Category Archives: Travel

Off to Oz

Australia was never top of my list for a place to visit, partly because of the exhausting flight, and partly because I love history and I still look upon Australia as being ‘new’. Not to mention all the men were chauvinists, weren’t they?

But if I wanted my first two novels, Annie’s Story and Juliet’s Story, to feel authentic I was going to have to visit at least Melbourne and Sydney. And it would be a great opportunity to find out more about my grandparents who emigrated to Australia in 1913, the same year as the fictitious Annie.
The Ghan

Much as I was tempted to follow in their footsteps and go by sea, I knew that wasn’t really practical, especially when travelling with my incredibly-easily sea-sick sister, Carole. We decided to see as much of the country as we could fit in over the four weeks we’d allowed ourselves, so we booked the Ghan from Darwin. Named after the Afghan cameleers who once traversed this route, the Ghan, regarded as one of the world’s greatest rail journeys, followed a fabulous route through the centre of Australia to Adelaide, stopping at various places of interest along the way. More train journeys took us to Melbourne. This was where my grandparents disembarked.

Luckily, Carole had teamed up with June, a very nice lady, and they toddled off sight-seeing while I delved into the family history. My dad’s cousin, Jean, had told me my grandparents had married in England just before they left, but I seemed to remember Nana saying they were merely engaged, and had to be segregated on the ship. This turned out to be the case, and I excitedly left the Births, Deaths, and Marriages building in Melbourne clutching their marriage certificate. From there I found where they lived, where my grandfather worked as a waiter at the Hotel Esplanade at St Kilda, and that at one point they moved to Sydney. They returned to Melbourne, and finally, after seven years, went back to England.

Everyone who helped me track them down seemed almost as thrilled as I was to find another piece of the jigsaw puzzle, and Carole and June were suitably amazed when I told them all I had discovered over dinner.

Following my grandparents felt as though I was actually following Annie and her new husband, Ferguson, in Annie’s Story, as all the parties were of a similar age. Soaking in the Oz atmosphere and culture really helped to bring to life both novels, and the greatest surprise for me was that I fell head over heels in love with the country and its people. And without doubt the men! I can’t wait to go back, but unfortunately Kitty, in Book 3, doesn’t go. However, she does travel to Cairo, Naples and Rome, but that’s another story!

Annie’s Story will be published 20 April 2015

Restructuring the novel

scissorsWhen I started the novel several years ago I created a dual timeline. The main heroine, Juliet, granddaughter of Annie, goes to Australia to follow in her grandparents’ footsteps (though she has another secret reason for going), and interspersed with her story is her grandmother, Annie, as a young girl, and linking the two stories by way of diaries and letters and events.

Called The Voyagers, this became a huge novel of 148,000 words which no agent or publisher would touch, especially from an unknown fiction writer. Three interested agents suggested the same thing – that I separate the two stories. I was already writing what I thought was the sequel, Kitty’s Story, so I was quite upset at the idea. That is, until my fantastic critique writing partner, Alison Morton (author of the Roma Nova series), who knows my characters almost as well as I do, immediately said: ‘Separate the two and Kitty becomes the third, so you’ll have a trilogy!’

As soon as she said that, I knew it was exactly right for my saga. But when I separated Annie and Juliet, the proportion was all wrong. Annie only had 49,000 words; Juliet, on the other hand, had a standard 99,000 words. So I set to and delved deeper into Annie and what happened to her, and she has now evolved as a 125,000 word novel. I’m so glad I took Alison’s advice, as I realised when I was developing Annie’s character and story that she deserves to have her own full-length book.

And because both Annie and Juliet sail to Australia, I was bound to have to go too! Purely for research, of course. More in my next blogpost!

Research Unlimited

One of the best things about being a writer is that you have to do research.

Research paperwork! (Photo courtesy of Alison Morton)

Research paperwork! (Photo courtesy of Alison Morton)

A warning –  it takes up a huge amount of ‘writing time’ and may lead you into fascinating areas that are not pertinent to your novel. However, if you’re writing historical fiction you will need to do a fair bit of research to a) find out facts, and b) check facts you think you already know. Thank goodness for the almighty Google, but remember it’s not infallible, particularly Wikipedia (although that site seems to have improved), and you should still use your reference books, biographies, maps, etc.

You don’t have to travel to the actual place to write about it. Joanne Walsh’s novella, Christmas in Venice was published in time for Christmas 2014. I ordered it on my Kindle and had a wonderful relaxing Christmas Day caught up in the story. Sheer bliss. I complimented her on her excellent evocation of Venice. ‘Thank you, but I’ve never been there,’ she said, to my astonishment.

But it’s brilliant if you can manage to visit the place you’ve set your book, as nothing’s quite the same as experiencing first hand the light and the smell and the noise and the atmosphere of an unfamiliar place.

