The Allure of Ruins by Santa Montefiore

Santa Montefiore

High up on the cliffs, overlooking the Irish Sea, is an old stone castle. Its empty eyes stare vacantly out at a horizon that is always the same yet forever changing in colour and cloud. One of the towers stands hollow but proud while the other has long since crumbled into the ocean. Sea gulls build nests where once the garrison stood. The wind sweeps in off the water, damp and cold, and slips through holes in the walls to touch the grassy spaces where long ago carpets were laid, fires were lit and banquets served. I’m sucked in by my curiosity and swallowed into the mystery of the past.  I wander enraptured by thoughts of what it must have been like centuries ago when those rooms reverberated with voices and the patter of feet, and those windows were full of faces, scanning the same unchanging horizon for ships. 
Ruins have always fascinated me. I want to be left alone to feast on the possibilities, to soak up the sense of history, to feel the vibrations of the past in those silent and chilly walls. But what is it about ruins that makes them so compelling? Do they perhaps resonate with the deepest part of us that knows that one day our bodies, too, will be empty shells, and our own lives relegated to history? Is our curiosity propelled by the mystery of our own mortality? Do they focus our minds on the transience of our lives and the inevitability of our deaths?
When I gaze up at those ancient walls I like to imagine the people who once dwelt there.  Their lives were perhaps long and vital and full of adventure.  They, like us, believed they were immortal. But where are they now? What is left of them? Those who kept them alive in their memories are also dead. Unless they were important historical figures, they will be lost forever like foam on the sea.  Ruins make me question my purpose here. If I am to leave the earth without a trace of ever having lived, what is it all for?
I wonder what those windows have witnessed. If only those walls could speak. But they’re not sharing their stories and neither is the wind that moans around the corners like ghosts of the dead, desperate not to be forgotten.  It fills me with a melancholy that is somehow pleasurable and I wallow in it as my imagination expands and I begin to weave a story of my own.
My new novel, Secrets of the Lighthouse, is a tale that unravels the mystery of a ruined lighthouse as well as a castle which has been boarded up and abandoned.  I chose Connemara as my setting because Ireland is intrinsically enigmatic and hauntingly beautiful. Every morning I hurried to my desk to indulge my love of ruins and nostalgia with greedy delight, and did what ruins always compel me to do – breathe life back into them again.

            

Truth and Fiction in Infinite Sky by C.J. Flood

C.J. Flood

A lot of people ask me how autobiographical Infinite Sky is, and the truth is, it's hard to say. The story begins a few weeks after thirteen-year-old Iris Dancy's mother leaves the family to go travelling around North Africa. Iris's home life quickly falls into a state of chaos, with her dad struggling to cope, and her older brother angry about being left behind. When a family of Irish Travellers set up camp in the Dancy's paddock overnight, these already high levels of tension increase. Iris finds the Travellers fascinating, especially their teenaged son, but her dad and brother want the Travellers gone, and fast. Over the course of a summer, events unfold that change these two families lives forever.

I started writing Infinite Sky four years ago, the summer before I started a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. It began as a sort of mystery story, with Iris uncovering clues about the whereabouts of her mother, and the type of person she was. For some reason, it didn't work. In workshop, my fellow students said it lacked dimension. I'm not sure why, but on arriving at my first creative writing course, I seemed to have forgotten how to write.

After a particularly harsh workshop, my tutor asked what I was trying to say with my novel. I came out with a strange jumble of things – still unsure what I wanted to say. One of them was that I wanted to write about the effects of a divorce on children. My tutor recommended I go back to writing what I knew, and I began mining my experience as an adolescent. I wrote scenes about my parents' separation and my relationships with my brother and parents. My classmates liked these scenes, and gradually, I began working the two ideas together. Using the truth of my experience of a separation, but jazzing it up with exaggeration and intrigue whenever I fancied. 

