Tag Archives: Kitty Wilson

SISTER SCRIBES: KITTY WILSON ON WRITING A SERIES

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When I wrote the first book in The Cornish Village School I had initially intended for it to be a stand-alone. The thought of turning it into a series wasn’t something that had occurred to me, not for one moment. But my publisher suggested that this was a great idea and I happily agreed. Being a self-flagellating writer type – many of us are –  I was astonished at the suggestion that readers would want to read about Penmenna School more than once but was very willing to do as I was told (such a good girl). I was worried though about what I would write about, how many single teachers can one small school have?

I am currently finishing writing the fifth and final in the series and have loved every minute of my time in Penmenna. It has expanded from a tale of a headteacher to a series that has embraced the highs and lows of a whole community and I am saddened that this is my last foray into the village. It was my choice but is bittersweet all the same. On the other hand whilst it feels odd to be on the brink of creating a brand-new world – I have inhabited Penmenna for the last three years – it’s exciting too. A whole new blank sheet to fill with whatever and whomever I want.

As a reader, I read the most when I was an adolescent, before the responsibilities of adult life caught up with me and I loved a series, then they were often trilogies. I devoured everything I could find on my mother’s shelves, the Jalna books come to mind, Norah Lofts, and R F Delderfield.

Why did I enjoy reading these books so much? With a series each book feels like returning to good friends. The start of a new book within a series is both comfortable and exciting, you have created a bond with the characters, feel you know them, where they’re going, and it’s exciting willing them on. The end of a book often feels as if it’s come around too soon, you want more time with them, you’re not ready to say goodbye.

The same is true when it comes to writing. Currently I am finishing up Marion’s story. She began in the first book as a velociraptor draped in Cath Kidston and was the ultimate baddie, loathsome. Having a series means I have been able to develop her and turn her into a heroine. I am fully rooting for her now and really hope readers will do the same as her story finishes.

But it’s not all been plain sailing. The tricky thing with writing a series, unless you plan every last detail (and I am a planner), something will come back to bite you. I have had so many plot possibilities pop into my head, have written chapters and then realised I can’t use them because they contradict something miniscule I wrote in one of the other books. So, whilst you know your characters better – a bit like real people – certain things have happened in their world which prevent them from moving on in a way that would be helpful to your current plot. And you have no-one to blame but yourself.

Do keep your eyes peeled for the cover reveal of the final book in The Cornish Village School series, it will be coming on Valentine’s Day and I cannot wait to share it with you.

 

 

SISTER SCRIBES’ READING ROUND UP: JANUARY

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Jane:

The last book I read in 2019 was Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path, a fitting end to the year. It was our book club choice, one we’d begged the library for after having suffered the poet laureate’s egotistical whinge about doing the same walk at roughly the same time.

Phrases such as ‘greatest surpasses least’ spring to mind. Raynor Winn and her husband Moth had nothing left to lose when they embarked on the South West Coastal Path in the summer of 2013; no home, no jobs, no money and in Moth’s case, having been diagnosed with a terminal illness, no future. And yet the book is a joy, well deserving of its award nominations and best-seller status.

That isn’t to say it sugar coats the pill. I felt desperate with them, thirsty with them – and mostly hungry with them. But I also saw the beauty that surrounded them, heard the wash of the waves, the weather howling in from the Atlantic as autumn started to bite. That is the genius of Winn’s writing, the power of her words. That and making an autobiography read and feel like a novel.

There is a lovely postscript to my review too: yesterday I went to hear Raynor Winn speak and had a long conversation with Moth, still very much alive. He told me she wrote the book as a gift for him, for when he can no longer remember the wonderful thing they did. Which makes it a love story as well.

When Kate Field found out I was reading The Salt Path she begged me not to read her new book next because she thought it would be an anti-climax. It is typical of her modesty, but wide of the mark. Hers is a completely different book and I wouldn’t even begin to compare them.

A Dozen Second Chances is just the sort of romantic fiction I like. The characters are real and relatable, mature and shaped by their lives. And being characters in a book Eve and Paddy have had plenty of history, which has done just that. The will-they-won’t-they story of their second chance made me unwilling to put the book down, with a clever and beautifully sewn up plot and satisfying ending.

