Author Archives: Jane Cable

SISTER SCRIBES’ READING ROUND UP: MAY

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Kitty

The Book of Us – Andrea Michael

Oh my goodness, this book. This book won my heart over, filled it with joy and then smashed it into itty-bitty pieces. A story of friendship, loyalty and love, it explores many issues, particularly how perception and truth can be very different things as well as how some bonds are so strong they can never be broken.

I found it to be written with an emotional insight, depth and honesty that lifted it apart. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Beautiful.

Cass

A Borrowed Past – Juliette Lawson

What would you do if you discovered your whole life was built on a lie? This is the question a teenage William Harper has to face up to on more than one occasion in this excellent, page-turning story.

William dreams of being an artist, something his strict father is strongly against, but when a shocking family secret is uncovered, William takes his chance, running away from home to start a new life… but even as the years pass, and he grows from boy to man, further challenging truths emerge, showing the past is never far behind him.

I do love to pick up a book, not really knowing what to expect beyond what the blurb has told me, and my enjoyment of this story was definitely enhanced by the settings (as much a heart and soul of the story as the characters) in the northeast of England.

Having lived near York for seven years, it was a delight to tread the well-known streets with William, and the settings of Seaton Carew and Scarborough were also fascinating backdrops to this historical saga.

The writing was beautifully evocative of the era and the story skilfully documented, painting the page with words much as William longed to spill the images in his mind onto paper with a brush.

Ms Lawson writes captivating descriptions, strong narrative and relatable and believable dialogue between her well-drawn characters. She has a wonderful ability to draw the reader inside the pages of the book, to feel as though they are living the moments alongside William, and I cannot wait to read more in the Seaton Carew saga series.

A Borrowed Past is a compelling, wholly enjoyable read and I highly recommend it.

Jane

Her Mother’s Secret – Jan Baynham

This impressive debut transported me to Greece. The ability to weave a setting from words without the descriptions overtaking the story is a real skill and this book shines because of it.

The characters are fascinating too. For me, the 1969 ones in particular, when Elin spends her father’s legacy to attend an art school on a Greek island. Each person is carefully drawn and none of them are wasted in what they bring to the plot. I was pulled into Elin’s story, the friendships she forms, the enemies she inadvertently makes and the love she finds; the shocking reason it doesn’t all end as she would have wished.

For a dual timeline (Elin in 1969 and her daughter Alexandra in 1991) the structure is unusual in that after a few opening chapters straight after Elin’s death the book tells first her story and then Alexandra’s. But I can see it needed to be that way for the story to unfold in the correct manner. And it was refreshing not to be hopping about in time too.

I would thoroughly recommend Her Mother’s Secret. It was published by Ruby Fiction last month as an ebook across all major formats.

 

 

SISTER SCRIBES GUEST: LINDA HUBER ON FAMILY SECRETS

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I’m delighted to welcome the lovely Linda Huber, a prolific author and fellow Swiss resident, to Frost Magazine today, where she’s talking about how family secrets inspired her writing.

It’s always fascinating, talking to older family members and hearing their stories of days gone by. I remember my grandmother talking about her life growing up in Edinburgh with her parents and brothers. The family were keen photographers so we have a wealth of photos ranging from Granny as a toddler in 1890-something, all the way up to her last years, when she lived in Glasgow with her younger brother.

What she never mentioned was either of the wars she lived through, apart from the odd comment about food rationing. Another taboo was the death of my grandfather when my mother was just fourteen. He died in an industrial accident on the railway, where he worked, so Granny was given compensation – a return train ticket to London. It was her first and only trip outside Scotland. How I wish I’d been old enough to know I should be questioning her greedily, saving up her answers for my own children. I was still a teenager when she died, and there was too much Mum didn’t know either.

That’s how it is with family secrets, I think – usually, they’re not so much grisly skeletons in the closet as things that are just too hard to speak about. Or maybe, details are simply forgotten over time, not mentioned because nobody thinks to. When I was researching my family tree, I came across a distant little cousin who’d drowned in a Glasgow swimming pool in the 1940s, aged eleven. I’d never heard of her, and my mother could only just remember hearing her talked of. It was a tragedy lost over generations, though I’m sure little Agnes’s close family still remember.

