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Places in our Memories with Juliet Greenwood #MondayBlogs

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There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.

Today I am thrilled to welcome Juliet Greenwood, a friend for many years, and a brilliant writer. Juliet is sharing her special memories Llyn Idwal, a lake near Snowdon in Wales.

I have so many places in my memory that remain vivid over time. The one I have chosen has been familiar since childhood, and is one I hope to visit again very soon. Oddly enough, it’s less than six miles from my cottage in Snowdonia, but because it was just outside our five-mile range from home during the pandemic lockdowns, and since these have eased I’ve had a puppy whose joints need protecting, I haven’t been there since 2019. It’s a place that’s both private and very public, both accessible and isolated, and one that is filled with atmosphere, images and stories.

The place is Llyn Idwal, a small, beautifully clear, lake that lies a short walk up from the main A5 road between the university city of Bangor, on the coast, and Snowdon itself. During the day, and particularly in summer, it is popular with tourists from all over the world. But if, like me, you live only a few minutes away by car, it’s still possible to arrive at first light, when it’s almost completely isolated, with just the occasional serious climber heading out for a day on the surrounding peaks of Tryfan, the Glyders and Y Garn.

Being surrounded by high mountains, the light and the colours caught in the lake’s waters are constantly shifting, caught within a huge silent bowl, sometimes utterly still, with a sense of vast space and silence, at other times savage with wind and rain. At the far end is a cleft in the rock called the Devil’s Kitchen. I can remember my imagination being fired as a child by the stories that, when cloud rises up like smoke above the kitchen, you know the devil is cooking up his tea. It’s always a reminder of the uncontrolled and (if you are not careful and treat the landscape with respect) perilous wildness of the mountains, where, from the tops, you can see the train chugging away, taking visitors up Snowdon, or look down on the sea and mountains stretching out into the distance, and feel your own smallness and insignificance.

My favourite memories are of those occasional calm and cloudless mornings, when the lake itself is utterly still, with occasional ripples from the breeze. Especially in the silent clarity of first light, it has a mournful air that perfectly reflects the legend of Prince Idwal being drowned in the lake by his enemies, and the saying that no bird has since flown over its waters. There’s a feeling of being in a true wilderness there, a place to breath in clean air, clear the mind and put troubles into perspective. As a writer, it’s also the perfect place to work out particularly knotty plot lines. Not that you can concentrate on anything but watching your feet and drinking in the atmosphere, but I usually find that the mind has been quietly working underneath while the body has been doing its thing, and the solution is there once I arrive home, tired but exhilarated and desperate for toast and a strong pot of coffee.

It’s one of those place I’ve always taken for granted. The last time I went up, on a crystal clear late autumn morning in 2019, I – like everyone else I met on the way down, cheerful and friendly, and enjoying this accessible piece of wild beauty – had no idea how life was about to change. Where I walk my dog each morning nearly my house, I can see the mountains surrounding Llyn Idwal. It was a weird feeling during the pandemic to have them so close, and yet forbidden. Similarly, there was an even stranger conflict of the idyllic quiet of a landscape devoid of tourists, which now belonged only to those of us who live here, and the frightening events of the world outside.

In this vast landscape of the mountains, there was a glimpse of a world without human beings, the birds louder, the seasons quietly turning without us. When my car battery went flat (the only thing he was called out to, during lockdown, the recovery man told me wryly), I drove up the valley to recharge it, turning round as I reached the entrance to Llyn Idwal and the edges of my permitted range. I couldn’t resist stopping briefly and winding down the windows. Despite not daring to turn the engine off in case I couldn’t start it again (the mortification!), the silence and the stillness was overwhelming. Unnerving, even, like a post-apocalyptic world. For all my longing to be there after so many months, and the frustration of being so close to the lake, I hastily dashed back to the busy throng of my characters, with all their noisy troubles and conflicts.

I have so many memories of Llyn Idwal, going up as a small child, and in all weathers as an adult. It will be strange going back after the intensity of the time since I was last there. Like most of us, I’m still processing the emotions of the pandemic, and I shall have sad, as well as joyful, memories of the beloved four-legged walking companion who adored it up there, and whose time came to an end before we could go again. But I shall also have my new little walking companion, who will be deliriously discovering a new world (we’ve already had the conversation about sheep). And I’ll be remembering that, in the meantime, I’ve had another two books published, with a third completed, and now on its way to being published this May, and just how amazing that is – something you forget when you are in the middle of it all!

I know that when I so go back to Llyn Idwal, I’ll wait for one of those brilliantly magical early mornings, when I can get up there at dawn, and savour the stillness and the sense of isolation, before returning down amongst the walkers making their way up, exchanging greetings, as people (and dogs) in the mountains do, and sharing the beauty of the day and the privilege of sharing this very special place. And then I shall return to my desk and corral my Shakespeare sisters into doing what I tell them, rather than heading off on a tangent. I shall fail, of course (characters always do their own thing), which may well require another dawn adventure to the calming waters of Llyn Idwal….

Bio and Links

Juliet Greenwood is a historical novelist, whose latest novel, The Shakespeare Sisters, set near Stratford-upon-Avon during WW2, will be published in May 2023 with Storm Publishing. She has previously been published by Orion and Honno Press, with her first novel being a finalist for The People’s Book Prize and two of her books reaching the top 5 in the UK Kindle store. She has always been a bookworm and a storyteller, writing her first novel (a sweeping historical epic) at the age of ten. Juliet is fascinated both by her Celtic heritage and the history of the women in her family. She now lives in a traditional cottage in Snowdonia, North Wales, set between the mountains and the sea, with an overgrown garden (good for insects!) and a surprisingly successful grapevine.

Amazon page: https://amzn.to/3GH74Mw

Website:       http://www.julietgreenwood.co.uk/

Facebook:     https://www.facebook.com/juliet.greenwood

Twitter:         https://twitter.com/julietgreenwood

Instagram:    https://www.instagram.com/julietgreenwood/

Places in our Memories – With Angela Petch #Memories #Photos

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There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.

Today I am really pleased to welcome author Angela Petch to tell us about her special memories of her family, her wedding and Italy.

This favourite photo from an old album captures a special moment. The day before my wedding in Italy, I went on a picnic with my family: the last day as a single woman. My mother gathered a bunch of wild flowers to hand to me and the moment was spontaneously captured on film.

These poor-quality photos of long ago represent memories embedded in my brain and which creep back nowadays in my writing.

I came late to publication and I truly believe I wouldn’t have been ready earlier. I needed life experiences to write about and most of my books include something from my past or my family’s past.

In my new book, The Girl Who Escaped https://geni.us/B0BYC1V9NHcover I revisited the city of Urbino, where I married forty-five years ago, to site my story. Much of it is a true account of my husband’s Italian grandfather. Luigi Micheli was a courageous partisan. But he kept quiet about it. We found more out after he died, from papers he left in an old box, and I have threaded details into my story. I used the abbey where we married as an invented location for secret meetings of partisans. Many priests were involved in the underground movement, so who knows if somethings did go on there?

My books, published by Bookouture, are all set in Italy.

In 1960, my young suburban life was uprooted from a London dormitory suburb and planted in the Eternal City, Rome.

My father had accepted a job at the headquarters of the branch of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. I still remember my first impressions as my mother and brother and sister stepped off the train at Rome Terminus into the noise, heat, bustle and bewildering babble of a strange language.

The traffic was scary and so my father swapped his new, white Ford Consul for a tiny, dented second-hand Fiat Topolino. He barely fitted in with his long legs and in the summer his head poked through the tiny roll-back soft top “lid”.  In this car he could give as good as he got and join in the terrifyingly lawless traffic that sped through the streets of Rome.

Our garden in the countryside outside Rome was surrounded by peach orchards and vineyards. Dotted around the gravel paths were a roman bath and ancient statues and columns. We cycled round fig, orange, lemon and medlar trees, always wary of snakes. The highlight was a rudimentary, unchlorinated swimming pool filled by hose pipe and emptied when the water started to go green. We shared it with tadpoles and baby frogs in spring.

Our classmates at St George’s English School were international. I sat with a Ghanaian girl called Dorcas, an Australian boy called Gregory, and there were South Africans, Italians, American, French and a handful of Brits too. I’ve always loved mixing with people from other nations and this early experience was the start.

St George’s English School Rome

Italy is an integral part of me. If I were “born again”, I’d choose to be Italian. I went on to study Italian at university, work in Sicily, marry a wonderful half-Italian, teach Italian, live in the Tuscan mountains for six months each year, and now I have had five books published by Bookouture, all set in Italy.

Little did I know that the hamlet of Castel Cavallino where I married, outside Urbino, would be an important place in my new book and that forty-four years later, I would perch again on the wall surrounding the houses, to jot research notes.

 

My sixth book comes out on April 19th and is available now to pre-order on Amazon.  Link: https://geni.us/B0BYC1V9NHcover

Blurb and a couple of reviews

Italy, 1940. The girl sobs and rages as her father tells her the terrible news. “Italy is entering the war alongside Germany. Jews are to be arrested and sent to camps. We have to be ready.”

As fascists march across the cobbled piazzas and past the towered buildings of her beloved home city, twenty-year-old Devora’s worst fears come true. Along with her Jewish parents and twin little brothers they are torn away from everything they love and sent to an internment camp huddled in the mountains. Her father promises this war will not last long…

When they are offered a miraculous chance of escape by her childhood friend Luigi, who risks everything to smuggle vital information into the camp, the family clambers under barbed wire and races for the border. But Devora is forced to make a devastating choice between saving a stranger’s life and joining her parents. As shots fire in the moonless night, the family is separated.