On a personal note I loved the fact they are archaeologists. The heroine of my next book is as well and I could see Kate’s research had gone along similar lines to mine. I just hope she enjoyed it as much as I did.

 

Kitty:

January is the perfect time to catch up with my reading and I have read several books that I have absolutely loved.

Our Sister Scribe, Susanna, published her first book as Polly Heron – The Surplus Girls. Jane has already shared an extensive review on Frost but I have to add that I adored it and I urge saga lovers to give it a go.

I also raced through Mhairi McFarlane’s If I Never Met You and, true to form, it didn’t disappoint. I love everything about Mhairi’s writing, it’s always fast-paced, insightful and genuinely funny – guaranteed to make me cackle. In this one the heroine is in her mid-thirties when her life and expectations are thrown into disarray and she starts a faux-romance with the office Lothario. Truly fabulous.

And finally, Cathie Hartigan’s Notes From The Lost. A timeslip with part of the story set in wartime Italy and part set in modern-day Exeter. I fell so heavily in love with Alfie, an escaped POW hiding out in mountains and villages and found this book to be uplifting and restorative, with both parts seamlessly woven together. I cannot wait for some time to pass so I can have the pleasure of reading it all over again.

 

 

 

SISTER SCRIBES’ BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2019

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Kitty: I knew when I was reading it that Circe would be a book that stayed with me for a long time and I’m happy to call it my book of the year. I’m already itching to re-read it, an absolutely wonderful read. 

I finished Circe by Madeline Miller this month and I cannot do justice to how much I loved it. The story of Circe, a woman locked in by her divinity whilst also dealing with the very female roles of mother, daughter, sister and lover. This retelling made Circe much more accessible and empathetic than the male-centric version that I grew up with. Full of self-discovery, courage and empowerment it turns the myth of vicious witch into a story of a true heroine. I loved it so much that having read it once I am going to store it, like a secret treasure, for a re-read in a few months so I can wallow in it slowly and feel the magic again.

Susanna:  I love Carol’s 20th century sagas, but this year she wrote her first Victorian story, which happens to be my favourite historical setting. Carol Rivers + Victorian = one very happy reader!

One of the things I love and admire about books by Carol Rivers is that, while some authors get a bit stale and produce books that feel samey, Carol always writes something fresh, using new ideas, at the same time as remaining true to the drama and strong sense of personal relationships that characterise her books. Christmas Child is a story for any time of year, not just for the festive season. An emotional and enthralling tale, it follows Ettie as she faces up to life’s dangers and challenges and learns the hard way that not everyone deserves to be trusted. I love stories set in Victorian times and I’m delighted that Carol Rivers has, for this book, left behind her customary 20th century setting and moved into the 19th century. I hope there will be more Victorian stories to come from this wonderful writer.

Cass: A hilarious yet poignant story of self discovery, where you are laughing out loud one moment and holding back tears the next.

“Everyone should be adopted, that way you can meet your birth parents when you’re old enough to cope with them.” So says Pippa Dunn, the eponymous heroine of Alison Larkin’s debut novel, The English American (which has its roots in her autobiographical one-woman comedy show of the same name). Adopted as an infant and raised terribly British (attending a posh boarding school, able to make a proper cup of tea and in the ‘love’ camp for Marmite on toast), Pippa – now 28 – discovers her birth parents are American. Finally, she begins to understand why she’s so different from everyone she knows. Pippa sets off for America, soon meeting her creative birth mother and her charismatic birth father. Moving to New York to be nearer to them, Pippa believes she’s found her ‘self’ and everything she thought she wanted. Or has she? This is a hilarious yet poignant story where you are laughing out loud one moment and holding back tears the next. Pippa’s journey is very funny, yet deeply moving, and I highly recommend The English American to anyone who loves to finish a book with a smile on their face and a warm feeling in their heart.