Annie’s Story, Book 1 of The Voyagers trilogy, begins in 1913 where Annie is a housemaid in a fictitious King’s Lynn’s  country house. As I grew up in Norwich and my grandparents lived in King’s Lynn, the Norfolk settings didn’t give me too much problem. Also, my 100-year-old razor-sharp father-in-law had been a butler at several grand country houses around Britain for 40 years or so, and was a mine of information about the goings on ‘above and below stairs’.

King's Lynn

King’s Lynn

My own grandparents were servants who emigrated to Australia in 1913 ‘to better themselves’, so my grandfather said. But beyond the voyage, I never asked them about what happened once they had arrived in Melbourne. Trouble is, we don’t realise how important it is to record our older relatives’ memories until it’s too late. My excuse was that I wasn’t a novelist at the time!
I didn’t know the route the Orsova took in 1913 which was important in my story. And then all the information I needed came to me serendipitously.

And that’s what my next blogpost is about…

Two paintings – enough to inspire my debut novel

ORSOVA_383Hanging on the wall in my writing cabin are two old hand-painted prints, about 2 feet across, in their original black japanned frames. My grandparents bought them as souvenirs when they were on board the R.M.S.Orsova, a ship carrying the mail and twelve hundred sea-faring passengers and crew. The young engaged couple were bound for Australia. The year was 1913. One image is of the ship in stormy seas, the other in calm.

Since a child I’ve always loved these two pictures. When our parents would take us to visit Nana and Pop in their little terraced cottage in later years, my sister would fly through the front parlour to find them, but I would always hover in front of the two ship pictures, staring at them, imagining the people on board and wondering where they were going. It was only when I was about ten that Pop told me he and Nana had sailed on that ship all the way to Australia, and I would beg them for stories about the voyage and what happened when they got there. They eventually came home with two-year-old Harold (who was to become my father), after seven years because Nana pined for her sisters. At least that was what they told me at the time. The truth was very different. If only I’d written it all down, as I only remember bits and pieces of their lives in Melbourne.

MigrantsBut the pictures were enough to give me the idea and inspiration to write my first novel, using my grandparents’ decision to emigrate to Australia as a trigger point for my heroine, Annie. But almost everything in Annie’s Story is fictitious and does not follow my grandparents’ story. I don’t want Nana and Pop performing somersaults in their grave thinking the readers will get the wrong idea!

It was a moment of connection when Tracy Chevalier gave a talk at a Persephone lunch one day on her best-selling Girl with a Pearl Earring. Apparently Tracy had Vermeer’s print on her bedroom wall since she was nineteen, and one day she wondered what story lay behind the girl in the painting.

I believe that behind every novel lurks a real-life snippet that inspires the author to get that story written down. In fact, if authors made a point of telling their audience what inspired them to write their novel, I am sure some fascinating stories would emerge.

Inspiration, then doing it.

inspirationI’m talking about inspiration. Who or what inspired you to write your first novel? What was the moment when you knew you could do it and would do it? When you suddenly gained the confidence to tackle something so mammoth? When your life and family and job, even if one or more of those areas was in disharmony, still pointed the way that ‘this was the hour’ to make that decision and actually begin?

I’d wanted to write ‘a book’ since I was nine. By ‘book’ I meant fiction, such as the kind of adventures my idol, Enid Blyton, wrote about. I began by writing a serial and was the only pupil to have it pinned up on the class notice-board. I remember even to this day the thrill of seeing my story on display, and a group of children clustered round, avidly reading it. Then demanding to know when they would be able to read the next episode. Oh, the stress, even for a nine-year-old!

Adult life rolled along, and my writing consisted of dozens of short stories and articles and letters, together with some editing of a couple of charity magazines. But I was no nearer to my dream of writing a novel. And if I thought about it, I was beset with fear that I wasn’t clever enough.

But the dream kept nudging me. So I decided to go on a writing course. The only possibility in Tunbridge Wells at the time (ten years ago) was one morning a week at a script-writing course put on by the Adult Education Centre. I was disappointed it was script writing. ‘You’ll learn just as much, if not more, about novel writing on that one,’ said Richard, my published friend. So I took his advice. We started with a class of about 15 with Malcolm Davidson, our tutor. He had a wonderful wry sense of humour so I wasn’t surprised he had been on the US team writing the great American sit-com, The Golden Girls. He was an excellent teacher but even so, our class dwindled rapidly to a half a dozen.

At the end of the year I had a one-to-one with him and told him my secret dream of writing a novel. He asked me if I had An Idea. I told him I had two pictures of a ship called the Orsova hanging in my sitting room, which my grandparents had bought when they sailed to Australia in 1913, thinking they were going to emigrate. I told him I didn’t know many details of their journey or their seven-year time spent in Melbourne, but had enough of my own ideas to completely fictionalise it. Then I said I wanted to intersperse it with a present-day heroine who follows in her grandparents’ footsteps.

