Category Archives: Writer Interviews

PUBLICATION SPECIAL: SUMMER AT THE FRENCH CAFE BY SUE MOORCROFT

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As the saying goes, this is the first Sue Moorcroft book I have read, but it won’t be the last. On the face of it, Summer at the French Café is a happy ever after holiday read, but actually the book is far more.

So, what makes it stand out? The sense of place, certainly, and I love that. As I read I could actually see every place the author described; Parc Lemmel, the bookshop café at the story’s heart, the local villages… and without a single sentence of overblown description. All I needed to know was dropped seamlessly into the narrative in an exceptionally skilful way.

But more than the quality of the writing, I love the fact there is a very serious issue at the heart of the book, one that isn’t squashed or skimmed over in the search for a happy ending, one that is dealt with in a sensitive and realistic manner. That issue is emotional control; how it can be used in relationships, the reasons people accept it, and the dangerous patterns that mean it can echo across generations and years.

I asked Sue Moorcroft why she decided to tackle this insidious form of coercion…

“I’m interested in human behaviour, so when I read about control within relationships, I wanted to write about it. It provided the perfect secret behind central character Noah giving up his life in Dordogne and moving across France to Alsace. I write love stories, so the mystery had to be nuanced rather than a simple jeopardy.

I remembered someone who, when she lost her husband, refurnished and redecorated her home. I’d never come across that reaction to widowhood. She explained, ‘He liked to be the one to choose. But now I can.’ To me, this put their relationship in a whole new light. When we’d invited her out and she’d said, ‘I’ll have to check,’ had she meant with her diary? Or with her husband? When we’d picked her up, he escorted her to the car and looked inside to say, ‘Good evening’. How old-fashioned and courtly, I’d thought. But was he checking she was going out with who she’d said she was? If so, did this behaviour make her feel cherished?

Or did she resent it and feel controlled?

She also once mentioned that she’d married young and that her (by then deceased) dad had been a similar man to her husband…

I’ll never know if I jumped to conclusions, but my suspicions informed the background I gave Noah’s ex, Florine. When Florine’s controlling father died, she felt adrift. Attentive Yohan came along, telling her what she looked best in what he liked so that she could like it too, and she felt secure again. But leaving Noah for Yohan pitched her into a very different relationship.

The interesting thing about control, and which provided the nuances I was after, is that it doesn’t have to involve a traditional bully. Yohan doesn’t hit Florine or her daughter Clémence – he loves them. In fact, he almost suffocates them with his love, wanting constant knowledge of where they are or to have them with him, using his anxieties over them to cut them off from others, so he can bask in their undivided attention. His behaviour stems from his own insecurity and immaturity. Mix in a little self-importance and selfishness, and you have a controlling man. Yohan isn’t a main character, which means that Summer at the French Café is not his story – but the plot around Noah won’t work without him.”

 

Jane Cable

 

 

 

 

 

SUNDAY SCENE: LEONIE MACK ON HER FAVOURITE SCENE FROM WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE VENICE

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My latest book, We’ll Always Have Venice, is my second romantic comedy set in Venice and is a summer love story, following the winter adventure of A Match Made in Venice. Whereas the first book explored Murano and the ancient art of glassmaking, as well as the old city itself, the second book features the idyllic lagoon and the further islands, including Burano.

The main character, Norah, is a marine microbiologist exploring the lagoon to collect samples every weekend with her guide, rower and oarmaker Gianluca. Every weekend is an adventure, taking refuge in an island monastery during a storm, picnicking with flamingos and dodging cruise ships.

One of my favourite scenes is where they accidentally disturb some fishing nets and bump into the fisherman and his son. But they’re not catching fish. The nets contain a local delicacy only available in May. And with true Burano hospitality, they end up pleasantly tipsy on Prosecco with stomachs full of delicately fried crab.

 

Gianluca squinted at the net. ‘Moeche,’ he said, a grin breaking out. He dropped her hand and strode over to the fishermen. He beckoned to Norah with quick fingers. ‘It’s crabs. Look!’