Jane: Elizabeth Buchan’s The Museum of Broken Promises is, like her other books, a slow starter. I have learnt to be patient while she creates a tapestry of detail so rich and wonderful, holding my breath until to story tips into second, third and fourth gears and becomes unputdownable.

The book is set in Paris in the present day and in Prague in the 1980s. The end of the Cold War was in touching distance, yet nobody knew it, and this adds an additional poignancy to the narrative. Laure, a young woman coming to terms with the death of her father is an au pair to a businessman and party insider, and while trying to make some sense of life behind the Iron Curtain, meets a dissident musician who steals her heart and soul. Years later in France, she sets up the Museum of Broken Promises, full of artefacts people donate in attempt to avenge or assuage the pain of betrayal – and some of them belong to her own past. Slowly the book teases out truths from a long ago Czechoslovakian summer. One moment achingly beautiful, the other shocking in its violence, the whole fits together like a handmade glove. It stayed with me, too – and it’s only now I’m writing this review I finally understand the most important promise. And who broke it. A must read. Honestly.

Kirsten: Beautifully written and no matter how grim the present times feel, at least we are not living in a plague village in 17th century Derbyshire!

I love historical fiction and I was late to the party with  Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. It was published in 2002 and was recommended to me several times before I finally grabbed myself a copy. The book is set in 1666 and it’s based on a true event. The Great Plague has reaches the quiet Derbyshire village of Eyam through a contaminated piece of cloth that has been sent to a tailor from London. It’s the only place in the region that’s been affected and the villagers make the extraordinary decision to isolate themselves totally so that the plague cannot spread further – so no one allowed in or out until the plague has run its course or everyone has died. This story is told through the eyes of 18-year-old Anna Frith as she confronts ‘the loss of her family, the disintegration of her community and the lure of a dangerous and illicit love’. I loved it. It’s sad and interesting and touching and fascinating and I had no idea that anything like this had happened. I wonder how we’d have reacted in the same situation.

SISTER SCRIBES GUEST: LORNA COOK ON THE IMPORTANCE OF WRITING BUDDIES

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I love this post, it sums up everything I have found to be true of the writing community. After reading and loving The Forgotten Village, I was lucky enough to meet Lorna at the Joan Hessayon Award this year, which she deservedly won. She was an absolute joy – funny, friendly and unassuming – and I cannot wait for her next book. 

 

When I started writing my debut novel, The Forgotten Village, I had zero writing buddies. Not one. I had just had my second child and we were going through that odd stage together where she slept most of the day (and not at all at night!). It left me slightly frazzled, very jaded and I was left to my own devices while my hubby went out to work and I took maternity leave. I joined lots of little groups with my tiny newborn but I sorely missed colleagues. And that joy of real human interaction that has nothing to do with nappy-chat was hard to find.

Don’t get me wrong – I did not go through the equal amounts of pain and joy of writing a novel so I could make chums. That was the happy by-product of this crazy and often misunderstood realm of fiction writing. And it is misunderstood. When I very quietly, very cagily, tell people I write novels it is only because someone has asked me directly ‘So, Lorna, what do you do for a living?’

And then begin the questions about how much I earn and if I am the next JK Rowling. Every single time. Praise be for The Romantic Novelists’ Association. I’m not sure I’d be quite as sane (manic laugh) as I am now without the RNA and the wonderful friends I’ve found there who just get it.  I joined the RNA’s New Writers’ Scheme in 2017 and no one ever made me feel as if I ‘wasn’t quite one of them’, because I was unpublished. I had found likeminded souls, who knew the pain and pleasure of being a novelist. Most of them were also unpublished like me and we’ve had many an hour of gossiping about industry one-to-ones at the RNA conference, about disastrous critiques from independent editors and the sheer joy of meeting new people.

I joined the RNA’s Chelmsford Chapter and was made to feel instantly welcome. I try to make it to all the lunches, which are once a month so I can share in dramas and pain, excitement and what everyone is working on at the mo. It’s brilliant. I always come away motivated. As a result of the Chelmsford Chapter, a few of us have formed a breakaway writing group called … wait for it, ‘Write Club’. You think we’d be better at puns than this – what with being writers, but there it is.  And once a month we meet and share in the ups and downs, as well as helping each other with our current WIPs.

