Margarine Cookery Service called “Tea-Time in War-Time” from March 1943. The company writes, “We are giving you various tea-time, high-tea savouries and salad recipes, all of which are very easy on your rationed ingredients and will help you save bread.” It goes on to say that cooked potatoes are used in most of these recipes as a base.

Here are just a few recipes if you’re feeling particularly ambitious during your self-isolation.

Potato Pastry Savoury Tarts

6oz mashed potatoes

3oz self-rising flour

1 1/2oz margarine or cooking fat

Pinch of salt

Sieve flour and salt into a bowl. Rub in the margarine. Add the potato and rub in. Press together until the mixture forms a ball and leaves the sides of the basin clean. No water for mixing needed. Roll out thinly on a floured board. Cut into rounds and put into well-greased patty tins as for jam tarts. Put about a teaspoonful and a half of salmon and anchovy filling in each and bake 30 to 40 minutes in a moderately hot oven. 

Salmon and Anchovy Filling

4 tblsps mashed potato

4 tblsps salmon and anchovy filling

A little household milk

Seasoning if needed

Mix the fish paste and potato well together with a little household milk until the mixture is smooth and free from lumps and is of a spreading consistency. Add seasoning if required.

A Podcast to Listen to…Unspooled

I have a deep, unflagging love of films from Hollywood’s Golden Age. I like to attribute this to seeing Lauren Bacall seduce Humphery Bogart over a match in To Have and Have Not when I was a teenager, although my countless viewings of a PBS broadcast of Singing in the Rain taped onto VHS is probably really to blame. Either way, I’ve recently been craving interesting, intelligent conversation about some of my favorite films. 

If you are like me and enjoy taking apart the movies you love to see how they work, I cannot recommend the podcast Unspooled enough. Actor Paul Scheer and critic Amy Nicholson are working their way through the American Film Institute’s Top 100 movies and both offer fun, funny, insightful commentary about some of my favorite films. I recommend starting at the beginning episode 1 on Citizen Kane and working your way through the list as you watch along, but I really wanted to shout out the fantastic conversation around Rear Window, a movie that feels particularly appropriate for our current self-isolation age.

Publishing Dreams and Breaking News: Getting “The Call”

Every traditionally published author* has a story about “The Call.” It’s the moment that their agent or an editor gives them a ring or sends them an email to let them know that they are about to become a published author.** 

I got the call when I was at work for a now-defunct news website. I was an evening breaking news editor, and I’d just heard that there might be a fire on 13th Street just below Union Square and near NYU. I’d just sent a reporter downtown to check it out when an email from my agent dinged to my inbox. Do you have a few minutes to talk? :) 

Some context, my agent knew that I had a full-time job. She was always incredibly respectful of that and never called during working hours without asking first, so I knew this was a big deal. And she’d put a smiley face. This was clearly serious business. 

I was fairly protective of running a breaking news story from end to end, but I emailed her back immediately to say yes call whenever please call, and asked/told my colleague to cover for me. Then I stepped into a conference room. 

My agent rang. An imprint of Simon & Schuster wanted to publish the long novella I’d written, The Governess Was Wicked. That wasn’t all. They also wanted to publish the next two books in the same series I’d pitched along with it. They were offering me a three-book deal. I think that’s the point where I nearly expired on the spot. I’d been waiting four years and several books that never got off the ground to finally sell a book and a publisher wanted to take three books at once. And pay me for it. 

My agent ran quickly through the rest of the deal and promised to send more information via email so I could get back to breaking news. I was shaking when I called my parents in London. (Mum picked up because Dad was already asleep, but I’m 99% sure she woke him up as soon as I jumped off the phone a few minutes later.) Then I silently screamed, took a deep breath, composed myself, and went straight back to my desk to finish the breaking news story. (The first was “knocked down” quickly, no one was hurt, and there’s as minimal property damage.)

In some ways, it’s particularly fitting that my call came during breaking news. I started writing when I was a graduate student attending journalism school. I balanced the two careers as best as anyone can balance news and writing for years, once even finishing edits on a camp bed pushed under the desk of a cubicle at my TV station because a self-published book I was working was due in the middle of a major snowstorm. 

I also like telling this story for a couple reasons:

It proves that one of my mother’s favorite expressions—”an overnight success 10 years in the making”—is very true. On the outside, it looks like I got a three-book deal on my first go when in reality it took many attempts to find the right book for the right editor. I went out to market in 2012. I sold in 2015. And that’s not even a particularly long time to wait in publishing. Those three years of waiting felt very, very long, but in the end, I’m glad I kept my faith because it was the right move for me. 