At the word ‘crabs’, she shrank back. Crustaceans were her least favourite form of marine life, coming in after gelatinous zooplankton and ectoparasitic flukes. She shook her head fiercely at Gianluca.

‘These aren’t just any crabs,’ said Gianluca with enthusiasm.

‘These,’ explained the fisherman grandly, ‘are nude crabs. Or they will be in some days, I hope.’

‘Did he say “nude crabs”?’ Reluctantly curious, she approached and inspected the specimen in the palm of the older man’s hand. ‘That’s carcinus aestuarii, the common green crab. And it’s about to moult. Natural behaviour for this species in spring, I believe.’

‘But have you ever eaten it, fried lightly in oil?’ Gianluca said, his face lit up. He turned to the older man and spoke in rapid dialect. A moment later, they were shaking hands and clapping each other on the shoulder like long-lost friends.

Norah watched with a smile tugging on one side of her mouth. Her brain filled in the blanks of the conversation:

‘For your nòna, I will give you a good price – and because you can speak my dialect!’

‘I have always wanted to meet a nude crab fisherman!’

‘Lucky for you the crabs are nude and not the fisherman – bahahaha.’

They followed Emiliano and Daniele back to the island of Mazzorbo, where they sorted the crabs into submerged baskets according to the imminence of their moulting and retrieved the jelly-like specimens that had already shed their shells and were crawling around nude.

Norah’s stomach rumbled as Gianluca rowed up to Burano. Earlier that day, they’d stopped for lunch at an osteria on the eastern side of the island, but she hadn’t seen the main canal. The fondamenta was bustling with tourists visiting the lace ateliers or stopping at market stalls, and locals wandering to their favourite spots for their evening aperitivo. The brightly coloured houses – sky blue, hot pink and lime green – were a shock after the graduating greens, blues and browns of the lagoon. Flapping laundry hung from ropes under the upper windows. The buildings were only two or three storeys high, making the island feel like a village in comparison to its grand old sister to the south.

SUNDAY SCENE: EVA GLYN ON HER FAVOURITE SCENE FROM AN ISLAND OF SECRETS

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It’s every writer’s dream, isn’t it? To sit in the exotic location where you’ve set your book and actually write the scene. From exactly the same place as your character; to see what they see, hear what they hear, smell what they smell. Well, one morning when I was on the Croatian island of Vis researching An Island of Secrets, I made it happen when early one morning I picked up my notebook and strolled down to the harbour…

 

Although a few cafés were open at this hour Leo had chosen one in front of a broad flight of steps in a corner of the harbour, its tables tucked back into a narrow space between a pizzeria and a bakery. Not the one where she usually bought her bread, but today that might change too. Or it might not. If she was to stay in Komiža then something damn well had to – she’d been here a month and she couldn’t go on as she was.

Cigarette smoke drifted around her and music was playing from a radio further down the quay. A few local people were about and the crew of one of the holiday yachts moored on the mole had settled at a table somewhere behind her, but generally there was an air of peace about the place and she felt herself relax. A scrawny black and white cat with the swagger of a prize-fighter strolled past, but the tiny tabby cleaning itself under one of the chairs seemed unimpressed.

There were two reasons she had chosen this place to have her coffee. The first was that she could see The Fishermen’s House from here, and the second that yesterday she had found a photo from 1944 in the online archive of a museum in Split and she was pretty sure she recognised where it had been taken.

She pulled out her phone and looked again. Yes, that was definitely the narrow building where the tobacco shop now was, and the distinctive carved lintels above the windows of the property directly to her right were in the picture too. The palm trees were in the correct places, although in the photo they were barely taller than the men and now they towered more than four storeys high.

She had scanned the faces of the commandos in vain for anyone who looked vaguely like Grandad. But although she had been disappointed, she knew he might recognise some of the men and the thought made her tingle with excitement; she had already emailed the photo to Auntie Mo so she could show it to him. It was progress of a sort and there was pitifully little else to say. How the hell did you find out about some random woman who lived sixty years ago in a foreign land? Especially when you weren’t entirely sure who that woman was.

