Sometimes you find a niche where you know you just fit. That’s how I felt when I joined the Romantic Novelists’ Association and then the RNA Saga Writers group on Facebook. I was made very welcome and, in fact, was interviewed:on the Write Minds blog https://bit.ly/2VhEPg7, run by two of the members:Francesca Capaldi Burgess and Elaine Roberts.

I wanted to discover how and why, like me, they wrote family sagas, with a little romance thrown in. So I asked if any of them would be interested in discussing that. I certainly received some fascinating answers.

This is the sixth of my interviews with a Romantic Saga Author, and today I’m so pleased to be with Rosie Hendry

Rosie Hendry

1. When you started writing your book, did you intend to write a family saga – or series of stories rather than one story?

The Mother’s Day Club, was always intended as the first of a new series called Women on the Home Front, as I wanted to explore how the second world war affects a family and the village community in which they live. Each book will bring new characters and challenges to the family as the course of the war progresses. The plan is to write more stories stretching across the years of wartime following the lives of the family.

Which do think is more important, the family story or the romance?

Definitely the family story in these books. There are romances but they are woven in amongst everything else that’s going on.

How important do you think it is to research the historical background, locations, features of the era, your characters live in?

Absolutely essential. I always think the wartime situation is like another character, having a huge effect on the story and the challenges faced by the people. It’s important to get the historical details right, and having not lived through those times myself, the only way to ensure that what I write is as correct as I can make it, is to do lots of research. Luckily, I really enjoy that aspect of writing historical fiction, especially discovering the social history of that period and how people’s lives were affected in so many ways. I especially love finding out snippets which didn’t make the history books but were important to people. It’s a wonderful feeling when I discover a forgotten gem of historical fact which inspires my storytelling.

How do you manage to keep track of all the characters in your book/s over a stretch of time?

I’m a planner – this helps me keep track of all the characters and what’s happening with them. I have a notebook where I record each characters’ details like eye and hair colour, family details etc, which I can refer back to.

 I use different colour post-it notes on a board to plot out the story scene by scene, giving a set colour to each character. This helps me keep a balance of different characters viewpoints within the story, so that no one has a lot more than the others. I found this is the best way for me to write a multi-viewpoint story and weave the different strands together.

A saga demands change, both in its characters and its world, how important is the time period to the development of your narrative.

Writing books set during the Second World War gives me a time period against which to set the story. I will hang characters’ storylines on different events from the wartime, so the factual events act rather like a scaffolding. I choose events carefully so they are appropriate to my characters’ lives, but which will also challenge them.

When I’m plotting the story, I print out calendars from the wartime and mark on the historical events that I want to use to ensure I keep the story’s timeline accurate to the time period. One thing I love about writing the Second World War stories is how women’s lives were challenged, and they were required to step outside of their comfort zones and do things they would never have been asked to do during peacetime. It makes perfect fuel for storytelling!

Blurb for The Mother’s Day Club –

Norfolk, 1939

When the residents of Great Plumstead, a small and charming community in Norfolk, offer to open their homes to evacuees from London, they’re expecting to care for children. So when a train carrying expectant mothers pulls into the station, the town must come together to accommodate their unexpected new arrivals . . .

Sisters Prue and Thea welcome the mothers with open arms, while others fear their peaceful community will be disrupted. But all pregnant Marianne seeks is a fresh start for herself and her unborn child. Though she knows that is only possible as long as her new neighbours don’t discover the truth about her situation.

The women of Great Plumstead, old and new, are fighting their own battles on the home front. Can the community come together in a time of need to do their bit for the war effort?

Out on 18^th February.

 Available from Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mothers-Heart-Norfolk-Rosie-Hendry-ebook/dp/B07YD6TW8Z/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+mothers+day+club&qid=1609520131&quartzVehicle=845-899&replacementKeywords=the+mothers+day&sr=8-1

Kobo – https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the-mother-s-day-club-1

Apple – https://books.apple.com/gb/book/the-mothers-day-club/id1481637535

Keep in touch with Rosie Hendry via

Twitter – @hendry_rosie

On Facebook Rosie Hendry Bookshttps://www.facebook.com/RosieHendrybooks/

Website – www.rosiehendry.com