The resulting novel has a lot of truth in it. The setting is the house I grew up in, exactly, and the father character looks and sounds an awful lot like my dad, though he says and does things that my dad wouldn't dream of. There's so much of my dad in Thomas's characterisation that I was nervous of him reading it. My dad collected towers of five pees when I was a kid and had pockets full of sawdust. He still smells like wool and sweat and grass when he's finished work. Thomas, like my dad, is a landscape gardener. I stole so much! (Luckily my dad loved the book, and hasn't disowned me). The mum characterisation was a bit different. I had to use my imagination to create Anna and her reasons for leaving her kids. (My mum moved up the road during my parents' separation, whilst Iris's mum moves to Tunisia.) As such, Anna quite naturally evolved into someone apart from my mum, though she has the same strength and positivity, and a kind of glamour about her, too. Iris's brother, Sam, started out as based on my older brother, but he quickly became his own person. Being very close with his mum in the story, he takes her absence especially hard. He falls in with local troublemakers, and takes up fighting. All very unlike the peace-loving, long-haired skater brother of my teens.

The most fictional element of the novel is the family of Travellers. I did a lot of research to create them, though in the end, they are just people. Trick, Iris's friend/love interest takes a lot of traits from the boys I have loved thus far in my life. So you see, the question of how autobiographical Infinite Sky is, is a difficult one! Truth and fiction are so tightly woven together that it is an intense read for family and friends, and from what I hear from reviewers and readers, for strangers too.

It's All About the Setting... by Susan Elliot Wright

Author Susan Elliot Wright

As a reader, I enjoy novels with a strong sense of place because I want to be able to visualise the setting, to see the characters and events against a backdrop, whether it’s a grey, concrete city full of high-rise buildings, a wild, windswept stretch of moorland, or the golden sands of a sundrenched beach. I like the setting to provide some sense of atmosphere, too, so I can really get into the ‘mood’ of the story, and if the setting can reflect some of the themes, better still!

My novel The Things We Never Said has three different settings: south-east London, where I grew up; Sheffield, where I’ve lived for the past eight years; and Hastings, a coastal resort I’ve visited many times. The decision to use these settings was partly a pragmatic one – they were places I knew, so I’d be able to describe them effectively and they’d be easy to research. But writing about places with which I was personally familiar also allowed me to reflect on how they may have affected the way my characters acted and reacted, and also how my characters might be affected by being away from the places they felt close to.

I knew when I started the novel that I wanted to write about the sea. One of the major themes in The Things We Never Said is nature v. nurture, and I felt that the sheer, unceasing force of the tides would help reflect the power of nature. For me, the sea also represents mystery; I’m fascinated by the idea that we only see the surface, and that as we watch the perpetual movement of the waves, there is a vast, unseen world beneath, a secret place that remains hidden from all except a few curious divers - secrets are a big part of the novel, too!

The weather is, I feel, very much part of setting. Like the sea, it’s useful in evoking the power of nature as well as helping to create a particular mood. What’s more, it’s great fun to write about! But it was only as I began to write that I realised just how important the weather was going to be. As I wrote about the freak hurricane that devastated Sheffield in 1962 and the incredibly harsh winter caused the sea to freeze in 1963, it became clear that these two extreme weather events had a huge part to play in the development of the plot, creating twists and turns I hadn’t anticipated.

This has made me realise that setting in a novel should never be neglected. It can be as important as the characters themselves, and can even be a character - in fact, when I think about The Things We Never Said, I see four images at the same time: Maggie, Jonathan, the hurricane, and the vicious winter.

Setting is important to the plot in the novel I’m currently working on, too. Part of the story is again set on the South coast, only this time I’m writing about stifling, searing, suffocating heat. Which makes a change!

What's in a Name? by Paige Toon

Coming up with titles for books can be a tricky process, but it’s one of the most important things to get right. I thought you might like some insight into how we came up with my titles, starting with my first…

Lucy in the Sky came courtesy of my brother, Kerrin Schuppan, who has always been incredibly creative (he’s head of menswear at super-stylish clothing company Country Road in Australia –www.countryroad.com.au if you’re interested). I was about to have a meeting with Suzanne Baboneau from Simon & Schuster about my book idea. My heroine, originally called Meg, is on a plane to Australia and has to turn her mobile off, but before she does, she notices a text from her boyfriend’s phone, saying ‘I have slept with your boyfriend four times this month.’ I didn’t yet have a title, so I texted my bro and he came back with a few suggestions, including Frequent Liar Points and Lucy in the Sky. I loved the latter so much that I changed the heroine’s name to Lucy, saving Meg (a name I really liked) for my second book, Johnny Be Good.