 

Leo is in Komiza to try to find out what happened to the woman her grandfather, Guy Barclay, had to leave behind when his commando unit pulled out in 1944. When Guy first arrived on Vis, the only part of Yugoslavia not occupied by the Germans, his mission had seemed straight forward, but then he stumbled across a brutal execution on a remote hillside that changed everything.

These executions – of female partisan fighters who had fraternised with their male colleagues – really happened, and at the time their British allies were powerless to do anything about it. But it made me wonder, what if one of them had tried? I had my hero and I had my story.

 

Find out more about my books set in Croatia at evaglynauthor.com

 

 

 

 

 

SUNDAY SCENE: SUSAN BUCHANAN ON HER FAVOURITE SCENE FROM SIGN OF THE TIMES

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Travel is a major passion of mine, but without question, Bibbiena in north-east Tuscany is my favourite real setting in my books. The hilltop town set in the Casentino Valley is surrounded by lush greenery and vineyards. I have a natural love of Italy and all things Italian – I studied Italian at university and Bibbiena was the setting that inspired me to write my first book, Sign of the Times, which celebrated its tenth anniversary in March. I’d never been to this corner of Tuscany and it was one of those random lucky finds, but it will stay with me forever.

Probably the best way to do it justice is via an excerpt:

‘Holly’s thoughts returned to Dario as she padded down the windy road and up the hill to the centre of Bibbiena. It was a little as she had expected: bumblebee-striped canopies and green chairs stacked on top of tables, at what she could only assume was one of the restaurants on closing day. A group of teenagers stood around chatting and flirting. Holly strolled past them and spied twenty or thirty stalls with canvas awnings ahead of her. So, there is a market. Continuing, she passed a bar on the opposite side of the road, where four elderly men were playing chess. Holly watched them for a few minutes and then, conscious they had stopped chattering and were looking in her direction, waved then moved on.

She crossed the road a little further along and turned up into the village centre, following the sign for the church. The reddish-brown buildings were of rough-hewn stone and Holly guessed they were eighteenth century. Today she wanted to absorb the atmosphere, without having to remember she had to write about it. She passed a tabacchi, a lawyer’s office, an accountant’s, until finally she came across a bottega. As she peered through the glass in the door, the owner sprang to open it, and she fell forward into the shop, almost colliding with him.

‘Scusi, signorina.’

Holly waved away his concern and then picked up jars and bottles, examining the contents and ingredients. The bottega was filled with mouth-watering goodies; pickled vegetables, zucchini, red peppers and cherry tomatoes filled with anchovies. The upper part of one wall consisted only of wine and the lower half entirely of olive oil. Holly had never seen so many different kinds of olive oil. Next to the cassa and the beaming shop owner lay a wide assortment of cold meats and cheeses. Holly wanted to buy up the whole shop. Then she clapped eyes on the counter of fresh pasta…mmm. Ricotta-filled ravioli, pumpkin stracci…’

Holly’s subsequent conversation with the shop owner, Giampiero, reveals much about small-town and village life, not least the warmth and friendliness of the people. He knows where she is staying, and when she tells him her landlady has invited her for dinner, he calls the butcher to ask if Viviana, the landlady, has been in, and if so, what she ordered. He gives Holly the story behind the prize-winning bottles of olive oil and once he knows what they’re having for dinner, he helps Holly pick out the perfect wine.

The villa on the cover is a representation of the one I stayed at, and the house in the distance, one I could see from my villa, and the location of a wedding in the novel.

After a ten-year break from writing about Bibbiena, I can’t wait to return to it in 2023. If you haven’t been to this gorgeous corner of Tuscany, please do. You won’t be disappointed.