The good things in life don’t always come at the most convenient times. I think, in my imagination, I assume I was going to be lounging on a chaise in an evening dress when my Call came. Instead, I was stress sweating while trying to get information out of the FDNY and hurrying my agent off the phone. One of the most important calls of my writing career was actually really inconvenient, but that’s sometimes what balancing a writing and work life is like. You just have to figure out a way to make it work. (And know that there’s no shame in asking for help.) 

If your dream is to be published by a big New York publisher, I hope you keep submitting and talking to agents, but most of all I hope you keep working because you love writing. 

Oh, and the fire? There was no damage or injuries, so really it all worked out for everyone in the end.

*Those of us who put out books with a publisher rather than through self-publishing. 

**If the author chooses to accept the publisher’s offer, which is another matter entirely.

Lessons from the Past...The British Red Cross in World War I

Watching the wonderful thanks I’ve been seeing for nurses, doctors, and other carers working during the pandemic, I can’t help thinking about all of the incredible work that the Voluntary Aid Dispatch, British Red Cross, and Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Corps did during World War II. Part of my 2021 release will be set in a convalescent hospital set up in a requisitioned manor house, so I’ve been doing a deep dive into the history of all three of those organizations. However, it’s a piece of history from World War I that I wanted to share with you in case you’re interested in researching a bit of your own family’s history.

Over 90,000 people—many of them women—volunteered for the British Red Cross during World War I, and there is a database where you can search for your relatives. (There is also the option to search for a local hospital so you can find out more about war efforts in your area.) In many cases, the information comes up with an image of the volunteer’s Voluntary Aid Dispatch card and additional information attached to the record.

Courtesy of the British Red Cross

Even if you don’t have have direct connections to the British Red Cross, the site is worth a look because it’s full of incredible, heartening information about how normal people did extraordinary things that helped heal the wounded who came back to Britain from the battlefields of France.

A Book to Read...Lady in Waiting by Anne Glenconner

I love a book with a lengthy subtitle, and Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown, by Anne Glenconner has an excellent one. A light, breezy memoir by Lady Glenconner, one of Princess Margaret’s ladies and waiting, this book is like stepping into another world because Lady Glenconner’s England is not our own. For many years, her life seemed to consist of social engagements, galas, and charity dos. But that doesn’t mean that Lady Glenconner’s life was not without difficulties or that she doesn’t have insightful things to say about the world she grew up in.

And yes, for those of you who love The Crown, this is probably going to be even more fun for you.

Goodreads Giveaway

We could all do with a little pick-me-up these days, and could be a better mood-lifter than a new book?

My publisher has kindly decided to give away 50 Kindle copies of my latest historical fiction novel The Whispers of War to U.S. Goodreads readers! You can enter by clicking here.

The competition is on until April 20th. Good luck!

A Time to Escape

To say that it’s not an easy time in the would would be a laughable understatement. I know that a lot of people are going through difficulties and many more are living in fear of what might happen to them, to their loved ones, to all of us.

I’ve talked before about my former career as a New York City journalist. In that job, you’re exposed to some of the very worst of humanity. (And I was a producer for years so I had the privilege of being back in the studio, watching a feed come in while the reporters were confronting these things in-person.) Even now, people will sometimes ask me how I dealt with writing all of those horrible stories, and I always have the same answer: I have a fundamental belief that most people are inherently good and decent.

In the midst of this pandemic, I’m heartened by what I’ve seen around me. Nurses, doctors, carers, delivery people, grocery store employees—so many people continue to work tirelessly to try to help others. My neighbors have banded together to create a volunteer group to identify vulnerable people in need of a helping hand or to simply check in on one another and make sure we’re all okay. I feel more connected to some long-time friends who I rarely get to see thanks to phone calls, texts, and video chats. People are coming out of the woodwork to help. To connect.

Here in Britain, as politicians and the health authority ask people to pull together for the collective good, it’s hard not to think about World War II. It’s an indisputable fact that not everything was sunshine and roses during the war. All you have to do is read Joshua Levin’s excellent book The Secret History of the Blitz to know that in wartime some people were still happy to cheat, lie, and steal their way through life. No amount of propaganda from the Ministry of Information could squash crime and guarantee all people adhered to the idea of the collective stiff upper lip. However, I do think that the overall message rings true today: We’re all in this together.

I had such a lovely response from readers of my newsletter after I recommended a handful of comfort reads, that I thought I might continue in that vein for a little while by making this section of my website into a bit of a recommendation engine. This will include a mixture of book and pop culture recommendations, recipes, interesting tidbits that I’ve found through my research, and more.

Please always feel free to comment me and let me know what you think of my picks. If you would like to sign up for my newsletter, you can click here.

Stay safe and spend some time escaping into books, movies, TV shows, and more.