Tag Archives: Cass Grafton

RETREATING IS THE BEST STEP FORWARD BY CASS GRAFTON

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One of the many things I’ve learned as a writer is the importance of location. This isn’t about the settings of novels so much, but rather places where it’s possible to escape from day-to-day life and become fully immersed in a story in the making.

Most authors, when at home, tend to write in whatever space they have created for the purpose, anything from a desk in the corner of a room to a dedicated office or (my personal dream) a writing hut in the garden. When the opportunity arises, though, the chance to go away—especially with other writers—is the perfect mix.

Although I’m lucky enough to ‘retreat’ with four of my writing friends each year, usually on an escape into the Shropshire Hills, I’ve also enjoyed a few Cornish writing experiences through The Writing Retreat, superbly run by Jane Moss and Kath Morgan, who not only offer their insight and experience through optional tutoring and one-to-ones they also provide plenty of personal time to write. I’m booked onto my third retreat with them next March and can’t wait—though I’ll have to diet before I go so that I can enjoy the delicious meals they dish up every day!

My most memorable stay with Jane and Kath so far took place a few years ago in a truly remarkable location: the Old Sawmills, a property situated on a secluded creek off the River Fowey in Cornwall.

I was deep into the writing of a book I hoped would be the first in a romance series, set in the fictitious town of Polkerran Point (also in Cornwall), which had several parallels with the town of Fowey and the village of Polruan, situated further down the river from the isolated creek that is home to Old Sawmills.

This fabulous property sits on a tidal inlet, only reachable by boat at high tide or by walking through the woods from Golant or uphill and down dale from Fowey (a much longer route).

The mill building has a fascinating history spanning centuries and was converted some years ago into accommodation, with a music studio built on the lower ground floor. Many musicians have stayed there over the years, and some iconic albums have been recorded in this distinctive location, including Oasis’s Definitely Maybe, and several by Muse, including Showbiz and Origin of Symmetry.

Stalled in my writing for months, once installed in my room at Old Sawmills, I quickly realised I’d found my happy place. My bedroom overlooked the top end of the creek, beautiful in any season, and sat in the window there or curled up on a squashy leather sofa in the light, bright sitting room, the words flowed.

Perhaps it’s not surprising. Not only had many musicians created their masterpieces there, but Kenneth Grahame is also believed to have been inspired to write Wind in the Willows after picnicking in a little creek off the River Fowey—allegedly this one—an experience that is reflected in the opening chapter and describes the setting perfectly.

For myself, not only did staying at Old Sawmills give me the space and opportunity to pour my heart into my book—now published as New Dreams at Polkerran Point—but the setting of the recording studio will be a key location in the third book in the series.

Currently for sale, who knows what the future holds for Old Sawmills? In my dreams, a reclusive writer will buy it and happily sit in the conservatory, nature all around, as they pen novel after novel, lost in a world of their own creation.

 

Visit https://www.thewritingretreat.co.uk/ for more information.

 

 

 

 

SISTER SCRIBES’ GUEST: ALISON LARKIN ON WHY SHE WRITES

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Welcome to Alison Larkin, bestselling author of The English American, award-winning Austen narrator and now the narrator of The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen and The Unexpected Past of Miss Jane Austen. 

I’m with Dorothy Parker who said “I hate writing. I love having written.”

I was born in Washington DC, adopted by English parents and raised in England and Africa and I’ve written for as long as I can remember – poems and plays mostly. But they were usually pretty surreal.

Then something happened that changed everything. Including the kind of writing I did.

It was the early 1990’s. I’d recently left drama school and was playing Flora Poste in Cold Comfort Farm in Newbury when the ‘phone rang back stage and I learned that the birth mother I knew nothing about and had been searching for was alive and well and keen for me to come and visit her at her home – in Bald Mountain, Tennessee.

So I went to Tennessee to meet her. Then I moved to New York and became a stand-up comic, because what else do you do?

Growing up, we didn’t talk about feelings in my family, which was helpful I think because the. absence of any other outlet meant I had to write, even though I hated it. I’m sure I never would have written the stand-up comedy act that led to the one woman show that led to my novel The English American if I hadn’t had to.

Photo credit Sabine von Falken

But I did have to. Why? Because people kept asking me what it was like meeting my ‘real’ mother and every time they used those words I felt as if I’d been punched in the heart. Because, to me, my ‘real’ mother was the mother who had raised me. And yet I had needed to find my birth mother and people didn’t ‘get’ why.

So I decided to combine stand-up comedy and theatre and show people through a one woman show in which I played myself, my English mother, and my American birth mother who were diametrical opposites in every way. The show was a hit and led to sitcom development deals in Hollywood and a run in LA and London. And then I had children and stopped performing comedy because I wanted to hang out with my kids while they still wanted to hang out with me.