 

www.susanbuchananauthor.com

 

 

 

 

SUNDAY SCENE: CAROLINE JAMES ON HER FAVOURITE SCENE FROM THE SPA BREAK

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In May 2021, I received a message on Twitter from a publisher asking if I would be interested in a potential project. At first, I thought it was spam. After all, publishers rarely approach an author. But over the next few days, I realised that the enquiry was genuine. Could I write about a spa break where four mature friends experience a life-changing weekend? You bet I could! I love writing about older protagonists making exciting life changes. As the saying goes, ‘You are as old as you feel.’

The novel is set in summer in Lancashire, the county where I live, close to an area called the Trough of Bowland, which is classed as an area of outstanding natural beauty. There are hills covered in heather and magnificent views as far as the eye can see. With vast rocky fields to roam over, sheep graze idly and a river meanders alongside a remote twisting road. The water is clear, cool and always inviting and nearby picnic areas are abundant.

I began wild-water swimming later in life, and this area is ideal, with many pools and safe bathing places. One of my favourite scenes from The Spa Break finds the characters swimming in a river. As the friends Bridgette, Emily, Marjory, and Serena came to life, their wacky escapades at the spa began to fill the page and encouraged them to go out of their comfort zone. I imagined scenes where they bravely explored new possibilities, sometimes reluctantly.

In this scene, before arriving at the spa, the friends stop by the river for a coffee break. Unwilling Bridgette is encouraged to swim by the wild-water swimmer, Serena.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Serena asked and took hold of their hands. ‘One, two, three… swim!’ She tugged hard and plunged them into the water. Submerged to their shoulders and gasping at the cold, within seconds, the women were swimming. Cheers resounded from the riverbank as the bikers whistled and clapped.

  ‘Hang on! Wait for me!’ a voice suddenly called out.

  Everyone turned to see Bridgette, her short elf-like body running across the grass. With spontaneous applause, they took in the sight of her skirted swimsuit. The thin fabric of a generous sarong, knotted at her wide waist, billowed around her chubby legs. A rubber cap, red with colourful flowers, covered her hair and on her feet she wore a pair of latex bootees.

  ‘Bridgette!’ Serena yelled and, rising like a salmon leaping upstream, reached Bridgette’s side. ‘You made it.’ She laughed and leaned down, guiding her in.

  ‘I’m coming out of my comfort zone!’ Bridgette shrieked as she dipped into the water and, with furious strokes, began to paddle towards Emily and Marjory.

What is wild water swimming? It is swimming in a river, lake, pond, the sea – anywhere where the water is untamed. If you’ve never tried swimming outdoors, I can highly recommend this type of swimming. After the initial shock to the body, it is blissful to be at one with nature. As your breathing slows down, an exhilarating experience takes over. It is the perfect anecdote to the frustration and bewilderment of current world events. Reading novels may also help us recharge our batteries and escape into a fantasy world,  bringing light relief when needed.

I thank Frost Magazine for this opportunity and reiterate Bridgette’s words, ‘May you be blessed with friendships as solid and cherished as my own.’

www.carolinejamesauthor.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SUNDAY SCENE: JEN GILROY ON HER FAVOURITE SCENE FROM THE SWEETHEART LOCKET

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My latest book is The Sweetheart Locket, released in ebook in March from Orion Dash with a paperback following later this year. Inspired by the ‘sweetheart jewellery’ members of the armed forces gave to loved ones at home, it’s a Second World War dual-time novel of love, loss and family secrets, wrapped up in courage, loyalty and hope.

Spanning four countries and two continents, most of the story is set in England in places which have shaped my own life. Although I now live in Canada, I lived in England for many years, first to undertake postgraduate studies at University College London in the heart of Bloomsbury.

From student days long ago, London became my favourite city—the red double-decker buses and black taxis I’d seen in films; buildings, roads and parks familiar from my bookish childhood; and several thousand years of history under my feet.