Haunted by the question of whether they are dead or alive, all Devora can do for their future is throw herself into helping Luigi in the Italian resistenza in the fight for liberty. But posing as a maid for a German commander to gather secret intelligence, Devora is sure she sees her friend one night, in a Nazi uniform…

Is Devora in more danger than ever? And will her family ever be reunited – or will the war tear them apart?

An absolutely devastating but ultimately uplifting historical novel about how love and hope can get us through the darkest times. Perfect for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Rhys Bowen and Soraya M. Lane.

Read what everyone’s saying about Angela Petch:

‘Wow!… The writing is magnificent… A story of love, loss, secrets and hope… I have truly fallen in love… A beautiful, touching story that I would recommend to everyone.’ Cooking the Books

‘The mysteries and the discoveries come fast and furiously: leaving the reader often gasping for breath… A lovely read.’ I am, Indeed  

BIO:

Angela Petch is an award-winning and bestselling writer of fiction – plus the occasional poem.

Every summer she moves to Tuscany for six months where she and her husband own a renovated watermill which they let out. When not exploring their unspoilt corner of the Apennines, she disappears to her writing desk at the top of a converted stable. In her Italian handbag or hiking rucksack she always makes sure to store notebook and pen to jot down ideas.

The winter months are spent in Sussex where most of her family live. When Angela’s not helping out with grandchildren, she catches up with writer friends.

LINKS

Blog: https://angelapetchsblogsite.wordpress.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AngelaJaneClarePetch

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Angela_Petch

  Instagram:     @angela_maurice

Buying link for new book:  https://geni.us/B0BYC1V9NHcover

My Review of Snow Angels by Jenny Loudon #TuesdayBookBlog #review #WomensFiction #RBRT

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Many thanks to Jenny Loudon for sending a digital copy of Snow Angels to me, in return for an honest review as a member of Rosie’s Book Review Team #RBRT

I gave Snow Angels 4*

Book Description:

An accident. That’s all it was.

Amelie Tierney is working hard, furthering her nursing career in Oxford. She has a loving husband and a small son, who is not yet two. She jogs through the streets of her beloved city most days, does not see enough of her lonely mother, and misses her grandmother who lives in a remote wooden house, beside a lake in Sweden.

And then, one sunny October morning, it happens—the accident that changes everything and leaves Amelie fighting to survive.

Set amid the gleaming spires of Oxford and the wild beauty of a Swedish forest, this is a story about one woman’s hope and her courage in the face of the unthinkable.

My Review:

This is a story of love, of grief, of acceptance, of guilt, of survival, of secrets. There are many themes interwoven throughout: the love of nature, the inevitability of life moving on, the change of seasons, the exploration of human nature, as well as the more disturbing themes of racism, cynicism, suspicion, antagonism. All thoroughly explored by the author of Snow Angels.

And, as I wrote in my review of the last book I read by Jenny Loudon, Finding Verity, here, there are exquisite descriptions as well in Snow Angels that give a wonderful sense of place. Set in Oxford and Sweden, it is obvious that the author both knows and has researched both places extensively, and brilliantly captures the tone of each. As a consequence the pace of the narrative is vastly different.

The first quarter of the story narrates the inciting incident, the accident which completely changes the life of Amelie from wife, mother, daughter, to a grieving woman who has lost her husband, her child, her mother. The action in this section moves quickly, and in itself is shocking, portraying a reality that is distressingly realistic, and shows how tenuous life can be. It is well written, and the breadth of emotion explored here gives the characters so many layers that it is easy for the reader to see them, to immediately empathise with them.

In an almost unconscious need to escape the loss of the life she has known in Oxford, Amelie leaves her home, the friends she has there, and her work as a children’s nurse in a hospital, to escape to Sweden to stay with her grandmother, Cleome, who lives in a small cottage surrounded by a forest and close to a lake. And so begins the next phase of the book.

And this is where I show my subjectivity as a reader. Before I say anything about this I need to say that Jenny Loudon’s writing, when it comes to setting the scene is superb. This is truly poetic prose: expressive and lyrical, she conjures up wonderful images that juxtapose the emotions of her characters. The descriptions in these chapters, each headed to portray the different stages of the moon, the shifting of seasons, parallels the action within the plot.

However, as I say, this is where I reveal my preference in stories. The narrative slows up too much for me. I became aware that some scenes, some thoughts, some actions, some dialogue of the characters, were returned to, too often. And described in similar ways. I realise that this whole section is written to show the stages of grief, of acceptance, of moving on. But the repetition, albeit presented in numerous similar ways almost … not quite… but almost, tempted me to skip parts. I promise I didn’t!

What frustrated me was the fact that there were other subjects, other characters introduced into the plot that I feel could have been explored to more depth, integrated to balance the introspection of Amelie and Cleome. I became impatient of the contemplative mood within the text. There really are some brilliant minor characters in Snow Angels. But I felt they were only given a voice in a retrospective way; the reader is told their stories in a distanced, almost objective way, which, for me, lost the immediacy of their tragedies, their losses, the way their lives had fallen apart.

Which leads me to the last part of the story, the summing up of the action when the story is over. In one way it satisfied my curiosity; We are told what eventually happens to each and every one of the characters. In another, it disappointed me. The résumé almost felt like a synopsis, and, for me, emphasized the comparative slowness of the main section of the story.

Having said that some might wonder why I gave Snow Angels four star. Well it’s because I realise that, despite my preference for more action packed novels, I do like character led stories as well, and there are great characters in Jenny Loudon’s book. She also has a a very evocative style of writing that gives instant imagery that will appeal to many. In that vein I recommend Snow Angels to those readers.

About the Author:

Jenny Loudon is a British novelist whose work includes SNOW ANGELS, a moving and uplifting tale of recovery after loss, and the bestselling love story FINDING VERITY. She read English and American Literature at the University of Kent in Canterbury and holds a Masters in The Modern Movement. She lives with her family in the English countryside.

Learn more about Jenny Loudon at www.jennyloudon.com

Places in our Memories: With Patricia M Osborne #Memories #MondayBlogs

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There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.

Today I’m really pleased to welcome Patricia M Osborne, friend, author and poet and supporter of many writers, whose work she highlights every week.

When Judith asked me if I’d like to submit a blog about a place in my memory it was Bolton that instantly jumped out. I often wonder why my years as a child from the age of seven to ten were so impressionable. Maybe it was because we first arrived in Bolton after becoming homeless and were housed in a half-way house.

 It was January 1963, I was seven coming up to eight, and the snow was thick on the ground when my dad made me go to the shops with him so I’d know where to go in future. Freezing, I sobbed. I wanted to go home, but Dad told me off for whinging, saying he was cold too. The day afterwards I got sick and couldn’t keep food down for weeks other than a bowl of Oxo. Maybe that’s why I hate snow so much because it takes me back to being so poorly.

 Our two-up-two-down terraced house in Bamber Street, Daubhill, had a front room, a sitting room, a tiny scullery and two upstairs bedrooms. There was no bathroom, just a tin bath stored in the yard which Mum had to drag in, fill with hot buckets of water from the stove, and bath us in front of the fire. The toilet was at the bottom of the yard and I was terrified to go out there on my own in case there were any daleks.

 It was at this house my late sister, Heather, got carried out on a stretcher to hospital. We were like inseparable twins and after being left alone without a playmate for two whole weeks, I was jubilant when she returned home. We’d play upstairs in the cold bedroom for hours. She’d be John Steed banging a large umbrella on the wooden floorboards while I was Cathy Gale.

 I loved the museum in the town hall which also consisted of a library and aquarium. It’s still there. This was a place where Heather and I spent most of our time. If not choosing Milly-Molly-Mandy books in the library, we’d be exploring the mummies in the museum or hovering around the glass case of porcelain dolls. There was something about those dolls that made me yearn to own one while Heather found them spooky.

The tiny church school we attended consisted of only three classrooms. It was situated at the bottom of our cobbled street, and although only five minutes away, Heather and I managed to be late most days. A lot of the time was spent being taught the catechism, or learning subjects via the wireless such as the Monday morning singing lesson. Whenever I hear The Skye Boat Song it takes me back to those times.

 In the playground the older kids loved swinging me around because I was so light. It was in that same playground during out of school hours when a flasher exposed himself to Heather and I, but we were too frightened to tell Mum and Dad. And then there was the kind teacher who at the end of term offered me the three-foot Christmas tree from our classroom to take home because she knew we didn’t have one.

 My best friend, Susan Brown, lived over a wallpaper shop. Sometimes when I’m playing table tennis out on my patio, I experience a kind of déjà vu when I’m back in Bolton as an eight-year-old in my best friend’s backyard pushing her doll’s pram.

 On my ninth birthday party, the landlord, who was a taxi driver, turned up at the door. He grabbed my mum by the wrist and made her cry as he tried to pull her out of the house because he wanted it back for himself. It was only when Dad came home from work we were safe. My sisters and I used to lie in bed at night petrified at the sound of a car going by or when car lights shone over the ceiling in case it was the bad man back.

Daubhill holds a lot of memories for me, good and bad. Two years later we were housed in Tong Moor, a different area of Bolton, in a three-bedroom house with a bathroom and garden but still an outside loo. It was here that my youngest sister was born. But then that’s another set of memories.

 Thank you, Judith, for letting me share some of my memories.  

Thank you, Patricia for sharing. Your memories brought back many of my own, especially the outside loo, where my fear was the spiders!

And If ever you feel like coming back to tell us more of your memories you will be very welcome.😊

Photograph of the places that Patricia remembers can be found through the links below…

Picture of Bamber Street – Bottom right
https://www.boltonrevisited.org.uk/a-daubhill.html

Bolton Town Hall
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-bolton-town-hall-bolton-town-centre-bolton-england-uk-135468774.html

About Patricia:

Born in Liverpool, she now lives in West Sussex.