Other secrets are grisly and terrible. A few years ago, I read a news story where someone had kept something truly awful from his nearest and dearest for over twenty years. I won’t say more because they are real people, but this man’s wife and children had no idea that the person they were living with was capable of what he had done. That started me thinking… and the end result is my ninth psychological suspense novel, The Runaway.

Cass (left) and Linda (right)

In the book, Nicola, Ed and Kelly Seaton relocate from London to lovely Cornwall. It should be a fresh start for them all – teenager Kelly had got in with a bad crowd, Ed had lost his job and Nicola was struggling to keep the family on an even keel. So they moved into Ed’s old family home by the sea. Nicola was determined to make a success of the new life, but little did she suspect what had happened in the house when Ed was growing up. He’d kept his secret well…

This is the third book I’ve set in Cornwall; I’m making no secret of the fact that I love the place! The Seaton family’s new home is near St Ives, which has fabulous beaches and a beautiful old town. It’s years now since I’ve been there, but one day I’ll go back. And meanwhile, I can write about it.

 

Linda Huber grew up in Glasgow but went to work in Switzerland for a year aged twenty-two, and has lived there ever since. Her day jobs have included working as a physiotherapist in hospitals and schools for handicapped children, and teaching English in a medieval castle.

Her writing career began in the nineties, when she had over fifty short stories published in women’s magazines before turning to longer fiction. The Runaway is her ninth psychological suspense novel.

Find out more about Linda at www.lindahuber.net or follow her on Twitter @LindaHuber19

SISTER SCRIBES: JANE CABLE ON HOW WINNING A FACEBOOK COMPETITION INSPIRED A BOOK

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As an author, the most frequently asked questions are without a doubt about what inspires you. Sometimes it’s the very smallest thing, but wherever an idea starts it needs to become a snowball, slowly gathering size and pace, to create the perfect storm – if you’ll excuse my rather poorly mixed weather metaphors.

My lastest book Endless Skies had the strangest of starts. My husband Jim and I are huge fans of The Great British Menu, and when one of the then finalists, Colin McGurran, organised a Facebook competition to win a stay at his restaurant with rooms in Lincolnshire, Winteringham Fields, we decided to enter. It was a simple ‘yes or no’ question followed by a draw, so Jim decided to take ‘yes’ and I would take ‘no’. Unfortunately I never did complete my half of the bargain as my mother was rushed into hospital. Fortunately the answer was ‘yes’ and even more fortunately, Jim’s name was drawn out of the hat.

One of Colin’s signature dishes

We arrived at the village of Winteringham on the banks of the Humber on a glorious summer day and once we had checked in went for a walk. The skies above us were blue and quite immense – on a different scale to anything we had seen elsewhere – but half way back across a field of stubble we heard what sounded like thousands of running footsteps behind us. We turned, only to see a curtain of rain approaching. It was a scene so incredible it had to find its way into a book and a tiny seed was planted.

For a while it rattled around in my head as I was working on Another You. Eventually I did some research about the area and discovered it was where Ermine Street ended and the Romans probably tried to cross the Humber. What a great place for an archaeologist to find herself. Alone, under that vast, empty sky.

We returned to Winteringham Fields the next year to celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary and explored the area further, including the wonderful museum and library at Scunthorpe, where I was able to find out more about archaeological digs in the area. By this time I was writing; Rachel was alive in my head and we were having such fun disappearing down Roman rabbit holes together.

The settings; gorgeous Winteringham with its spectral remoteness and the bustling city of Lincoln were firmly established and the characters were coming along nicely too. Not just Rachel, but her octogenarian friend Esther (based more than a little on my mother, who had died between our first and second visits), and then men in Rachel’s life; Ben, Jem and Jonathan. I had an intricate plot as well, but something just wasn’t working.

The war memorial at Hemswell

It took another visit to Lincolnshire to fathom it out. Jim is a keen cook and for his fiftieth birthday I arranged for him to spend a day in the kitchen at Winteringham Fields with Colin and his team. While he was up to his elbows in fish preparation I decided to visit the vast antiques centre at the old RAF base at Hemswell in search of a wooden towel rail for our spare room.