But then I started to get really annoyed with the way adopted people were portrayed in books and on TV as eternally damaged victims at best, or serial killers. So I thought that maybe if I could put an authentic adopted heroine at the center of the kind of novel that I like to read  then maybe people on a beach or a plane would understand why someone from a very happy adoptive family would need to find the people she came from. And maybe, just maybe, instead of having to go through the whole thing every time someone said “What was finding your birth mother really like” I could say “It would take a book to explain. Oh! Wait! I’ve written one.”

After The English American came out I was rescued from writing by the audiobook industry who set me up with my own studio and hired me to narrate the first of over 200 audiobooks I’ve narrated to date. And I was so busy raising my children there was no time – or need – to do any writing.

My handsome, brilliant Indian fiancé, Bhima, loved my writing. “Why don’t you write more,” he pressed me four months ago. “Because I’m happy,” I said smiling again at the first man I ever dared to fully love. I’d spent a lifetime looking for him. And finally, in my 50’s, there he was.

Then he died. So maybe I will be writing again after all.

 

Between now and Christmas, for every audiobook downloaded directly via www.alisonlarkinpresents.com one will be donated to people in need.

 

 

 

SISTER SCRIBES: CASS GRAFTON ON HER LOVE FOR DAPHNE DU MAURIER’S CORNWALL

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I’ve been reflecting lately on which books stand out most to me, from childhood through to the present day, and a pattern has emerged: my all-time favourite reads at any particular time of my life had a strong sense of place.

From Enid Blyton’s boarding school stories, through my teenage passion for the Brontës’ wild Yorkshire moorlands, it’s clear I was hooked on places from an early age. Onward I went into Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire, Harry Potter’s Hogwarts and Tolkien’s Middle Earth, always captivated by a good setting.

Alongside my fellow Sister Scribes friends, Kitty Wilson and Jane Cable, I have a deeply-rooted love of Cornwall, and whilst writing a recent novel, I thought back to when this fascination with the county began and realised it stemmed from my interest in a writer and her Cornwall-based stories: Daphne du Maurier.

It was the 1990s, and every autumn, my husband and I would spend a week on the south-east Cornish coast—days of kicking our way through crisp golden leaves, inhaling the smell of wood smoke from cottage chimneys, and watching the gulls wheel across steel-grey skies as waves lashed the rocky shoreline.

One of our favourite walks was the Hall Walk, which has stunning views across the charming town of Fowey and out towards Gribbin Head as you meander towards Pont Creek, onwards to Pont Pill and then back along the other side of the creek to Polruan.

During these holidays, I discovered Daphne du Maurier’s strong connection to the area, where she lived for many years, but at the time I had only read her most famous novel, Rebecca. I became fascinated with her life, devoured her biography and began to read her other works, beginning with the first full-length novel, The Loving Spirit.

Daphne often walked the Hall Walk from her then home at Ferryside, adjacent to the Bodinnick Ferry where it docked after crossing the river from Fowey. It was on this walk, at Pont Creek, that she came across a derelict schooner, the Jane Slade. Although the ship was rotting, the figurehead remained intact, and she became spellbound by the ship, not only often climbing aboard and imagining its past adventures, but also going on to make local enquiries into the vessel and the local family who had built her.

She absorbed the history of the boat-building Slades, sought out the family tombstone in the churchyard at Lanteglos, up above Polruan (the church where Jane Slade had been married and where Daphne herself went on to marry), and was also given access to some family letters.

Bewitched by all she was discovering and inspired by her surroundings, Daphne realised she had enough material for a novel, a book she wanted to write ‘in which atmosphere and a sense of place would dominate’.

The Loving Spirit (the title came from a poem by Emily Brontë) was published in 1931— with the Slade family becoming the Coombes and Polruan renamed as Plyn—and is still in print today.

The figurehead from the Jane Slade was given to Daphne, and it was mounted on a beam below her bedroom window at Ferryside, where it still hangs.

My love affair with Cornwall is as strong as ever, and I’m looking forward to when I can visit again, walking those beloved paths, taking in the breath-taking views and inhaling the atmosphere of the place my heart calls home.

 

Sources: Daphne du Maurier – Margaret Forster (1993), Vanishing Cornwall – Daphne du Maurier (1967)

 

 

 

SISTER SCRIBES: CASS GRAFTON ON JANE CABLE’S ANOTHER YOU

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Today, I’m delighted to be talking to author, Jane Cable, about one of her novels, Another You, a moving saga of modern-day family life. Despite touching on the horrors of combat, past and present, it’s a heart-warming tale of one woman’s fight to reclaim her identity and discover what really matters to her.