In February 2019, she graduated with an MA in Creative Writing via the University of Brighton. She is a novelist, poet, and short story writer. When she’s not working on her own writing, she enjoys sharing her knowledge and acts as a mentor to fellow writers.

In 2017 she was a Poet in Residence at a local Victorian Park in Crawley and her poetry was exhibited throughout the park. In 2019 her poetry was on display at Crawley Museum.

Patricia has had numerous poems and short stories published in various literary magazines and anthologies.

Where to find Patricia M Osborne and details of all her books are here…
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PMOsborneWriter
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/triciaosbornewriter
Website: https://whitewingsbooks.com/
Amazon author Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/~/e/B06XHLKG1N

My Review of Remember No More by Jan Newton – Now an Audio Book #review #DSJulieKit #Crime @CrimeCymru #audiobook #families #FrometheArchives #Wales

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I can’t believe it is almost five years ago since I wrote this review of Jan Newton’s brilliant crime story. Originally, I was given an ARC of Remember No More by the publishers, Honno, for a fair and honest review. I said at the time:”Believe me, this is one to look out for!!“ I wasn’t wrong. And now Honno have released Remember No More as an audio book: https://tinyurl.com/32cm2n8s. So now we have a choice… read, or listen – it’s brilliant.

Book Description:

Newly promoted DS Julie Kite is at a crossroads. Her husband’s new job takes her away from urban Manchester and its inner city problems to a new life in tranquil mid-Wales. It is to be a new start for them both. On her first day at Builth Wells police station, Julie is thrust unexpectedly into the centre of a murder investigation in a remote farming community. At the same time, Stephen Collins is set free from HMP Strangeways. He immediately makes his way back to mid-Wales, the scene of his heinous crime, in order to confront those who had a hand in his incarceration.

The twists and turns of the investigation into the death of solicitor Gareth Watkin force DS Kite to confront her own demons alongside those of her new community and the lengths to which we’ll go to protect our families.

My Review:

This is a plot with many twists and turns. The depths of the historic layers are slowly revealed alongside the introduction of the protagonist, Detective Sergeant Julie Kite and her struggles in both her work and home life. I loved the author’s ability to balance  – and juggle – both, and to keep the reader interested throughout the story. For me the genre of crime fiction can only work if there are false leads, clues that baffle or can give a ‘eureka’ moment. Remember No More does all these.

The story is told from an omniscient point of view, weighted mostly from the protagonist’s viewpoint and this works, as I have the feeling we will be hearing more from DS Kite. But there is also an insight to the other characters and this adds depth to the them; to their struggles, their loyalties, their place in both the community and their families. The characters are well rounded and it is easy to empathise with some of them – and to recognise the weakness and malevolence in others. 

The dialogue works well, differentiating the Welsh born characters and contrasting with the accent of Julie Kite and other Northern England characters. The internal dialogue gives greater perception to them all. I liked the slow internal acceptance of the protagonist’s change of life and work situation from Northern England to Wales.

I think one of the great strengths in the author’s writing is the descriptions of the settings. If I can’t picture the world the characters live in, it doesn’t work for me. Jan Newton  bases her book in mid Wales. The details are authentic and give a tangible sense of place. I admired  her ability to bring the sense of place alive. I was immediately drawn in by a very early description: ” the road was hemmed in either side by reeds and grasses, which had been bleached by the winter’s snow and were still untouched by the spring sunshine…”.And later, “the car rattled over a cattle grid and a vista of villages and isolated farms opened up below them as the road hair-pinned to the right, before descending along the edge of a steep valley. the tops of the hills were the pale browns of moorland, but the valley bottoms were already lush with meadows and hedges.” Good stuff!!

If I had any reservations about the story it would be about the relationship between the protagonist and her husband. But this is only because I wanted to know the background of their marriage. Maybe this is something to be revealed in the next story of DS Julie Kite. 

A couple of last mentions; I love the cover, the image is wonderful, I feel it is the scene that the buzzard sees in the Prologue. Oh, I do like prologues!

This is  a book I have no hesitation in recommending to any reader who enjoys a good strong crime mystery.

 I enjoyed reading Remember No More, and, by the way, there’s another offering from DS Julie Kite …

Book Description:

Newly promoted DS Julie Kite has been in sleepy mid-Wales for mere months when she’s faced with her second murder case. A man’s body has been found by school kids trekking the Monk’s Trod. The trail takes her back north to her parents in Manchester and to a housing estate in Blackpool. It’s not a simple case – a young mother has disappeared, but so has her son and her next door neighbour’s wife. And the husband of the landlady of the B&B where the girl was staying. When an ex-serviceman farmhand with PTSD attempts to take his own life the case gets more complex still.

Buying Links:

Amazon.co.uk: https://tinyurl.com/2p9adcpx

Amazon.com: https://tinyurl.com/2p87s9fm

About Jan:

Jan Newton grew up in Manchester and Derbyshire and spent twenty years in the Chilterns before moving to mid Wales in 2005. She has worked as a bilingual secretary, an accountant, and in the Welsh stream of Builth Wells Primary School. She plays the euphonium in Llandrindod and Knighton brass bands

Jan graduated from Swansea University in 2015 with a Masters in Creative Writing and has won the Allen Raine Short Story Competition, the WI’s Lady Denman Cup, the Lancashire and North West Magazine’s prize for humorous short stories and the Oriel Davies Gallery’s prize for nature writing. She is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association.

My Review of The Bubble Reputation by Alex Craigie #socialmedia #TuesdayBookBlog #Review

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Book Description:

If you want to destroy someone’s reputation, social media provides the perfect tool.

Emmie Hobson, children’s author and TV presenter, is riding high on a wave of popularity when an unscrupulous newspaper editor, desperate for a scoop, brings Emmie’s world crashing down.

Social media picks up the baton and a terrifying backlash of hate and abuse is unleashed. Threats are made and there are those, inflamed by the rhetoric, prepared to take the law into their own hands.

My Review:

I’ve read previous books by Alex Craigie and thoroughly enjoyed them all, my latest review, that of Means to Deceive, is here: https://tinyurl.com/5y98ak9e

The Bubble Reputation is a story with a chilling message, but it’s not overtly didactic; as usual with this author’s work, this is a steady unveiling of the plot; the revelation of how evil social media can become when driven with the intent of ruining someone’s life.

The character of the protagonist, Emmie Hobson, is well rounded and it’s easy to emphasise with her. And when her optimism and confidence, the enjoyment in her life, is gradually reduced to despair and uncertainty, it’s heartbreaking. This is a book where the reader can see what is happening and wonder how far her jealous antagonist will go, and what Emma can do to stop the malice.

And with a cast of realistic and credible minor characters, some of whom are spreading the spite and others who seem incapable of stopping it, it becomes frustratingly impossible to see who will finally win in this struggle.

The dialogue carries every character’s personality, leaving no doubt who is speaking. But, sometimes, that spoken dialogue becomes unreliable, and leaves the reader to question the words when they don’t match the inner dialogue and actions of of a particular character. The narrative is often the only disclosure of the reasons behind the actions. It’s a clever ploy by the author.

And, as I’ve said in the past, Alex Craigie has a talent for writing descriptions which give a great sense of place. So it is with The Bubble Reputation. But, equally fascinating for me, is the way she has brought the world of social media to life with all the possibility of the inherently manipulative and dangerous behaviour within it. Social media becomes a character in its own right and intrinsically carries the warning that is the main theme threaded throughout the story.

Above all else, this is a tale that is well written, with strong narrative, convincing characters and a plot that progressively moves onwards, taking the reader with it towards an accomplished ending.

I enjoyed The Bubble Reputation and have no hesitation in recommending Alex Craigie’s latest offering to anyone who enjoys a slow-burning psychological drama.

About Alex Craigie

Alex Craigie is the pen name of Trish Power.

Trish was ten when her first play was performed at school. It was in rhyming couplets and written in pencil in a book with imperial weights and measures printed on the back.

When her children were young, she wrote short stories for magazines before returning to the teaching job that she loved.

Trish has had three books published under the pen name of Alex Craigie. The first two books cross genre boundaries and feature elements of romance, thriller and suspense against a backdrop of social issues. Someone Close to Home highlights the problems affecting care homes while Acts of Convenience has issues concerning the health service at its heart. Her third book. Means to Deceive, is a psychological thriller.

Someone Close to Home has won a Chill with a Book award and a Chill with the Book of the Month award. In 2019 it was one of the top ten bestsellers in its category on Amazon.

Book lovers are welcome to contact her on alexcraigie@aol.com

Places in our Memories: With Georgia Rose #MondayBlogs #Memories

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There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.

Today I’m welcoming Georgia Rose, one of my online friends whom I’ve known for a long time, and had the great pleasure in meeting and getting to know her in real life at Barb Taub’s writing retreat on Arran, a few weeks ago.

Thank you for inviting me onto your splendid blog, Judith. This has been a lovely post to think about and write.

I lived in several different houses as a child but the one I loved and think about most frequently we moved from when I was only about four.

Sandhill House, Ampthill

It was a rather grand looking terraced Georgian property that needed plenty of work doing to it and had some unusual features. One of which was that it was built on the side of a hill. This meant that to go out into the garden you had to go up a rather beautiful staircase (I fell down it once, put my tooth through my lip and still have the scar to prove it) onto a large landing and out through double doors onto a covered veranda and then into the garden.