I found so much more. Standing in a quiet room at the back of the centre, with the sounds of schoolchildren in the playground next door drifting through the open window, it came to me. World War Two. I was in an old barrack block used by Polish airmen during the conflict and I could almost hear their feet on the lino as they ran down the stairs. The last piece of the jigsaw was in place and I could finish Endless Skies.

 

During our first visit to Winteringham Fields I reviewed it for Frost and you can read that review here. But not if you’re hungry.

Winteringham Fields Review

 

 

SISTER SCRIBES GUEST: KIRSTEN INTERVIEWS WRITER AND TUTOR CHRIS MANBY

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Today I ask the questions of Chris Manby.  Chris was the tutor on my very first retreat and we have since become good friends. Over to you, Chris.

  • First off the blocks. Plotter or pantser?

Definitely a plotter! I used to be a pantser but a series of short deadlines meant I had to get a strategy. I use screenplay principles to work out what needs to happen when though of course I often stray from my plan

  • How do you organise your work?

I’m a real geek.  When I get my deadline, I work out a timetable with daily word count based on the average length of a novel.  I make sure I allow myself weekends off (though rarely take them).  Then I just get writing.  I don’t stick to rigid hours but I do stick to daily word counts.

  • What is the hardest part of writing?

Getting through the mid-section of a book without losing pace and enthusiasm. Plotting helps as it means I can write something from the end instead and often that will inform what needs to happen in the middle.

  • And what is the most rewarding?

Most rewarding is returning to a manuscript after a week or so away from it and thinking “that’s actually not so bad”.

  • How has your writing style developed over time?

Photo credit: Michael Pilkington

I’m not sure my style has developed much at all!  I still think the first short story I had published –when I was fourteen – is one of the most elegant things I’ve ever written.  But I do now avoid swearing in my books. American readers in particular don’t like it.

  • What do you see as the greatest success of your writing career?

In the noughties, I had a few top ten bestsellers. That was wonderful.  But what felt like real success was when my sister said she loved one of my novels! It was The Worst Case Scenario Cookery Club.

  • And what was the deepest disappointment?

Any book that doesn’t sell is a disappointment but after twenty years I’m learning not to equate sales figures with a book’s intrinsic merits. I know my best-selling books are far from my best work!

  • Talk us through how you develop your characters.

In the same way we get to know a new friend.  The more time you spend with them, the better you know their quirks, their hopes and their dreams. Sometimes characters surprise me.

  • Sister Scribes is all about women writers supporting each other. Do you have a ‘go to’ bunch of fellow female writers you value and rely on?

I met a wonderful bunch of women in 2000 when, together with Fiona Walker and Jessica Adams, I edited an anthology called Girls’ Night In for War Child. Lucy Dillon and Alexandra Potter are two great friends from those days.  They’re always up for a glass of fizz and a chinwag.  More recently, through the Place To Write I’ve made some fantastic new friends, who are always ready with a word of encouragement. I don’t often show writer friends my work in progress though. I’m easily discouraged by faint praise. Better not to risk it.

  • Can you tell us anything about your next project(s)

I’ve just finished a ghost-writing project and now have three months to write a novel.  Fortunately, it’s already planned to the “nth” degree.  It’s called “What the Heart Sees” and the hero is… well, he’s small, dark and very, very hairy.

 

 

JANET GOVER INTRODUCES THE RNA’S ONLINE WRITING COURSES

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Writers might be solitary creatures much of the time, but that doesn’t mean we are finding the current restrictions any easier to deal with. Our nature leads us to keeping our minds active, and like everyone else, we are missing being with friends and colleagues at social gatherings, conferences and events.

Purely by chance, a project I’ve been working on for a while now is coming to fruition at just the right time. I’m talking about the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s new online learning programme #RNALearning.

Teaching and writing are two things I’ve done all my life, and I’m also a bit of a geek. When online training was first suggested to me in my day job as an IT trainer, I wasn’t too thrilled. I like face to face contact with people I’m teaching. They are more likely to laugh at my jokes that way. But once I started training online, I soon became a convert.