Marie is the well-respected chef of The Smugglers pub, near Studland Bay, but despite her success in the kitchen, she feels less confident in her handling of relationships, both with her (almost) ex-husband, Stephen, and her much-loved son, Jude.

A chance meeting with an American soldier, just as the Bay is preparing to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings, seems the perfect escape from worrying about everything—if only she could get rid of her debilitating migraines and the sense of the past coalescing with the present.

Another You was a brilliant read, and Jane is a proficient storyteller. Her characters are entirely relatable, their faults as much at play as their strengths. Although touching upon the lingering effects of PTSD and the invisible scars left by all wars, Jane manages to blend in romance, mystery, family relationships and an unforeseen twist towards the end.
The book stayed with me long after I’d finished, and I was keen to ask Jane some questions about it.

I was swept away by your beautiful descriptions of the Studland Bay area of Dorset. Was it the setting that inspired you initially or had you come across the tragic story that took place there during the war first?

Studland was the initial inspiration for Another You. I first visited with a friend in 2009 and fell in love with the enclosed bay with its calm blue waters and high white cliffs. It has a magic all of its own for me – arriving on the chain ferry from Sandbanks (Dorset’s millionaire’s row) you feel as though you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole and landed in another world. The Second World War story only came in at the second major redraft of the book, but when I read about it during my research into the area it spoke to me too loudly to ignore.

The connection between the past and the present is something you do so skilfully in your novels. What is it as a writer that attracts you to blending time periods?

I have always had an interest in consciousness beyond matter and the ways present and past could intermingle; either through the spirit world, inside people’s heads, or by any other mechanism it’s currently beyond us to understand. If that sounds seriously strange it springs from my firm belief that because we can’t possibly know everything we shouldn’t rule anything out. Just think how science continues to advance. As I writer I love the ambiguity of it all and try to let my readers make up their own minds about how it could happen.

On a lighter note, how are your cheffing skills? Are you as good a cook as Marie, because if so, please can I come to dinner?

I’m sorry, but I am no more than an adequate cook – not even the best chef in my own household, to be honest. But I loved researching Marie’s recipes for Another You. And you are more than welcome to risk dinner with me at any time. I’ll get the rosé in…

 

I’ll bring the glasses! Thank you, Jane, both for answering my questions and writing such an absorbing, well researched and beautifully told story about self-discovery, emerging from darkness into light and finding love where you least expect it.

 

 

 

SISTER SCRIBES: CASS GRAFTON ON AN UNEXPECTED LITERARY CONNECTION

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Living in Switzerland for the past six years, we’ve been fortunate enough to visit some wonderful locations, many with literary connections.

For example, JRR Tolkien made a trip to Switzerland in 1911 and took inspiration from the scenery to create the settings for some scenes in The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. His journey took him to many iconic locations, including Zermatt—home to the Matterhorn—and Lauterbrunnen, a verdant and picturesque valley with over 70 waterfalls.

The author wrote to his son, Michael, in 1967: I am delighted that you have made the acquaintance of Switzerland, and of the very part that I once knew best and which had the deepest effect on me. The hobbit’s journey from Rivendell to the other side of the Misty Mountains, including the glissade down the slithering stones into the pine woods, is based on my adventures in 1911.

This is not the only Tolkien connection with the country. The unique Greisinger Museum in the village of Jenins is dedicated entirely to Middle-earth and contains unique artefacts, art, literature and collectors’ items, and you enter through a door into a hobbit hole!

Not far from Lauterbrunnen is another place with a literary connection: Meiringen. The town is in a beautiful valley and is famous for the stunning Reichenbach Falls, portrayed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes’ novel, The Final Solution.

These were not unexpected literary connections, however, being popular tourist destinations.

One of our early discoveries was idyllic Weggis, a small resort town lying on the shores of Lake Luzern and at the foot of Mount Rigi (known as the Queen of the Mountains) from whose summit there are stunning views of the lake and a spectacular vista of the Alps.

Modern day visitors take a train to the summit, but before the Victorians constructed this cogwheel mountain railway (the first of its type in Europe, opening in 1871), wealthy people travelled up Rigi by sedan chair. The mind boggles!

Weggis is such a beautiful place. The water is a deep, aqua blue, almost transparent by the shoreline, and the mountains across the water stand out starkly from it, glowing in the bright summer sun or wearing snowy caps in winter. There is an ethereal light gently embracing the rocky outcrops at all times of year; a light that changes with the seasons. Being there is like taking a deep breath of fresh air, bringing a sense of calm, of escape from the everyday world.