It was in this garden that my phobia of chickens started. Mum kept hens, however they frequently escaped from their run and I remember being too frightened to go and play if they were out as they were on beady eye level to me, and had vicious beaks. The funny thing was that mum couldn’t eat the eggs they laid so she would sell her eggs to the shop over the road. And then buy any eggs we needed, from the shop over the road…

Because the garden was on a level with the second floor of the house there was only a short distance up one side to get to the roof. Our small dog, Maginty, loved to climb up onto the roof so he could sit by the chimney. Unsurprisingly he often caught the attention of passers-by on the pavements below and concerned people would knock on the door to tell mum there was a dog on her roof. Unsurprisingly I think she got quite blasé about situation. One icy morning mum was again trying to reassure some alarmed person who had knocked on the door but when they wouldn’t give up and asked her to come outside to look, she found that Maginty had lost his footing and was splayed across the slates, trying not to slip off the roof to a certain death.

Maginty

I am so familiar with this story I can see all of this in my mind but now have no idea if I actually witnessed it or if I’m purely remembering what I’ve been told. What I do know is that I have no idea how Maginty was rescued (because of course he was rescued, dear reader) although I imagine it must have involved a fireman’s ladder because of the height of the roof from the road.

There was also a wonderful attic in this house. A small door led off the wide landing then there was a short flight of stairs up to another level and although it was always called the attic, it was also my bedroom for a while. It had a small window that opened among all the foliage that grew over the veranda and bare boards on the floor. And it was in this room that early one Christmas morning, having discovered a packed stocking at the end of my bed, I opened up a selection box and bit into my first and last Marathon (now Snickers). That introduction to nuts enough to put me off eating them my entire life.

The other majorly exciting thing to say about this house was in the cellar. It is well known that Henry VIII sent Catherine of Aragon to live at Ampthill Castle, situated in Ampthill Park, from 1531 to 1533 while he sorted out their divorce.  Rumour has it that there was a passageway that led under the park from that castle as some sort of escape route. Now, this favourite house of mine is close to Ampthill Park, and my dad had a workshop in the cellar. When I went down those cellar steps there was, and presumably still is, a large circular brick lined start to what looked like a tunnel. It was tall enough for a man to be able to stand up in it and a short way back into it, it had been filled in with earth. I may be being fanciful of course with my imaginings but then what are childhoods for if not for dreams and what-ifs?

My parents were young and dealing with all the challenges small children bring as well as doing all the work the house needed. I suppose with my child-sized view of life back then I have rather romantic memories of it and thought the house perfect just as it was. I remember a beautiful dress my mum made for me there and her bringing me cheese and pickle sandwiches in bed when I was ill, which for some reason I ate while sitting under an umbrella. I remember playing with the fuses from plugs while sitting with dad when he was mending something and swallowing a couple by accident. And I remember enjoying sticking my fingers repeatedly into the putty he had used to replace a window. I wonder if he ever noticed and smoothed it out again or if the indents my stubby fingers made are still there?

I guess I get a warm feeling whenever I think about this house because of its character and beauty and the fact that while we lived there my family were still together.

Interview Resources & Information for Georgia Rose

First NameGeorgia 
Last NameRose 
Emailinfo@georgiarosebooks.com   
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Twitterhttps://twitter.com/GeorgiaRoseBook   
Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/georgia.rose.books   
Facebook PageGeorgia Rose – Author | Facebook 
Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/georgiarose4481/   
Pinteresthttps://www.pinterest.co.uk/georgia2471/   
Goodreadshttps://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7776633.Georgia_Rose   
BioGeorgia Rose is a writer and the author of the romantic and suspenseful Grayson Trilogy books: A Single Step, Before the Dawn and Thicker than Water. Following completion of the trilogy she was asked for more and so wrote a short story, The Joker, which is based on a favourite character from the series and the eBook is available to download for free at the retailer of your choice.   Her fourth novel, Parallel Lies, encompasses crime along with Georgia’s usual blending of genre and its sequel, Loving Vengeance, has now completed The Ross Duology.   She is now embarking on her third series – A Shade Darker.   Georgia’s background in countryside living, riding, instructing and working with horses has provided the knowledge needed for some of her storylines; the others are a product of her passion for people watching and her overactive imagination.   She has also recently started running workshops and providing one-to-one support for those wishing to learn how to independently publish and you can find her, under her real name, at www.threeshirespublishing.com.   Following a long stint working in the law Georgia set up her own business providing administration services for other companies which she does to this day managing to entwine that work along with her writing.   Her busy life is set in a tranquil part of rural Cambridgeshire in the UK where she lives with her much neglected husband.   

A Killer Strikes by Georgia Rose – publication date 1 January 2023

Book description:

The perfect family… The perfect murders…

A family massacred. A village in mourning. Can anyone sleep safely while a killer is on the loose?

Laura Percival, owner of The Stables, notices something wrong at her friend’s house when out on her morning ride. Further investigation reveals scenes she’ll never forget.

While the police are quick to accuse, Laura is less so, defending those around her as she struggles to make sense of the deaths. And all the time she wonders if she really knew her friends at all.

A chance encounter opens up a line of investigation that uncovers a secret life. One that Laura is much closer to than she ever realised.

A Killer Strikes is a gripping domestic thriller. If you like character-driven action, suspenseful storytelling and dark revelations then you’ll love this exciting novel.

Universal Book Link: https://books2read.com/AKillerStrikes

Goodreads: A Killer Strikes (A Shade Darker #1) by Georgia Rose | Goodreads

BookBub: A Killer Strikes by Georgia Rose – BookBub

Genres: Psychological thriller, domestic suspense

Formats: eBook (available to pre-order now), paperback and hardback to be available by 1 January 2023.

Places in our Memories with Alex Craigie #Mondayblogs #Memories

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There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.

Today’s memories are from Alex Craigie, a dear friend I’ve known both in ‘real’ life and online for many years. 

So many thanks to Judith for inviting me to take part in this series. Everyone has had a different take on the prompt and I’ve loved the diverse and fascinating contributions.

My first memories are of this house that was my home until I was ten.

Kingston Lodge, 7 Westminster Road, Eccles, Lancashire.

Here’s Google’s recent picture:

And here’s a couple of what it looked like then:

This one is of me and my brother at Easter. We’re with my mother, rolling hardboiled eggs on the driveway.

It’s a large house. Those pictures are of the side; the front is broader and stretches deep into the photograph.

My mother, a nurse, met my father, a doctor, in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. When the window cleaner crashed through the glass-topped verandah he was fortunate (!) to have people on hand equipped to deal with a medical emergency. (I see it’s been removed now.)

The entrance hall was a cavernous space bordered by a beautiful fireplace on the left and a staircase on the right. A long and creepy cloakroom dwelt under the staircase, dwindling to dark nothingness as it followed the line above it. The ceiling of the hall soared two staircases to the landing of the first floor bedrooms and the hard, smooth flooring was a great surface for playing jacks. One Christmas, I tottered around for ages on that floor in a pair of sparkly Cinderella shoes, aping the sound that my mother made in her stilettos.

Nowadays, I struggle to remember what I had to eat for lunch, but I can still recall the number of the phone on the camphor chest by the stairs: ECC (Eccles) 2048.

There were four rooms off the hall. The drawing room (with the French doors under the verandah) was light and sunny. I wrote my first story there at the bureau when I was six. When my mother read the bit where one of the characters was dismissed, she laughed at my use of the term “you’re fired”. It stung.

One evening I was sent to the drawing room to fetch something. A man with straggly hair was at the French doors, his face pressed up grotesquely against the full-length window. He started shouting and screaming and banging on the glass. I was terrified. My father explained later that the man wasn’t well. Since then, I close the curtains before it’s properly dark.

The other rooms off the hall comprised a lounge, dining room and breakfast room. The breakfast room led to the kitchen and pantry and there was also a door to the expansive cellars where things like coal were kept. For a timid child, the cellars held all the charm of Madame Tussaud’s dungeons. (I was that timid child.)

I have fond memories of Rory, our dog, stealing the brass hearthbrush, racing to the top of the hall staircase, releasing it and then chasing after it. I dropped a glass down them in similar vein –minus the intent– tumbling after it. Again, it was good to have a health professional on hand. A puckered scar is my memento.

These stairs led up to a landing. A corridor to the left, with built-in cupboards, ended in another cloakroom. In the middle was a minstrel gallery backed by a block of tall windows. At night, they threw menacing shadows of trees, and during thunderstorms these windows terrified me almost as much as the incident in the drawing room.

To the right of the gallery was a flight of stairs up to four of the bedrooms. I slept in the third room for a while, but there was a patch of wallpaper opposite the bed in which I could see a clown’s face. When I looked at it, the smile on the face seemed to grow in a sinister way that led to nightmares. I was relocated to the fourth room.

My brother’s cot was moved into this room with me and one morning, returning from the loo, I found him leaning over the bars and staring at his teddy bear melting on the small electric bar heater. There were full-length net curtains at the window. I can still picture the tiny felt circles that were dotted over them. As I took in the scene, the curtain nearest the cot flared up. I yelled for help, dragged Ian over the bars and hauled him onto the landing. When all the excitement was over, all that remained to show for it was an acrid smell, a blackened wall and ceiling, and a large tarry patch on the linoleum. My parents’ appreciation extended to a trip to Woolworths to buy a treat; well worth the momentary panic.

Up another small staircase was the family bathroom –an unlovely room in monochrome with a bath that had a green stain under one of the taps, a discoloured plastic beaker that held our toothbrushes, and greying towels that made great exfoliators. It was a cold room even in the summer.

One final staircase led to the last three bedrooms. The first of these was for the Au Pair girls who stayed with us to learn English and earned their keep by helping out. The second was sometimes occupied by Anne, a live-in servant who came and went according to her tempestuous lovelife.