Johnny Be Good was also courtesy of my brother, and it was such a good fit that we used it despite my editor saying that books with a male name in the title don’t usually sell as well. (She was right: it’s my least well selling book, even though it’s probably the one my readers are most passionate about!) I can’t remember what my rock star character was initially going to be called, but Johnny seemed to suit him so we went with that, and as he’s a bad boy, the title was set.

Chasing Daisy is one we really struggled with. I wrote an entire book about a heroine called Anna! The title Love in the Fast Lane was suggested, but I have to admit I hated it. So I called my brother in desperation and he threw around a couple of movie titles: Run Lola Run and Chasing Amy. I liked the latter, so my editor, Suzanne, suggested a bunch of ‘A’ sounding names, including Daisy. It was strange reading the book back with a new heroine’s name, but now I can’t imagine Daisy as an Anna! I do like the name though, so I think she might appear in my eighth book…

Pictures of Lily is one I came up with myself, but I had to fight for it. It’s not a well-known song title, but that didn’t matter to me. I loved the whimsical sound of it, and it fit with the story about a girl who wanted to be a photographer. I think this might be my favourite book of mine, and I’m so happy with the new redesigned cover. I would have loved green for the original cover, but apparently green books don’t tend to do as well. So far the response from my readers has been good, so fingers crossed.

Baby Be Mine is the sequel to Johnny Be Good, and I’m so grateful to my editor Suzanne for allowing me to write it! Johnny Be Good was left on such a cliffhanger (with Meg revealing that she’s pregnant but doesn’t know who the father is) that my readers all went a bit mental at me, so I really wanted to write them a proper sequel, even though Johnny Be Good wasn’t my best seller. Baby Be Mine has a double meaning, because Meg didn’t know who the father of her son was. We thought about calling it Be My Baby instead as it’s more recognisable, but my readers voted on Facebook for Baby Be Mine, and it also worked better on the cover.

One Perfect Summer. I loved the process of coming up with this title. I went for a meeting with my publisher and told them about the idea for the book. A group of about six of us sat around the table and brainstormed. Some ideas would spin off others, but I think my editor Suzanne was the one who actually said One Perfect Summer out loud. We all loved it, and it was a break away from the song titles of previous books, and looked great on the new cover design. The design spurned a whole new stunning look for my backlist.

The Longest Holiday was again the product of a brainstorming session with the team from Simon and Schuster. I initially thought of The Long Holiday, but Maxine Hitchcock added the ‘est’ and it immediately sounded better. Originally this book was set to be called Tell Laura I Love Her, but it was decided this felt like a step back and we should be moving away from song titles. The title, Tell Laura I Love Her, was actually suggested to me years ago after Chasing Daisy came out, by an old colleague from heat magazine, Charlotte Ward. She said one day she’d like me to tell Laura’s story. I actually came up with the idea for The Longest Holiday first and then tried to think of a heroine’s name. Laura popped into my head and I suddenly remembered Charlotte’s idea and realised the two plots could be combined. My readers love links to my other books, and I find it so much more interesting to write about characters when they already have an established back story.

As for my next book, we already have a title. But perhaps I’ll save that for another post!

@PaigeToonAuthor

Do I base my characters on real people..?

Jane Costello

One of the questions writers are asked all the time is whether we base any of our books on real-life events or people.

In my case, that bit at the front that talks about a resemblance to real people, living or dead, is spot on: virtually everything in my novels is the product of my (probably too) vivid imagination.

Nevertheless, there are occasions when I’ll stumble across something from which it’s impossible to resist taking inspiration, even if by the time it ends up in a book, it’s barely recognizable.

In Bridesmaids the idea for the breakdown of Valentina’s carriage was sparked by my best friend’s wedding, at which the bride and her bridesmaids - me included - were on our way to church in a beautiful classic car (don’t ask me what it was; I’d prefer to extract my own teeth than watch Top Gear).

We were on a dual carriageway, 10 minutes from our destination, when it emitted a series of loud explosions, before conking out in spectacular fashion. We eventually arrived in a muddy Land Rover.