In both the historical and contemporary strands of The Sweetheart Locket, London, and Bloomsbury in particular, have a starring role. Maggie, the heroine of the historical story lives in a hostel in Bloomsbury near where I once did, and important scenes take place in Russell Square Gardens, Russell Square Underground Station and Cartwright Gardens.

When Willow, the forty-something granddaughter Maggie never met, arrives in London from San Francisco for a work trip, she marvels she’s ‘finally here where her gran had once lived and walking along streets she might have known.’

My favourite scene comes from the historical story. It takes place in September 1939, soon after Maggie, a Canadian who’d been sent to school in England, defies her family, tears up her ticket home and decides to stay in London and ‘do her bit’ for the war effort.

Maggie crossed the road by the stately Hotel Russell and turned towards Russell Square where men piled sandbags around nearby buildings. One of the many signs that London was a city at war.

At eighteen, Maggie finds an office job and makes new friends, Evie and her brother, Will. This friendship sets Maggie’s life on a new path—one that later shapes Willow’s life too.

[Maggie] turned into [Russell] Square and found a bench in a sunny corner near a horse chestnut tree, spiny seedpods almost ready to split and scatter mahogany-brown conkers onto the path below.

…Although she’d escaped from her old life, at night in the hostel she couldn’t escape from herself and the thoughts that swarmed in her head like incessant insects. Unlike the men stacking sandbags, she wasn’t doing something useful for the war…Albeit in a different way, it was a kind of prison like her family and school had been.

As she talks with Evie and Will, Maggie realizes that for the first time in her life she’s an independent adult who can make her own decisions.

Will’s gaze was warm, and Maggie’s tummy lurched in a new but not unpleasant way.

Along with those fragments of her ticket, she’d thrown out the girl she used to be but who was the woman she might become?

Maggie in 1939 and Willow in 2019 are both at turning points in their lives. Connected by Maggie’s wartime Royal Air Force sweetheart locket, they’re on a quest discover who they are, what they want and, ultimately, find the courage to follow their dreams.

‘The three of us will be good friends, I know it.’ Evie tucked her arm into Maggie’s.

Maggie knew it too. Her old story was over and the new one had begun.

 

 

Connect with Jen: www.jengilroy.com

 

 

 

 

 

SUNDAY SCENE: VICKI BEEBY ON HER FAVOURITE SCENE FROM A NEW START FOR THE WRENS

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The first time I visited Orkney, I’d gone to visit the fascinating Neolithic sites. However, I was surprised to find other, much more recent remains – the leftovers of Orkney’s wartime heritage. Along with ancient stone circles, tombs and stone houses, I saw concrete gun emplacements and the buildings still standing in Lyness on Hoy where there had been a huge naval base. Until then I hadn’t known about the large presence of the armed forces in Orkney during the war but after that I threw myself into research. When I learned that a lot of Wrens were posted to Orkney, it fired my imagination and I started to wonder what it must have been like for the young women who left the comforts of their homes to serve in Orkney.

It was a couple of years before I was able to start my story, and one of the first decisions I had to make when planning it was whether to make the setting wholly real or if I should blend real settings with fictional ones. In the end, lockdown made up my mind for me. The research trip I’d planned had to be postponed indefinitely and yet my deadlines were fixed and looming. As I was going to have to rely on my memories of my visit, plus maps and books, it made sense to create a fictional signal station where my Wrens would be based.

In the book they are tasked with challenging and monitoring all shipping entering and leaving Hoy Sound, the entrance to Scapa Flow, which was the wartime anchorage for Britain’s Home Fleet. I made up a headland, which I called Kyeness, where the signal station would be based, placing it just outside Stromness. Now I’m writing the third book in the series, it feels like a very real place to me, up on a high headland with stunning views across Hoy Sound, with the Hoy Hills beyond.

Another fictional location is the Wrennery, the large old house where the Wrens are billeted. However, it’s located in Stromness. It’s one of my favourite places in Orkney, with its narrow, winding streets and stunning views across the harbour. In one of my favourite scenes in the book, Iris, the heroine, goes for a walk with her sweetheart while recovering from a terrifying experience the night before. The route I describe is all real, starting in Stromness, and I spent ages studying maps and Google Street View, hoping I didn’t get anything wrong. When I visited Orkney again last November, I followed the same route myself and was relieved to find I’d described the scene correctly, although with the addition of barrage balloons and warships!