The third room became my playroom. It’s that window in the pictures at the very top of the house. I could only see out of it if I stacked up my toys and balanced on them. After a visit to the circus, I taught myself to stand on my head in there. I was expected to stay in this room, out of the way. I resented, later, being cooped in there with my brothers, but it was an escape from my parents’ disintegrating marriage. And I had my books.

My free time was mainly spent in the playroom, garden, or with my friend Jane.

Here I am in the back garden with my grandfather. Rory is in the foreground.

Looking back, I realise that I had no concept of my privileged existence. My life seemed very ordinary compared with my immediate surroundings. Jane’s house, round the corner from us, was much grander than ours. It had two impressive staircases and several live-in servants. Backing on to our garden was another palatial house used by the family of someone high up in the USAF. Cheryl was my age and had a massive, carpeted bedroom and exquisite princess and fairy costumes. In the winter, her father sprayed water over the lawn for her to skate on.

My parents divorced when I was ten. My father got the house; my mother got us. We moved to a basement maisonette in Bramhall, Cheshire. I’m in front of it here, on the right, next to my mother, two brothers and a (solemn) friend:

Behind the two windows at the bottom left, were a spacious kitchen and cramped bathroom. Those windows were beyond our reach and daylight was filtered out by the overhanging greenery and architecture. The two rooms above were, in contrast, full of light, but half the size because of the maisonette abutting them. A bijou sitting room and main bedroom were separated by a glass partition. I slept in the remaining tiny room with the older of my brothers. My mother and I repeatedly asserted how cosy it was. We knew we were lying.

Itchy bites turned out to be bedbugs and we had to leave temporarily whilst the place was fumigated. A lecherous landlord proved to be another problem (a divorced woman was often seen as desperate for attention and fair game), and noise seeped freely into the flat from the surrounding ones. We did have a phone, though. BRA (Bramhall) 3969…

That winter, 1962/1963, was one of the coldest on record in the UK. We returned one day to discover the water tank in the flat above us had burst and there were magnificently long icicles adorning our staircase. In the kitchen, I had a skating rink to rival Cheryl’s.

There were financial constraints in this new life, but I had a freedom that I’d lacked before. At the local school, I made friends and played outside with them. I taught the whole class how to stand on their heads. I left before the end of the year but was given a handmade book of poems put together by the teacher and signed by my classmates – most of them ‘with love’. It mattered. I still have it.

The loss of status had a traumatic effect on my mother who spent the rest of her days trying to fashion a residence as impressive as Kingston Lodge. She was a genuinely talented pianist and had a comfortable life but her appreciation for what she did have was overshadowed by what she’d lost.

I loved the old house, but there were other things I loved more.

Her loss was, sadly, my gain.

About Alex:

Alex Craigie is the pen name of Trish Power.

Trish was ten when her first play was performed at school. It was in rhyming couplets and written in pencil in a book with imperial weights and measures printed on the back.

When her children were young, she wrote short stories for magazines before returning to the teaching job that she loved.

Trish has had three books published under the pen name of Alex Craigie. The first two books cross genre boundaries and feature elements of romance, thriller and suspense against a backdrop of social issues. Someone Close to Home highlights the problems affecting care homes while Acts of Convenience has issues concerning the health service at its heart. Her third book. Means to Deceive, is a psychological thriller.

Someone Close to Home has won a Chill with a Book award and a Chill with the Book of the Month award. In 2019 it was one of the top ten bestsellers in its category on Amazon.

Find Alex on Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/ytnc6xxs

On Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/4dh2sz9x

Book lovers are welcome to contact her on alexcraigie@aol.com

Places in our Memories with Terry Tyler #Mondayblogs #Memories

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There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.

Today I’m welcoming Terry Tyler, a friend I’ve known online for many years, and had the great pleasure in meeting and getting to know her in real life at Barb Taub’s writing retreat on Arran, a few weeks ago…

First, thank you to Judith for inviting me to this nostalgia-fest on her blog!

When told about the feature, I immediately wanted to write about the place we used to go on holiday when I was a child.  It was a holiday rental bungalow called Barn Piece in Eccles-on-Sea, Norfolk, complete with a genuine gypsy caravan in the garden, which we loved.  We went there from about 1966 to 1976.

Behind us are you can see the dunes, leading to the beach.

The ancient village of Eccles-juxta-Mare, as it was once called, vanished into the sea over a hundred years ago, and by the time we started going on holiday there, in the late 1960s, the only indication of its existence on the map was the location of Eccles beach.  In the 1960s it consisted of a few private houses down overgrown lanes; they fascinated me, and I loved to peer through the untended foliage and wonder who lived in them.  The Pyghtle and Smee Cottage; they were the two I remember. 

Then there was a sandy track past shabby chalets to a grocery shop where Julia, Eddie and I would go to buy sweets, buckets and spades, postcards and other stuff that children used to spend their holiday money on in those days; I always spent all mine within a couple of days, whereas Julia made hers last. 

The bungalow had such a ‘we’re on holiday’ feeling about it, a home from home as we went there for many years.  By the beginning of the second week, I always felt as though my real life was there, not back at home.  Barn Piece was large and light and shabby and a bit musty-smelling, and we loved it.  This photo was taken by Dad back then; the gypsy caravan was just to the right of the washing line

Our dog was called Susie; she was with us for ten years and remembered the place whenever we arrived there, too.  She would hurtle up the sandy slope to the beach without being told where to go. 

Eddie said to me the other day that he can still remember how the gypsy caravan smelled—I can, as well. 

Here’s a picture of Julia and me cleaning it out!  Why we chose to do this on such a brilliant, sunny afternoon, I have no idea!

The last time I went there on holiday was in 1976, when I was nearly seventeen, and my best friend Ruth was invited to come with us so that I didn’t kick up about going on holiday with my parents and twelve-year-old brother!   The one of me (right) is two photos exposed together, but I’ve always liked its ghostly feel …

… which brings me to the eerie bells of the lost church, a victim of the coastal erosion so prevalent in that area.  I’ve found a couple of articles about it, which give more information than I can put here, or this post would be far too long!

Weird Norfolk: The lost village of Eccles which sometimes appears after storms and the graveyard where the dead cannot rest

The ‘lonely sentinel’ of Eccles-juxta-Mare is finally lost to the sea

Now and again we’ve gone back there to take a look—my parents went there in the winter of 1990, when the ruins of the church had become visible once more.

This photo on the dunes (that’s Mum in the grass! – Barn Piece down to the left), taken the same day, shows how wild the place feels—and you can see Happisburgh (pronounced Hays-borough) lighthouse in the distance. Happisburgh is fast becoming a lost village, too.  In 2005 I spent a weekend at a beer festival there—just a few years later, the field in which we camped had crumbled into the sea.

From 2000-2009 I lived in Cromer, further up the coast; around 2001, when my parents visited, we made the pilgrimage to Barn Piece.

I went back in 2007, too, but it had changed so much.  Smart holiday cottages and chalets were everywhere, and the new sea defences meant that I didn’t recognise the beach.  The sandy slope up the dunes that we used to run up as children, excited about our first glimpse of the sea, has gone; the dunes themselves had flattened into little more than a small hump.  Barn Piece, though, was still there.  Fifteen years on, I don’t know whether it is or not; I’ve googled it, but have come up with no results.  I’ve googled Eccles-on-Sea, too, and all those empty fields appear to have been built on.

Happy days.  Mostly, I’m so glad that my mother was like me, forever taking photographs—thank you, Mum, for all these memories!

The Author:

Terry Tyler writes post-apocalyptic, dystopian and dark psychological fiction, available on Amazon.  She loves quiet, wild places, and still gets as excited about going to the seaside as she did when she was a child.  Aside from writing, she enjoys reading, telly binges, long walks, and wasting time on Twitter.  She lives with her husband in North East England.

Places in our Memories: With Teagan Ríordáin Geneviene #MondayBlogs #Memories

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There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.

Today I’m really pleased to welcome Teagan Ríordáin Geneviene, who is going to tell us about what first occurred to her when I invited her to remember one of the places that has remained in her memory, and how it made her feel.

Hi, Judith.  Thanks very much for allowing me to participate in this series.  My mind works in twisting ways.  The kind of memory I’ve chosen to share may seem strange.  However, the first thing that came to mind when you asked me about this topic was old amusement parks.

When I was a small child there was an amusement park in the next town, which was slightly “less small” than my hometown.  To my shock, visitors from real cities scoffed at it.  I thought it was utterly magical.  Not long after that, we visited a carnival in the mountains, and even to my tween self, that one was ragtag.  Getting on the rides was… questionable to say the least.  By the time I was in my teens, back at the local amusement park, I could see the truth of how small, and how rundown it actually was.

The park didn’t create magic for me anymore.  Rather, it gave me a feeling I could only describe as otherworldly.  That sensation stuck with me and I’ve used “strange” amusement parks in two of my books.  One is a work in progress that I’ve stopped and started several times over the past few years.  The defunct amusement park is a central figure of that story.

The other is “Hullaba Lulu, a Dieselpunk Adventure.”  On that magical train-ride, one of the places Lulu and her friends land in is a “sideways” version of Atlantic City in the 1920s.  To Lulu’s surprise, admittance is paid in cheeseburgers.  Although it’s not all whimsy.  In fact, it’s downright sinister.

Here’s a snippet where Lulu and Pearl have gotten separated from their friend Rose.  Pearl found a fortuneteller automaton:

“Go ahead, Lulu!  Ask it a question.  It gave me ‘the lovers’ card,” Pearl enthused.

“You always ask about love, and they always tell you that you’ll find it.  I never know what to ask,” I complained.