‘That’s a parallel timeline,’ he said.

‘Do you think I’m being too ambitious for a first novel?’ I asked.

‘No,’ was his answer. ‘If you get stuck on one story you can turn to the other. And I can see you’re excited by the idea, so that’s the one to go with. You can do it.’

So I did.

Brief Encounters with London taxi drivers

taxi_bigbenTaxi drivers are a pretty diverse lot. Most of them enjoy a friendly chat. Some of them are really interesting with the added bonus of having a wry sense of humour, and I often learn useful snippets of information. But some drivers can be quite morose.

I use London taxis frequently and always make an effort to make some contact with each one. If they look sulky or uninterested in me and where I’m going, it becomes a challenge to change their mood. Take last week. I gave the driver a big smile as I asked him to take me to Mayfair and he just nodded. As I stepped into the taxi I said a cheerful ‘Good morning’, and didn’t even receive a reply. So I added, ‘Now what’s made you so grumpy today, when the sun’s shining?’

Yes, I know I take the risk that I will receive a short sharp retort but it’s a risk worth taking. This taxi driver immediately gave me a wide grin and said, ‘Sorry, love. I didn’t mean to be.’ We proceeded to have a stimulating talk about setting the world to rights – often their favourite subject.

When they ask me what I do and I say I’m a writer they are almost always impressed. One said, ‘I had one of you romantic writers in the back of my cab the other week.’ I asked who it was. ‘Katie Fforde,’ came the unexpected reply. ‘I know her,’ I said, delighted. ‘She’s lovely. And a best-selling writer, too.’ He was very pleased he’d met someone so famous!

I always ask very politely if I may leave one of my bookmarks on the back seat. (You never know who might climb in after you’ve vacated.) This would be awkward if I’d remained silent until I got to my destination. But by now we’re old friends and without fail they say, ‘’Course you can, love.’ If I haven’t already told them what it’s about they usually ask me, and have occasionally ended up buying a book there and then. (Every published writer should carry a copy of her latest book at all times.) If I really like them and they seem genuinely interested, I give them a book instead of a tip. By the time I’ve done the honours and signed, there’s a good chance I’ve missed my train. But I’m not grumbling.

At the moment I’m promoting Seller Beware: How Not To Sell Your Business, which is probably more appropriate than handing them a romantic novel, as taxi drivers still tend to be male. But this is what happened the other day when the driver dropped me off at Charing Cross station.

‘May I leave a bookmark of a book I wrote which was recently published?’ I asked.

‘Not this one, is it?’ he swung round in his seat and held up my Seller Beware bookmark. I was astounded. ‘Out of all the 22,000 cabs in London,’ he parodied in a dreadful Bogey accent, ‘you have to ride in the back of mine.’

We burst out laughing.

‘I’ve given away about 30 Seller Beware bookmarks to London taxi drivers in the last year,’ I said, ‘so what are the chances of that happening?’

He drove off, still chuckling.

I love these brief encounters. Now all I have to do is make sure I get a smut in my eye before I step into the next taxi and hope the driver’s got a clean hankie, ready to whisk it out! Who knows where that might lead me!

The Marrakech Express

marrakech trainPeople’s jaws drop when I tell them my sister and I have just been to Morocco and back by rail. ‘I didn’t think it was possible,’ several people said, so I had to explain there’s an hour’s ferry trip involved when you cross over to Gibraltar. But it was so much more fun than hanging around an airport for hours, with all the queues for security searches, not to mention being trapped in an aeroplane with inferior food and breathing in the same stale air. By rail means you simply board the train, open the window to let in some fresh air, and start travelling. And because every train ran on time there were no delays.

We were a group of 28 on The Marrakech Express booked through Great Rail Journeys. Irene (flowery t-shirt on left-hand side below), our bubbly German tour manager, kept us all under control (being mostly of the older generation we sometimes became a bit unruly), looked after our welfare, sorted out any problems, and shared hilarious anecdotes of previous trips. She was a hoot. We came off the train every night, staying between one and three nights in Biarritz, Seville, Rabat, Marrakech, Fez, Granada and Barcelona.
ScanImage002

For practically the whole way the scenery was stunning: mountains, fields of swaying wheat, barley and corn, grazing cows, goats and sheep, and extensive forests. When we arrived in Morocco it wasn’t red and barren as we expected, but green and lush. If we’d flown we’d never have enjoyed the changing countryside as we travelled from Europe to Africa.

Being a writer I made lots of notes of the trip and our mini adventures, as my next heroine might well go to Morocco by train. But she’ll have to tell me what happens when she meets a gorgeous Moroccan on board, as unfortunately I didn’t have that experience! It will have to be a case of ‘write what you don’t know!’