I owe so much of my sanity to the RNA and the friends I’ve found there. Honestly, I don’t know where I’d be without it.

 

LORNA COOK lives by the coast with her husband, daughters and a Staffy named Socks.  She is the 2019 winner of the RNA’s Joan Hessayon Award for her debut novel The Forgotten Village, which sold 150,000 copies and reached Number 1 in the Kindle Chart. Her second novel, The Forbidden Promise, is out in spring 2020. A former journalist and publicist, she owns more cookery books than one woman should and barely gets time to cook.

@LornaCookWriter (Facebook) @LornaCookAuthor (Twitter) @LornaCookAuthor (Instagram)  http://www.lornacookauthor.com

SISTER SCRIBES: KITTY WILSON ON WHY SHE WRITES ROMANCE

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I was due to speak as part of a panel on Why I Write Romance at Exeter Literary Festival the other day, and knowing that my Sister Scribes post was due I thought I could write about speaking at such events. Unfortunately, chronic ill health meant I was unable to go and thus my intentions disappeared into the ether.

But all was not lost, jotting down my thoughts on why I write Romantic Comedy I inadvertently wrote an essay of over 3,000 words. Too many for here but I can at least share my number one reason for loving romance with you.

Simply put, I love the sheer humanity of romance. Romance is universal, most of us have a desire to find a partner, someone you can share your life with, grow old alongside. But the ability to be a calm, confident and capable individual in life is often lost when faced with someone you are attracted to, even if you didn’t realise you were attracted to them until you start stammering and the flush of your face is radiating like a beacon.

I’ve learnt that no matter how golden or blessed someone appears to be, they usually share this awkwardness, self-doubt is at its height when it comes to meeting a potential partner, self-sabotage often unwittingly kicks in and age does not always make us worry less.

Oh my god! Did I just say that? I said that out loud? Now I’m going to go home and worry for three days.

The adolescent fear – my face is covered in spots and my sibling did something mortifying in school – they’ll never fancy me now, I may as well never leave the house and just curl up in a corner and die.

The slightly older fret – how can anyone love me with a saggy tummy and too much grey hair, I’m nowhere near as attractive as I was when I was in my twenties (although I’d argue actually you’re heaps more attractive but that’s a tangent I’ll get lost in for hours) they’ll never fancy me now…and repeat.

Romance as a genre reminds us everyone feels like this and we are not alone. The playing field here is level. Romance is relatable. Really relatable.

I love a literary novel and am in awe of how those writers deal with topics of race, gender, class, poverty, abuse, justice and so on and when I read literary fiction I feel clever and worthy because that’s how attitudes over the years have conditioned me to feel but romance is what I want to read.

I want to read about the heroine battling with the mundane, the washing machine that’s broken just as she’s stained her best dress and is due to meet the person of her dreams for their first date. I want to read that the dog has just pinched the dinner our hero or heroine has spent hours slaving over and it is now being vomited up over the living room – these things make me feel less alone, make me feel comforted. They make me feel reassured (and thus able to giggle) about my own life which is largely spent in the house dealing with domestic catastrophes rather than my imagined-and-never-quite-realised life trekking across continents being glamourous.

Romantic comedy reminds me that we all have our insecurities, we all have our everyday tribulations, sometimes we can be our own worst enemy but we are all in this together, we all share these emotions but hopefully, like the protagonists of romantic comedy, each day we grow and with that earn our own personalised happy-ever-after.

SISTER SCRIBES’ READING ROUND UP: SEPTEMBER

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Jane:

Sometimes I catch sight of a new book I just have to read as soon as possible. It doesn’t happen often and it’s always a leap of faith; will a favourite author dash my expectation of brilliance – or will they, once again, triumph.

Elizabeth Buchan’s The Museum of Broken Promises is, like her other books, a slow starter. I have learnt to be patient while she creates a tapestry of detail so rich and wonderful, holding my breath until to story tips into second, third and fourth gears and becomes unputdownable.