“Okay, then, gypsy king.  Here’s my question.  How is the Loop the Loop still here when it was taken down in 1912?” I asked in a snarky tone.

The gypsy’s flat mechanical eyes shifted to me with a click.  There couldn’t be life behind those eyes.  It couldn’t really see me… but I felt like he looked right through me.

“Did we go back in time?” I added in a softer voice.

The automaton sat motionless for a heartbeat.  Something about the sudden change in clockwork movement gave me the heebie-jeebies.

The gypsy gathered the tarot cards and spread them again.  It drew out a card with a drawing of a man hanging by his foot.  The fortuneteller moved the card so that the man was laying down.

“Sideways,” was all the automaton said.

“We didn’t move north or south, or forward or backward…” I began.

“Sideways,” it repeated with a mechanical nod.

I gave a frustrated sigh.  Why couldn’t the blasted thing be useful?  I turned to Pearl and asked her where Rose was.  My fair-haired friend shrugged, then she giggled and asked the fortuneteller the question.

“Where is our friend, Rose?”

The gypsy automaton gathered the tarot cards, spread them, and turned over the Three of Swords.  The design on the card was like the leaflet I found in the automat.  There was an image of a heart pierced by three swords.  Pearl and I both shuddered at the gruesome picture.  My worry had rubbed off on her.  She gave her long hair an anxious twist.

“Betrayal,” the fortuneteller said.

The air was split by a loud scream.  The sound echoed around the amusement park.

“Rose?” I yelled.

***

That’s only the beginning of the strangeness Lulu finds at the amusement park.  Wait until she gets to the Tilt-A-Whirl…

Sometimes memories go into our heads.  After they’ve been stored for a while, there’s no telling how they’ll come back out.  They might even get sideways.

Judith, thank you again for inviting me.  It’s been a delight.  I’m including my links.  I hope your readers will check out my blog, and follow me on my Amazon Author page.  Hugs on the wing!

I’m sure they will, Teagan. And thank you for participating in Places in our Memories.

Amazon Author Page:  relinks.me/TeaganRiordainGeneviene

Hullaba Lulu, universal purchase links:

Kindle:  relinks.me/B08JKP1RS4

Paperback:  relinks.me/B08JDYXPZM

Blog (Teagan’s Books):  Teagan’s Books – Founder of the Three Things Method of Storytelling (teagansbooks.com)

About Teagan:

In addition to the “Author Tool Chest” of non-fiction works, Teagan Ríordáin Geneviene writes whimsical and humorous stories.  She also writes high fantasy, urban fantasy, steampunk, and mysteries with historic settings.  Yes, that’s a variety of genres.  However, you will always find a sense of whimsy in what she writes.  It’s just that sometimes it takes a more serious form.

Teagan’s work is colored by the experiences of her early life in the southern states and later in the desert southwest, as well as a decade in Washington, DC.

When did Teagan get serious about writing?  She had always devoured mysteries and fantasy novels of every type.  Then one day there was no new book at hand for reading — so she decided to write one.  She hasn’t stopped writing since.

Places in our Memories: With Sally Cronin #MondayBlogs #Memories

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There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.

Today I’m so pleased to welcome Sally Cronin, who has agreed to share her memories with us.

Sally

Thank you Judith for inviting me to take part in this lovely series and I decided to go back as far as I could with my memories.

Scientists have more or less established humans can remember back to at least 3 years old, but it can be 6 months earlier for many.

I know I have very strong memories of Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka, where we lived from 1954 to 1956. I was 18 months old when we arrived, and the memories of those two years are a little bit like a kaleidoscope, creating colourful if slightly distorted patterns. They are also enhanced by the particular aromas, and the sounds associated with living in a land of spices, and on the edge of a jungle.

My father had been in based there in late 1944. Initially he was in a holding camp called Mayina in the jungle, until being transferred to HMS Woolwich in Trincomalee.

He had been based in Scotland prior to this so it must have been quite a change. There he had been part of repair team getting submarines back to sea following damage in the Atlantic. Now he was working on destroyers from the Pacific fleet using Sri Lanka as their home base.

The war in the Far East continued through 1945. Following VJ Day, my father continued working on destroyers needing to be refitted before sailing back to the UK.  He was in Trincomalee until June 1946 and then returned home to the family in Hampshire

He was honoured to receive a “Card for Good Service” presented by Lord Mountbatten the Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia Command in November 1945, in recognition of his valuable service keeping his destroyers at sea.

Earl Mountbatten inspects my father’s base in Sri Lanka @Eric Coleman

Our return to Sri Lanka

My father was posted back to Trincomalee as base radio officer in 1954. After a few weeks he was ordered to take over the RN Transmitting Station Kotogoda, fifteen miles outside of Colombo on a temporary basis. There was a lovely house for the station commander so my father arranged for my mother and the three of us to join him from England.

After a few months my father was then transferred back to Trincomalee. Having been entertained frequently at my parent’s renowned curry lunches, useful contacts had been made amongst the RAF officers at the nearby air base. A DC- 3 was appropriated and they kindly flew the family, all our worldly goods, and wonderful family cook who insisted on coming with us, back to Trincomalee. It must have been so thrilling and I do wish I had been a little bit older to be able to recall the experience.

Photograph

The Coleman family 1955

We settled in a house my father rented near the base. In addition to our cook, we had a house boy to work in the garden and an amah was employed to look after me. I was clearly getting to the active toddler stage and needed watching all the time. Being on the edge of a jungle meant that there was plenty of slithering and snarling wildlife that was fascinating for a child…she had her work cut out for her I am afraid! 

We moved a couple of times more until we eventually occupied the lower half of a large house which had been the WRNS Officers mess during the war. The garden was on the edge of the water this time and it is where my first memories really kick in.

Three sisters Sonia, Diana and Sally

I have two older sisters and whilst during the day I was in the constant care of my amah, when my sisters came home from school, I followed them everywhere, and this included into the water. They were already amazing swimmers and divers and I would be in my rubber ring desperately trying to keep up.

Things I remember vividly.

Our house came with trees and monkeys, small ones who were fascinated by glittering things and food. Their constant chittering filled the days and if a door was left open, they were in the house in a flash. Food was clearly the first priority, especially with our cook’s curries filling the air with tantalising aromas.

However, they discovered a treasure in my parent’s bedroom where the dressing table was adorned with beads, earrings and other trinkets. One night my parents came home from a party to find a troop of small thieves dressing up and admiring themselves in the mirror.

Sonia, Sally and her amah

On the subject of monkeys, a very large one found its way on to our wrap around balcony and discovered a cigarette box. He was not in a great mood and ate all the cigarettes, threatening anyone who approached. They are very dangerous, and I do remember clearly being dragged upstairs to our neighbours by my amah out of harm’s way. Probably wise as I had a tendency to be consider creatures great and small as potential pets.   

I remember getting measles when I was 3years old. I had been too young to be vaccinated before we left the UK and a wave of measles hit the island and I caught it.  The only treatment was to be kept isolated in a darkened room to prevent eye damage and kept cool and hydrated. I remember being in my cot with a fan above me in the dark for what seemed endless days, with my mother and amah applying cool flannels and chamomile lotion.

Sally aged 3 years old in smocked dress

I was soon back to mischief and particularly at my parent’s weekly Sunday Curry parties. It was open house for fellow officers and their wives, and also those on ships in the harbour at the time.

 I do recall the laughter and the attention I used to get as I was passed from guest to guest. My eldest sister was, and still is an accomplished needlewoman, and made me smocked dresses which were always much admired. She also made me underpinnings from the same material. I developed the rather indelicate habit when complimented on the dress, of lifting it waist high and announcing ‘and I have knickers to match’.  Thankfully something I grew out of sometime in my 30s.

I was rarely out of the water, but the one activity I couldn’t share with my sisters was their high board diving. One day my eldest sister was competing in a school event and completed a stunning manoeuvre off the highest board. She surfaced to what she hoped was a good score and lots of applause. Instead there was silence except from an audible gasp from the crowd.

I had followed her up the ladder and toddled down the diving board and jumped in after her. Apparently I bobbed up and shouted ‘Again’.

We were due to return to the UK in July 1956 and were leaving on a troop ship on the 30th. However on the 23rd of July, during my parent’s farewell party, his Captain arrived with the news that my grandmother and aunt had been tragically killed in a car crash in England.

My father was flown home immediately whilst my mother and the three of us left by ship on the 30th as planned. I was too young to understand the enormity of this family loss, and being one of the few children on board, was spoilt rotten. I do remember one instance in particular during a fancy dress party organised to keep us amused.

My sister Sonia made me a beautiful Little Po Peep outfit from crepe paper in lovely colours. I am sure there were knickers to match, but unfortunately it became rather too exciting and things got a little damp… Let’s just say crepe paper is rather unforgiving and absorbent….

The voyage was even longer than anticipated, as two days out of Colombo, it was announced the ship would be going via the Cape as the Suez was closed due to the war in the Middle East. This added another week to the passage and my mother became unwell.

Nothing serious as we were to discover after a couple of months as it turned out she was pregnant with my younger brother at the age of nearly 40. The village doctor initially put her symptoms down to dyspepsia but on a follow up visit she informed him that dyspepsia had just kicked her!

Today the smell of a spicy homemade curry, chamomile lotion, reminiscing with my sisters and spending time with these photographs brings back those long lost memories. We would live in Malta and South Africa over the next ten years, and those memories are obviously more clearly defined, but those earlier years are the most precious to me.

About Sally Cronin

Sally Cronin is the author of fifteen books including her memoir Size Matters: Especially when you weigh 330lb first published in 2001. This has been followed by another fourteen books both fiction and non-fiction including multi-genre collections of short stories and poetry.