Imagine my surprise, however, to discover that American author, Mark Twain, had also visited the little-known town of Weggis and felt very much the same. In 1897 he wrote: This is the charmingest place we have ever lived in for repose and restfulness, superb scenery whose beauty undergoes a perpetual change from one miracle to another, yet never runs short of fresh surprises and new inventions.

I do, of course, take some words attributed to Mark Twain with a grain of salt. He is famously quoted as saying of Jane Austen, ‘Everytime I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.’

Anyone professing such strong feelings against a book, yet continually attempting to re-read it, must be considered a bit of a contradiction! Jane Austen, I’m sure, would have been excessively diverted, and talking of diversions, it’s time I went off to look at the diary in readiness for booking another trip to Weggis.

Sources: MySwitzerland.com, The Letters of JRR Tolkien and Mark Twain – A Biography by Albert Bigelow Paine

 

 

SISTER SCRIBES’ READING ROUND UP: MAY

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Kitty

The Book of Us – Andrea Michael

Oh my goodness, this book. This book won my heart over, filled it with joy and then smashed it into itty-bitty pieces. A story of friendship, loyalty and love, it explores many issues, particularly how perception and truth can be very different things as well as how some bonds are so strong they can never be broken.

I found it to be written with an emotional insight, depth and honesty that lifted it apart. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Beautiful.

Cass

A Borrowed Past – Juliette Lawson

What would you do if you discovered your whole life was built on a lie? This is the question a teenage William Harper has to face up to on more than one occasion in this excellent, page-turning story.

William dreams of being an artist, something his strict father is strongly against, but when a shocking family secret is uncovered, William takes his chance, running away from home to start a new life… but even as the years pass, and he grows from boy to man, further challenging truths emerge, showing the past is never far behind him.

I do love to pick up a book, not really knowing what to expect beyond what the blurb has told me, and my enjoyment of this story was definitely enhanced by the settings (as much a heart and soul of the story as the characters) in the northeast of England.

Having lived near York for seven years, it was a delight to tread the well-known streets with William, and the settings of Seaton Carew and Scarborough were also fascinating backdrops to this historical saga.

The writing was beautifully evocative of the era and the story skilfully documented, painting the page with words much as William longed to spill the images in his mind onto paper with a brush.

Ms Lawson writes captivating descriptions, strong narrative and relatable and believable dialogue between her well-drawn characters. She has a wonderful ability to draw the reader inside the pages of the book, to feel as though they are living the moments alongside William, and I cannot wait to read more in the Seaton Carew saga series.

A Borrowed Past is a compelling, wholly enjoyable read and I highly recommend it.

Jane

Her Mother’s Secret – Jan Baynham

This impressive debut transported me to Greece. The ability to weave a setting from words without the descriptions overtaking the story is a real skill and this book shines because of it.

The characters are fascinating too. For me, the 1969 ones in particular, when Elin spends her father’s legacy to attend an art school on a Greek island. Each person is carefully drawn and none of them are wasted in what they bring to the plot. I was pulled into Elin’s story, the friendships she forms, the enemies she inadvertently makes and the love she finds; the shocking reason it doesn’t all end as she would have wished.

For a dual timeline (Elin in 1969 and her daughter Alexandra in 1991) the structure is unusual in that after a few opening chapters straight after Elin’s death the book tells first her story and then Alexandra’s. But I can see it needed to be that way for the story to unfold in the correct manner. And it was refreshing not to be hopping about in time too.

I would thoroughly recommend Her Mother’s Secret. It was published by Ruby Fiction last month as an ebook across all major formats.

 

 

SISTER SCRIBES GUEST: LINDA HUBER ON FAMILY SECRETS

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I’m delighted to welcome the lovely Linda Huber, a prolific author and fellow Swiss resident, to Frost Magazine today, where she’s talking about how family secrets inspired her writing.

It’s always fascinating, talking to older family members and hearing their stories of days gone by. I remember my grandmother talking about her life growing up in Edinburgh with her parents and brothers. The family were keen photographers so we have a wealth of photos ranging from Granny as a toddler in 1890-something, all the way up to her last years, when she lived in Glasgow with her younger brother.

What she never mentioned was either of the wars she lived through, apart from the odd comment about food rationing. Another taboo was the death of my grandfather when my mother was just fourteen. He died in an industrial accident on the railway, where he worked, so Granny was given compensation – a return train ticket to London. It was her first and only trip outside Scotland. How I wish I’d been old enough to know I should be questioning her greedily, saving up her answers for my own children. I was still a teenager when she died, and there was too much Mum didn’t know either.