The book is set in Paris in the present day and in Prague in the 1980s. The end of the Cold War was in touching distance, yet nobody knew it, and this adds an additional poignancy to the narrative. Laure, a young woman coming to terms with the death of her father is an au pair to a businessman and party insider, and while trying to make some sense of life behind the Iron Curtain, meets a dissident musician who steals her heart and soul. Years later in France, she sets up the Museum of Broken Promises, full of artefacts people donate in attempt to avenge or assuage the pain of betrayal – and some of them belong to her own past.

Slowly the book teases out truths from a long ago Czechoslovakian summer. One moment achingly beautiful, the other shocking in its violence, the whole fits together like a handmade glove. It stayed with me, too – and it’s only now I’m writing this review I finally understand the most important promise. And who broke it. A must read. Honestly.

 

Kitty:

This month I have been racing through the romcoms. I have just finished Lindsey’s Kelk’s One in a Million and absolutely loved it. She writes with such quick-fire wit that every page had me giggling and a little bit in awe. I enjoyed myself so much, I read it over two days, that I have gone and bought lots more of her books and am looking forward to laughing my way through autumn.

I also devoured The Man Who Didn’t Call by Rosie Walsh. I was immediately drawn into this novel. It tells the story of Sarah and Eddie and how they fall deeply and desperately in love over the course of a week, the reader is in no doubt that these two are bound to be together, that anything else would be ridiculous. Then Eddie goes on holiday and Sarah never hears from him again. This provides a thriller-like element to the story, where is he? Why has he not called? What on earth has happened? This is combined with their romance, the angst of the waiting for a phone-call, a connection that you know was special, that simply can’t peter out. I won’t give anything away and reviews show this is a little bit of a marmite book, but I absolutely adored it and suffered that sad book hangover feeling you have when a story you have loved has come to an end. Highly recommended.

I’ve just started Evie Dunmore’s Bringing Down the Duke and as a life-long fan of Julia Quinn I am over the moon to find another writer who can deliver such well-written historical comedy gold, this time set in Victorian Oxford rather than the Regency period. With whip smart dialogue and a fabulous premise, a bluestocking gathering support for The Women’s Suffrage movement, how can I not fall in love?

SISTER SCRIBES GUEST: CATHIE HARTIGAN BEHIND THE SCENES AT CREATIVE WRITING MATTERS

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I am so happy to introduce you all to Cathie on this month’s Frost. She is responsible for taking me under her wing at my very first RNA conference and was one of the very first people to ever read my work and encourage me to keep going. She is part of the Creative Writing Matters team who support writers in so many ways; mentorship, teaching, handbooks and the running of renowned competitions such as The Exeter Novel Prize.

 

Does creative writing matter? Yes, a great deal to us.  Margaret James and Sophie Duffy and I have been working together for nearly a decade now. As teachers of creative writing, and because a student’s success is as thrilling as one’s own – well, nearly – we encourage our students in any way we can.

What did they want in a textbook? What would really be useful for them? Would our experience as competition judges as well as teachers be of help? Margaret and I spent a year consulting them before we published The Creative Writing Student’s Handbook.

A dream for most novice writers, is that they should do well in a short story competition. I was thrilled when the first story I sent out bounded into a shortlist. What joy! More successes followed, but then, so did no listing at all. I soon discovered that just because it may not have done well in one competition, doesn’t mean to say it won’t succeed elsewhere. How many entries, who is judging, and whether there’s a strong entry or particular subject that resonates with the judge(s), all are factors.

During my years as a music teacher I was often charged with putting pupils through exams, and my sympathetic cup ran over on many occasions when I saw the terror with which many faced such trauma. But my goodness though, didn’t they all try harder when the exam loomed. Most got exponentially better!

On the back of my experience, I had the notion to hold a tiny competition in a creative writing class. The result was the same. Suddenly, all those last minutes unedited stories were tidied up. They took notice of the word count, the spelling and grammar, and familiar topics were rethought. I was surprised and delighted. Unlike music exams or driving tests though, entering a writing competition it isn’t a do or die situation. Okay, a particular judge may prefer another story, but it is possible to give of your best by crafting your story days or weeks previously.