Her latest release, Life is Like a Mosaic: Random fragments in harmony is a collection of 50 + images and poems on life, nature, love and a touch of humour.

As an author she understands how important it is to have support in marketing books and offers a number of FREE promotional opportunities in the Café and Bookstore on her blog and across her social media.

Her podcast shares book reviews and short stories Soundcloud Sally Cronin

After leading a nomadic existence exploring the world, she now lives with her husband on the coast of Southern Ireland enjoying the seasonal fluctuations in the temperature of the rain.

Links

Blog: https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Sally-Cronin/e/B0096REZM2

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7979187.Sally_Cronin

Twitter: https://twitter.com/sgc58

Places in our Memories: With Thorne Moore #MondayBlogs #Memories #SlightHumour

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There are places that remain in our memories, the details may become slightly blurred, nostalgia may colour our thoughts, but they don’t fade. And how those places made us feel at the time is the one thing that remains.

Today I’m pleased to hand over to Thorne Moore. These are Thorne’s memories. Well, they will be, once she’s got the following out of her system!

So, a rabbit walks into a pub and orders a pint of beer.

‘Anything else?’ asks the barman.

The rabbit checks the menu and says ‘Yes, I’ll have a toasted cheese and pickle sandwich please.’

‘Coming up,’ says the barman.

Next day the rabbit is back. He orders a pint of beer, peruses the menu again and chooses a toasted ham and tomato sandwich.

Third day, ‘What can I get you?’ asks the barman, presenting the rabbit with his pint.

‘A toasted beef and onion sandwich, please.’

Next day, no sign of the rabbit, nor the day after. Finally he reappears, looking very limp and wan.

‘You look rough,’ says the barman. ‘What’s up with you.’

The rabbit wipes his eyes. ‘I’ve had a bad case of mixing my toasties.’

What has this extremely awful joke got to do with anything? Nothing really, except that I was born in 1954, and when I looked up records to discover what important events happened to commemorate my birth, I discovered that it was the year that myxomatosis was introduced into Britain to control the rabbit population. Actually, it now seem to be recorded as 1953, so I can’t even claim that milestone.

I wasn’t actually aware of myxomatosis at the time. I wasn’t entirely aware of anything much for several months, if not years, but when I was, I assumed, as children do, that all around me was permanent. The world was there purely for my benefit so how it was must have been how it always had been. There was a thing called The Past, but it wasn’t real. There had been a war, but it was something black and white, literally and figuratively, that happened in films on our television. It was a fable that had nothing to do with the present that I inhabited.

I was ten when it suddenly struck me that the period between the end of the war and my arrival was actually less than the length of time I had been alive. It had been lurking all the time just behind me, almost within reach. My first real grasp of history. The past was just under my feet and nothing was permanent after all. My parents had not, as I always assumed, sprung fully formed from the earth for the sole purpose of being my parents. They had, in fact, once been ten-year-olds like me, living through a war that must have been terrifying rather than exciting.I became conscious at that time that the physical world I occupied, a housing estate on the outskirts of Luton, was not a permanent fixture on Planet Earth either. Most of the streets I walked along on my way to school, the houses I passed and even the school itself had only been built a year or two before my birth. What had existed there before was farmland, and its ghost still lingered. The huge wild cherry tree breaking through the pavement opposite our house (responsible for all the pretty but inedible cherry tree saplings in our garden), must have been growing in the hedgerow of a field even before my parents were born.

The lane, generally known as The Lane, that offered me a delightfully dirty alternative route to school, was not just a muddy connection between my road and the houses of Ackworth Crescent, but an old farm track, leading presumably to a farm house that had disappeared long ago. The very dark brooding little house near the top of the lane, in an overgrown garden full of bluebells, was probably as old, but to us it was just self-evidently a witch’s cottage. Some of us claimed to have seen the witch.

The lane was dark and unfrequented, overhung with trees and with no houses in sight, the sort of ominous place that no child would be allowed to walk alone along today. But them was innocent days and no one bothered. The lane crossed a brook on a rotting plank bridge, wide enough to have once supported a horse and cart. Beside the bridge ran a huge pitted iron pipe. I imagine the pipe was fairly recent, the sewer for the growing housing estate, but for us children, of course, it was the only possible means to cross the brook. Who would use a boring bridge when you could balance precariously on a curving pipe?

The brook wove through the estate, in several branches, channelled under new roads in culverts that you could walk through if you didn’t mind falling victim to killer leeches that were in there, just waiting to suck your blood. I don’t remember anyone actually coming across a leech, killer or otherwise, but only a few boys ever attempted it. There was a perpetual mystery about the way streams would emerge from such dark culverts, run in deep gullies between houses and then inexplicably disappear again.

Elsewhere, alleys between the new houses crossed the brooks on footbridges, which you had to run across because Coal Black Charlie lurked beneath them and would grab you if you dawdled. I have no idea who Coal Black Charlie was supposed to be, but I am sure every childhood map has a hiding place for such a character. It remained a mystery what he would do to us if he ever caught us – which he never did.

Eventually the brook disappeared into the most sinister culvert of all, round and pitch black, under the railway, to join the “River” Lea, which at that point was a marshy rivulet seeping out from the ugliest possible grating in the middle of a Neolithic campsite. No one ever ventured into the culvert under the railway.

Any illusion of the permanence of my housing estate was swept away in my last years at junior school, when the prefabs at the centre, including the one where my grandparents had lived, were demolished, the land turned into a massive building site.

There is always something sad, insulting, about the demolition of houses, even prefabs, their inner privacy and wallpaper stripped bare briefly, before being reduced to rubble. It wasn’t just structural entities that were being rubbed out, but homes, people’s pasts. The future, as it was then predicted, rose in their place. Walking to school, my sister and I laid bets on which huge tower block of flats would be finished first. They weren’t complete until I was at High School far away (well, a couple of miles anyway). One was called Hooker’s Court. For some reason the name was later changed.

If I needed a reminder that time moves on, leaving an imprint, but also forever morphing into something new, I visited the scene of my childhood many years later, long after moving to Wales, and found everything both the same and changed, the estate no longer on the very brink of town but engulfed in it, so many new roads and houses that I had trouble identifying my old school route at all. The lane is miraculously still there, surrounded by flats amidst the trees and shockingly gentrified with a pretty lamppost and a new footbridge. No one would think now that it had once been a farm track. The pipe is still there, unchanged. Do children still walk across it?

I found myself realising how differently children and adults see everything – people, places, time itself. To us children, the estate was full of secrets, possibilities, opportunities for play and sources of potential nightmare. We saw the brook and its culverts with unfettered imagination, conjuring up mysteries and monsters. Adults saw a logical scheme of town planning and drainage systems. It was that contrast that first inspired me to write The Unravelling, which is largely set in my old estate, though elements have been moved around a little and names altered.

To the best of my knowledge, no murder ever happened while I lived there, so I invented the plot, and my characters are purely fictional, but the place, through a child’s eyes, with all its sinister potential was real enough.

Thorne can be found at…

Website: https://thornemoore.com/

Twitter: @ThorneMoore

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thorne.moore.7

My Review of Her Nanny’s Secret: A compelling story of love, loss and self-discovery by Jan Baynham #familystory #romance #WW2 #RNA

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I gave

Book Description:

How far would you go to save the person you loved the most?
It’s 1941, and Annie Beynon has just become the first stable girl for the most powerful family in her Welsh village. Whilst her gift for working with horses is clear, there are some who are willing to make her life very difficult on the Pryce estate, simply for being a girl.
There are other – secret – ways Annie is defying conventions, too. As the war rages, and when Edmund, the heir to the Pryce fortune, leaves to join the RAF, it seems that it’s only a matter of time before Annie’s secret is exposed. That is, until she makes a shocking decision.
It’s 1963 before Annie is able to face up to the secret she chose to keep over twenty years before. Justifying that decision takes her to Normandy in France, and an outcome she could never have expected …

My Review:

Having already read and reviewed Jan Baynham’s Her Mother’s Secret, I looked forward to reading Her Nanny’s Secret. I wasn’t disappointed

My Review:

Having already read and reviewed Jan Baynham’s Her Mother’s Secret, I looked forward to reading Her Nanny’s Secret. I wasn’t disappointed

I really like this author’s writing style, easy to read yet with a depth of narrative that draws the reader immediately into the lives of the characters and their story.

All the characters are rounded and multi-layered, and add much to the plot, but this is definitely the protagonist, Annie Beynon’s story. She is portrayed as a strong-willed and determined young woman, unconventional for her time, yet, like many during those years, she falls prey to her emotions and needs to live with the consequences. Her journey through life from the Second World War and into the 1960s is consistent with her character throughout every circumstance, every decision made.

The  privations of the era, the social divisions of the time are shown through each character’s dialogue which strengthens their personalities. I particularly liked the differences in the syntax of sentences and shown accents that highlights their social and class standing.

This is also portrayed through the evocative descriptions of the various settings and lifestyles. There is no doubt that the author has thoroughly researched the decades that Her Nanny’s Secret is set against.

There are various themes that run throughout the book: The main theme of secrets is threaded around strong elements of romance and familial love, and, crafted around those, are themes of life’s hardships, loyalty, duty, jealousy and  rivalry.

I try not to give spoilers in my reviews, but I hope the above gives a flavour of Her Nanny’s Secret. This is a well-balanced, evenly paced and well written novel and one I have no hesitation in recommending to any reader who loves romance, but also enjoys a family story.

Jan’s other book:Her Sister’s Secret: The Summer of ’66, is patiently waiting on my TBR pile

The Author:

Originally from mid-Wales, Jan lives in Cardiff with her husband.