That’s how it is with family secrets, I think – usually, they’re not so much grisly skeletons in the closet as things that are just too hard to speak about. Or maybe, details are simply forgotten over time, not mentioned because nobody thinks to. When I was researching my family tree, I came across a distant little cousin who’d drowned in a Glasgow swimming pool in the 1940s, aged eleven. I’d never heard of her, and my mother could only just remember hearing her talked of. It was a tragedy lost over generations, though I’m sure little Agnes’s close family still remember.

Other secrets are grisly and terrible. A few years ago, I read a news story where someone had kept something truly awful from his nearest and dearest for over twenty years. I won’t say more because they are real people, but this man’s wife and children had no idea that the person they were living with was capable of what he had done. That started me thinking… and the end result is my ninth psychological suspense novel, The Runaway.

Cass (left) and Linda (right)

In the book, Nicola, Ed and Kelly Seaton relocate from London to lovely Cornwall. It should be a fresh start for them all – teenager Kelly had got in with a bad crowd, Ed had lost his job and Nicola was struggling to keep the family on an even keel. So they moved into Ed’s old family home by the sea. Nicola was determined to make a success of the new life, but little did she suspect what had happened in the house when Ed was growing up. He’d kept his secret well…

This is the third book I’ve set in Cornwall; I’m making no secret of the fact that I love the place! The Seaton family’s new home is near St Ives, which has fabulous beaches and a beautiful old town. It’s years now since I’ve been there, but one day I’ll go back. And meanwhile, I can write about it.

 

Linda Huber grew up in Glasgow but went to work in Switzerland for a year aged twenty-two, and has lived there ever since. Her day jobs have included working as a physiotherapist in hospitals and schools for handicapped children, and teaching English in a medieval castle.

Her writing career began in the nineties, when she had over fifty short stories published in women’s magazines before turning to longer fiction. The Runaway is her ninth psychological suspense novel.

Find out more about Linda at www.lindahuber.net or follow her on Twitter @LindaHuber19

SISTER SCRIBES’ READING ROUND UP: APRIL

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Kitty:

Firstly, I thoroughly enjoyed The Cottage in a Cornish Cove, a romantic comedy set in Cornwall and written by a fellow Sister Scribe. Cass Grafton’s descriptions of the county made me feel as I were home, I could see Polkerran beautifully in my mind and the descriptions of community were so well done that I could hear the characters calling to each other as they made their way around the village. Her gentle humour is woven throughout and I was genuinely willing the hero and the heroine together.  I particularly loved how she starts each chapter with a quote from classic romances with each one giving a snippet of what we can expect from the chapter.

I picked up expecting The Charm Bracelet by Ella Allbright a romance and what I got was so much more. The concept behind this novel, the charm bracelet with each charm marking a major event in, and telling the story of, Jake and Leila’s lives, is fabulous. I fell in love with Jake from the very first page and absolutely adored the way his character developed from boy to adult and was willing the relationship on with my whole being. There is however a twist to this tale and this was what made the book so special for me. The author has turned my heart inside out and this story will stay with me for a long time.  Highly recommended.

 

Jane:

First this month my reading took me to Dorset and the Jurassic coast around Lyme Regis. Georgia Hill’s timeslip On a Falling Tide had some lovely comments made about it by other authors I thought I should try it for myself.

The book travels between the 1860s, where Lydia wants no more than to be a fossil hunter but is expected to marry to further her uncle’s business interests, and the present day where Charity is searching for her roots following her grandfather’s death. The two women are linked by an ammonite Charity finds on the beach, but as the story unfolds what binds  them together runs far deeper than that. To say more would give away too much of the story, but Georgia Hill has created a fantastically malevolent ghost – and a heart warming love story – all rolled into one.

I was looking for a proper comfort read when I was reminded I hadn’t read any of Sue McDonagh’s romances by seeing the gorgeous new cover for her third book. Sue is a proper creative all rounder – she’s an artist as well as a writer so paints her own cover images.

I decided to go back to the beginning so downloaded Summer at The Art Café. The premise is wonderful; Lucy wins a gorgeous motorbike in a raffle and despite – or maybe because of – her husband’s disapproval, she decides to learn to ride it and in the process finds so much more than just the freedom of the roads.

What I loved the most about this book is that the characters settle under your skin without you noticing – they are all so effortlessly real, and that is a true gift. From bike instructor Ashley, to his six year old daughter, to Lucy’s best friends at the café, they all rang true and their journeys were convincing. For me the icing on the cake was that the book is set in my native South Wales, but it would be a delightful read for anyone who enjoys a satisfying romance.