Sophie won both the Yeovil Novel Prize and the Luke Bitmead Award, the latter leading to the publication of The Generation Game. Margaret was shortlisted for the RNA Romantic Comedy Award with The Wedding Diary, and for many years, had been the administrator for the Harry Bowling Prize. My short stories were being regularly listed and my debut novel, Secret of the Song was shortlisted for the Hall and Woodhouse Dorchester Literary Festival prize. Competitions were something we knew about. It wasn’t long before we realised that our fair city of Exeter was missing something – a novel prize. Seven years on, we can celebrate the publishing success of many fantastic writers who either won or were listed.

One of the lovely things about being a competition judge is being continually amazed by the extent of the human imagination. The sheer variety of subject matter that people choose to write about is extraordinary, but weird doesn’t necessarily triumph over the ordinary. The ability to move, surprise, make us laugh and/or cry will raise a story above the rest, but how or why isn’t easy to quantify.  Difficult choices have to be made. Sometimes there is a stand-out winner, but not often. Obviously, it’s nice to do well, but any listing is significant. A good record of success, at whatever level, shows commitment as well as quality.

Cathie Hartigan is a musician, novelist, and the founder of www.creativewritingmatters.co.uk and the creative director of www.exelitfest.com. Her second novel, Notes from the Lost will be published in October.

 

SISTER SCRIBES’ READING ROUND UP: AUGUST

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Susanna:

I’ve been reading The Black Silk Purse by Margaret Kaine. This saga is the sort of book which makes you read just a bit more… just another scene… just another chapter. The story has depth and pace, the characters are well-rounded and the mystery surrounding Ella’s past kept me turning the pages. I’m not going to give away any spoilers, but I particularly liked the way the ending was handled. Plenty of historicals overlook the importance of social class, but Margaret Kaine has taken it into account and therefore the happy ending she has written has substance and credibility and rounds off a thoroughly enjoyable book in the best possible way.

 

Kitty:

I have just taken a whole week’s holiday, full of many joys. One of which was having the time to read so read I did.

I have devoured The Forgotten Village by Lorna Cook, a fabulous timeslip that deftly weaves the story of modern-day romance along with a mystery long buried in the forgotten village of Tyneham, untouched since 1943.

I also managed to get to The Taming of the Queen by Philippa Gregory and cannot believe I have left it languishing on my bookshelf for so long. I have long been a devoted fan and this retelling of the story of Kathryn Parr, the final wife of Henry VIII, has been as satisfying as all her others in both the Tudor and Plantagenet series.

Currently I’m listening to The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary and am loving it as much as I thought I would, brilliant concept and beautiful characterisation.

And finally, this week I read an ARC which I think will be the stand-out book of 2020, but I can’t tell you about it yet. Grrr! Trust me when I can, I will sing from the rooftops so watch this space! It is perfect.

 

Jane:

I started the month by reading non-fiction; first Georgetter Heyer’s Regency World by Jennifer Kloester (for research purposes – thanks for the recommendation, Cass!) and then a cricket autobiography, probably unsuited to this page so reviewed elsewhere on Frost.

Even with a review copy of Elizabeth Buchan’s new book, The Museum of Broken Promises burning a hole in my Kindle I decided to turn to my book club read for August for some light relief. Also because it was a book I’d wanted to read for ages, A J Pearce’s Dear Mrs Bird. It’s set in London during the blitz and the narrator (Emmy) is a young woman with the narrative voice of Honeysuckle Weeks’ character, Samantha Stewart, in Foyles War.

Emmy’s dream job at a newspaper turns out to be less than perfect when she ends up working for Mrs Bird, an Edwardian throwback with a rather outdated problem page. Initially the book seems to be an amusing light read, but as the blitz worsens the story becomes darker too. The characters are wonderful and I enjoyed every minute I shared with them, although it wasn’t a book that blew me away. Still more than worth reading though.