By the time this nugget ended up in the novel, a huge amount of detail had been changed, less for the sake of protecting the innocent than ratcheting up the comedy (cue a handful of flatulent horses, a broken wheel, a feud between two friends and a hysterical bride).

But, occasionally, there’s enough comedy in real life to get you by perfectly well. In my latest book, The Wish List, heroine Emma has a polo lesson after she declared mastering the sport as one of her lifetime ambitions (15 years earlier, after reading a Jilly Cooper novel).

Not being entirely au fait with it myself, I decided that if I was going to make this believable I needed my own lesson. I had precisely no experience in polo – either watching or playing it - and I hadn’t been near a horse in years, unless you count holding my four-year-old still on his pony at Center Parcs.

I got through the lesson unscathed (just about), but it’s fair to say that Prince Harry doesn’t have anything to worry about.

The comedy scenes virtually wrote themselves - from my ungainly bum-in-air ascent onto a practice horse called Woody, to the big grin on my face when I thought I’d hit the ball so far it was out of eyeshot . . . only to discover that I had in fact missed.

Sometimes it’s nothing that big or specific; just a funny phrase you’ve overheard in the post office . . . or closer to home. My Mum is a rich source, as I discovered when she showed me her new dress in a gorgeous floral shade called ‘Listeria’ (she meant Wisteria - and it went straight into All The Single Ladies.).

But while I’ll gladly pinch the odd character trait or quirk, what I never do is base an entire character on someone I know.

The risk of someone recognizing themselves would be at best embarrassing and at worst expensive - plus I’ve got too much on my to-do list already without a lengthy libel battle.

More importantly, if a character is entirely created in your head, you don’t have to worry about whether a person would act a certain way in real life. You simply make the character do what you want and there are no questions asked.

Which is probably why most authors find making everything up from scratch is the easiest option . . .  and significantly more fun at that.

Inside the mind of Travis Maddox - The Difference between Men and Women

My previous four books were all written from a female POV, and had a fan not suggested that I write Beautiful Disaster from Travis’s POV, I might not have made the attempt. When I was about a quarter into the book, I sent the manuscript to Abbi Glines (author of Never Too Far), who is experienced and gifted at writing male POVs to make sure I was doing it right. Her response? “You must have been a foul-mouthed frat boy in a former life.”

Truthfully, writing Walking Disaster was the most fun I’ve had writing a novel. My female main characters could never be so brash, so vulgar, so brutally honest—and still be likable. Guys punch each other for no reason, they say the most hurtful things to the friends they love most, but that’s just the way some men communicate their feelings. It’s bizarre and amusing and liberating. 

Writing Travis, though, was a heavy responsibility. He’d caught quite a bit of hell for his actions in Beautiful Disaster. And I agree that not everything he did was excusable, but flawed humans aren’t born that way, they’re made. Each experience in his life—good or bad—shaped him, and I wanted readers to understand what molded him into who he is. It’s easy to condemn damaged people, but even with his shortcomings, Travis is inherently good. All of his fighting—for love, respect, and in the underground fighting ring—stemmed from one experience in his life. An experience that is revealed in Walking Disaster.

After publishing Beautiful Disaster, I was genuinely surprised by the reactions some readers had toward Abby’s indecision. Wavering is so common, especially at nineteen and certainly when it comes to relationships. When you’re barely an adult, the inability to commit to a choice when your heart is so strongly pulling you in the other direction, is part of the journey. 

But in fiction—as in life—women aren’t given the same number of free passes to make mistakes as men. Our choices become us, even when we’re still young and learning. It’s likely this is why many readers came away from Beautiful Disaster loving Travis and feeling annoyed with Abby. When Travis made bad choices, the reader could disassociate them from him, but Abby’s choices were perceived as her inherent faults.

I would definitely like to write a male POV again. In fact, I’m partially writing from a male POV in my current work in progress, Red Hill, which is told from three different POVs: a mother who has been separated from her children, a newly single father, and a female college student. I do find it more difficult to write from the male POV though. I was already familiar with Travis, so maybe that’s why writing Walking Disaster came so naturally to me. I’ll probably write the Maddox brothers books from a female POV like I did in Beautiful Disaster, but then again I’m never sure what’s going to work until I start typing.

Walking Disaster is out now in paperback and eBook.