After retiring from a career in teaching and advisory education, Jan joined a small writing group in a local library where she wrote her first piece of fiction. From then on, she was hooked! Fascinated by family secrets and ‘skeletons lurking in cupboards’, Jan’s dual narrative novels explore how decisions and actions made by family members from one generation impact on the lives of the next. Setting plays an important part in Jan’s stories and as well as her native mid-Wales, there is always a contrasting location – Greece, Sicily and northern France

To find out more about Jan, she may be contacted on:

Twitter – @JanBaynham https://twitter.com/JanBaynham

Facebook – Jan Baynham Writer https://www.facebook.com/JanBayLit

Blog – https://janbaynham.blogspot.com

My Review of Where There’s Doubt by Terry Tyler #psychological thriller

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Book Description

‘I can be anything you want me to be. Even if you don’t know you want it. Especially if you don’t know you want it.’

Café owner Kate is mentally drained after a tough two years; all she wants from her online chess partner is entertainment on lonely evenings, and maybe a little virtual flirtation.

She is unaware that Nico Lewis is a highly intelligent con artist who, with an intricately spun web of lies about their emotional connection, will soon convince her that he is The One.

Neither does Kate know that his schemes involve women who seek love on dating sites, as well as his small publishing business. A host of excited authors believe Nico is about to make their dreams come true.

Terry Tyler’s twenty-fourth publication is a sinister psychological drama that highlights the dark side of internet dating—and the danger of ignoring the doubts of your subconscious.

My Review

One of the certainties about any of Terry Tyler’s novels is that there will be individualistic characters that, from the moment they are introduced, come to life. Another of her talents is that she tells a great story, whatever the genre. I can say that, in all honesty, having read every one of her books. Whether it’s sagas, psychological fiction or dystopian, it’s the strength of the plots, the characters and the relationship between the two that draw in the reader from the first page. And Where There’s Doubt is no exception, as a psychological thriller this is both powerful and complex.

I love stories told from a variety of first-person points of view; for me it adds to the narrative if it is revealed in this way. We get to know each character, through their voice, through their behaviour, through their perception of the world, of life. In Where There’s Doubt the author introduces trust and gullibility, motivations with coercions, honesty with lies, and weaves them together. All of which kept me guessing. And usually getting it wrong.  

The main characters are multi-layered, from the wary protagonist, Kate, to Nico, the smooth conman, and the three diverse women he meets on an online dating site. And, in the background, adding authenticity to the plot, there are other characters: the would-be suitor of Kate’s, the  friend whose loyalty may be questionable, Kate’s employees in the café, the unpublished and naïve authors – preyed upon by Nico and his claims to be an independent publisher.
There are many settings, but the main background, the seaside town and café, give a unsafe validity to the criminality that is a fundamental theme throughout.

This is a contemporary read, with an all too familiar aspect of deceit and misrepresent in both internet dating and vanity press. But there are always possible consequences with both. I try not to give spoilers with any of my reviews – but I will say that love, loyalty, and justice are also threaded through this book..

 I admire Terry Tyler’s writing style, ability to produce impressive stories, and this thriller doesn’t disappoint. I would highly recommend Where There’s Doubt to any reader who is looking for a fascinating read.

About Terry Tyler:

Terry Tyler is the author of twenty-four books available from Amazon, the latest being ‘Where There’s Doubt’, about a romance scammer. Also recently published is ‘Megacity’, the final book in the dystopian Operation Galton trilogy. She is currently at work on a post apocalyptic series, which will probably take the form of three novellas. Proud to be independently published, Terry is an avid reader and book reviewer, and a member of Rosie Amber’s Book Review Team.

Terry is a Walking Dead addict, and has a great interest in history (particularly 12th-17th century), along with books and documentaries on sociological/cultural/anthropological subject matter. She loves South Park, the sea, and going for long walks in quiet places where there are lots of trees. She lives in the north east of England with her husband

Presenting the Authors at the Honno Book Fair 7th May 2022 at the Queens Hall, Narberth, Pembrokeshire. Today with Liz Jones

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Introducing my friends and fellow (or should that be sister?) authors of Honno – The longest-standing independent women’s press in the UK –  who will be at the Honno Book Fair on the 7th May 2022 , 10.00am until 4.00pm, at the Queens Hall, Narberth, Pembrokeshire.

If you’re in the area,we’d be thrilled if you popped in to say hello.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be introducing each author. I’ll also be showcasing Honno. 

Today, I’m really pleased to be joined by Liz Jones

Hello and welcome, Liz. Good to have you with us here today.

Glad to be here, Judith.

Please tell us, how many books have you written, and which is your favourite?

The Queen of Romance is my one and only (so far…)

How did you come up with the title for your book?

Through a long and tortuous process… My original title, The Many Lives of Marguerite was okay, but didn’t really tell the reader anything. Eventually, I came up with The Forgotten Queen of Romance. The ‘forgotten’ was later dropped… 

What inspired the idea for your book?

It all began when I visited what I thought was just her husband’s grave (that of the controversial Welsh author Caradoc Evans). Then I discovered Marguerite, this incredible woman who had been a bestselling romance author, whose book The Pleasure Garden was became Alfred Hitchcock’s first film, who had appeared in a film alongside the legendary Gloria Swanson, and had run a thriving repertory theatre company in my home town of Aberystwyth. Yet now she lay forgotten alongside her husband, without even her name on the gravestone. I had to find out more…

What part of the book did you have the hardest time writing? Or what was your hardest scene to write, and why?

The scenes about Marguerite’s childhood in India, during the days of the Raj. I have never been to India and knew little about the Raj, so I had to draw heavily on a combination of research and imagination. But I found this research fascinating. The mindset of the British in India was astonishingly racist and elitist. They were also making huge sacrifices for the sake of the British Empire, which they genuinely believed to be a noble project.

What part of the book was the most fun to write?

I enjoy visiting places and getting and writing about them in situ. Visiting Broadstairs, where Marguerite lived and ran a theatre company just before the war, was great fun, as was visiting the site of another of her homes, near Aberdyfi, high above the Dyfi estuary.   

Which of the characters do you relate to the most and why.

Marguerite as a biographical character was eccentric, endlessly fascinating and also infuriating! The men in her life were (with one exception) pretty awful to here. The character I felt by far the most empathy for was Pauline Bloch, the German Jewish refugee who was Marguerite and Caradoc’s live-in maid during the war. The poor woman was traumatised and not receiving the help and support she needed – least of all from Marguerite who was too wrapped up in her own marriage and money problems to care.  

I was privileged to read some of Pauline’s letters, written some thirty years later, where she reflected on her time with Marguerite and Caradoc. She was a strong, determined and remarkably fair-minded woman who had overcome so much.

If you were to write a spin-off about a side character, which would you pick?

Pauline, without a doubt.

If you’re planning a sequel, can you tantalize us with a snippet of your plans for it? If not, your plans for your next book?

All I can say is I’m researching another biography. It’s far too soon to reveal any more!

 At what point did you think of yourself as a writer?

I don’t think you can really call yourself a writer after just one book. Although now I do write most days – features for magazines, mostly.

 Have you ever considered writing under a pseudonym, and why or why not?

With a name like Liz Jones? Of course I have! If ever I write a book that’s completely different (a novel, for instance), I might just dream up a far more exotic name for myself!

 What do the words “writer’s block” mean to you?

Writer’s block is something I experience every day. Sometimes I can overcome it. Other times, I suddenly find that cleaning the sink or organising my bookshelf is suddenly far more pressing than writing… Yet once I’m really in the writing zone, I find it difficult to stop. If only I found it easier to get there in the first place – I’m still working on that!   

What do you need in your writing space to help you stay focused?

Peace, quiet, not too much clutter and, above all, a room of my own. (Virginia Woolf said it all really…)

 Are there therapeutic benefits to modelling a character after someone you know?

As a writer of non-fiction, I’m afraid I can’t really answer this!

 What is the most difficult part of your writing process?

Beginning.

What, to you, are the most important elements of good writing?

That’s a very big question! There are so many different kinds of good writing. If I had to say, I think it’s honestly – writing where the author strips away any ‘show-offy’ bits and tells the story with sincerity and integrity, rather than indulging in writing that draws attention to itself. Having said that, I can’t resist the odd flourish or purple passage, although I try not to overdo it! 

What comes first for you — the plot or the characters — and why? 

As a biographer it has to be character! I have to feel fascinated by a character to want to write about them.

 How do you use social media as an author?

I’m on Twitter, which I’ve found pretty useful, in a low-key sort of way. I know Twitter has a bit of a toxic reputation, but it’s great for connecting with other authors and keeping in touch with Honno and the wider world of books. What I also like about Twitter is that it’s okay to promote your own work there – unlike facebook, where too much self-promotion tends to be frowned upon! 

 Why did you [choose? Honno as a publisher?

The honest answer is because Honno is based in my home town of Aberystwyth. When my idea was still embarrassingly sketchy, I contacted the lovely Janet Thomas (a member of the Honno committee and hugely experienced editor). Thanks to Janet’s unstinting encouragement, I began to feel that my idea really could work as a book. Later, as a first-time Honno writer, I felt supported by the team throughout the whole process – from the initial edits to the marketing. Becoming a Honno author is like joining a very special women’s club! 

Author Bio:

Dr Liz Jones is a prize winning writer of creative non-fiction and journalism, and a creative writing tutor at Aberystwyth University. Her book, The Queen of Romance (Honno), a biography of Marguerite Jervis (aka Oliver Sandys and Countess Barcynska), ‘the most successful author and theatre entrepreneur you’ve never heard of’, was selected for The Independent‘s book choices for May, 2021.

Twitter: @LizJonesAber