‘… they walked out of Stromness on the Howe Road. The road climbed steadily until, looking back, Iris could see across Scapa Flow. The waters were now still and a clear blue, reflecting the sunlit sky. ‘It’s hard to believe it was so stormy out there last night.’ With the daffodils dancing in the breeze along the verges and even the barrage balloons gleaming in the sunshine, Iris felt the lingering fear of the night fall away. Far across the bay, she could see the faint outline of ships at anchor. At that distance, the water looked like silver, the ships set upon the surface like toys. Thoughts of yesterday’s stormy weather and those terrifying moments when she was being dragged beneath the water were fast fading like a half-remembered nightmare.’

 

 

To find out more about me and my books, please visit my website: vickibeeby.co.uk

 

 

 

 

T. Orr Munro: My Writing Process

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My Writing Routine

I write Mondays to Wednesdays from 9am until around 4 or 5pm. Occasionally I’ll write at other times but I find the distance of just a few days useful for honing ideas.

 

A bit about you.

I live in North Devon where I also grew up. I’m a freelance journalist, specializing in writing about policing, but, a long time ago, I was a CSI or Scenes of Crime Officer as they are also called.

 

What you have written, past and present.

I’ve a rather eclectic back catalogue! I’ve written a YA novel, ghostwritten the memoirs of a Battle of Britain pilot and a children’s history of Devon. I also have around five unpublished novels in my bottom drawer! I’m currently writing my second crime novel.

 

What you are promoting now.

Breakneck Point is my debut crime novel out in April about CSI Ally Dymond who is redeployed to a Devon backwater after blowing the whistle on police corruption, but the sleepy coastal town of Bidecombe doesn’t turn out to be quite as quiet as she anticipated.

 

A bit about your process of writing.

I’m quite disciplined about writing. I think it comes from being a journalist and having to sit down and write even when I don’t always feel like it. I’m a ‘reviser’ rather than someone who aims to get it right first time which means that it is sometimes hard to know when to stop.

 

Do you plan or just write?

I’m a planner. I try to plot the entire book out before I start although it invariably changes. However, it means that I tend to know what I’m going to write before I switch my laptop on. I don’t write linearly either. I’ll often write a scene in a different part of the book because I’ve had a particular idea or I’m in the mood to do it. My head has to be in the right place to write difficult scenes, usually 3.00am in the morning when I can’t sleep.

 

What about word count?

I don’t set myself daily word counts. It’s too much pressure! I’m also one of those writers who underwrites and struggles to get enough words down on the page rather than one that writes too many and has to cut back. I dream of writing too many words! It’s a constant challenge for me. I blame starting out as a print journalist where I would constantly look to strip out words so the story would fit the page. Old habits die hard.

 

How do you do your structure?

My books often just start with an image which I then work into a story. For instance, I’m writing book two in the CSI Ally Dymond series and that began life as a single scene which happens towards the end of the book. I do use various reference books. I’m a bit of a magpie, taking the bits that work for me, but I find them helpful for getting me over a plotting blip. I regularly dip into Creating Character Arcs by K.M. Weiland. Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody is good for checking that I’m on the right track and I quite like the approach taken in Book Architecture by Stuart Horwitz.

 

What do you find hard about writing?

Finding myself hurtling down a blind alley! It’s that horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach when you know something isn’t working, but you can’t work out what and you’ve already written thousands of words that you also know are probably going to wind up in the trash. It’s when I come closest to giving up altogether.

 

What do you love about writing?

As soon as I learnt to read I was utterly enthralled by words and how they could be used to transport me to other worlds. When I learnt to write, I realized I too could use words, but to create my own worlds. I get to play god, basically!