It’s so easy to attend an online course. There’s no special technology needed – just the internet. If you can watch a cute cat video online and send an email, you can do an online course. And in the current world, it’s a great way to keep our minds active in a lockdown.

Online courses can include watching videos (and not feeling guilty about it), joining online chat (see previous comment re guilt), downloading notes and doing exercises. It’s a great way to maintain contact with other writers, and because it’s online you can make it fit into whatever your time commitments are.

The RNA’s courses are open to anyone to join, whatever genre they are writing. Tutors will cover topics of interest for writers at all stages of their career, using the RNA’s online learning portal, via Moodle, a standard teaching tool used in many colleges and universities.

It’s my great joy to be the tutor for the scheme’s pilot course: Taking the Plunge – Your Submission Pack – which runs for the entire month of May. This is aimed at anyone who wants to follow a traditional publishing route and submit their work to an agent or traditional publisher. I’ll be talking about giving a book the best possible chance with agents and editors: preparing the MS, writing a synopsis and cover letter and what to do when the answer is no – or what to expect if it’s yes. Most importantly, there’ll be exercises and feedback for everyone. At the end of the course, participants should have their submission pack ready to go.

We started planning this last year – and never expected to be launching it in a world turned upside down by crisis. I hope it will be more than just a learning experience full of useful information for writers – I also hope it will help us all feel more positive in this difficult time.

Bookings are now being taken for the first course. Details can be found at:

https://romanticnovelistsassociation.org/rna-learning-intro-page/ or email janetgover@romanticnovelistsassociation.org

 

About the author:  Janet Gover is a former journalist and IT specialist turned award-winning novelist. She is also a qualified trainer and a well regarded writing tutor. She runs the RNA’s New Writers’ Scheme and is part of the Association’s education team.

SISTER SCRIBES’ READING ROUND UP: APRIL

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Kitty:

Firstly, I thoroughly enjoyed The Cottage in a Cornish Cove, a romantic comedy set in Cornwall and written by a fellow Sister Scribe. Cass Grafton’s descriptions of the county made me feel as I were home, I could see Polkerran beautifully in my mind and the descriptions of community were so well done that I could hear the characters calling to each other as they made their way around the village. Her gentle humour is woven throughout and I was genuinely willing the hero and the heroine together.  I particularly loved how she starts each chapter with a quote from classic romances with each one giving a snippet of what we can expect from the chapter.

I picked up expecting The Charm Bracelet by Ella Allbright a romance and what I got was so much more. The concept behind this novel, the charm bracelet with each charm marking a major event in, and telling the story of, Jake and Leila’s lives, is fabulous. I fell in love with Jake from the very first page and absolutely adored the way his character developed from boy to adult and was willing the relationship on with my whole being. There is however a twist to this tale and this was what made the book so special for me. The author has turned my heart inside out and this story will stay with me for a long time.  Highly recommended.

 

Jane:

First this month my reading took me to Dorset and the Jurassic coast around Lyme Regis. Georgia Hill’s timeslip On a Falling Tide had some lovely comments made about it by other authors I thought I should try it for myself.

The book travels between the 1860s, where Lydia wants no more than to be a fossil hunter but is expected to marry to further her uncle’s business interests, and the present day where Charity is searching for her roots following her grandfather’s death. The two women are linked by an ammonite Charity finds on the beach, but as the story unfolds what binds  them together runs far deeper than that. To say more would give away too much of the story, but Georgia Hill has created a fantastically malevolent ghost – and a heart warming love story – all rolled into one.

I was looking for a proper comfort read when I was reminded I hadn’t read any of Sue McDonagh’s romances by seeing the gorgeous new cover for her third book. Sue is a proper creative all rounder – she’s an artist as well as a writer so paints her own cover images.

I decided to go back to the beginning so downloaded Summer at The Art Café. The premise is wonderful; Lucy wins a gorgeous motorbike in a raffle and despite – or maybe because of – her husband’s disapproval, she decides to learn to ride it and in the process finds so much more than just the freedom of the roads.

What I loved the most about this book is that the characters settle under your skin without you noticing – they are all so effortlessly real, and that is a true gift. From bike instructor Ashley, to his six year old daughter, to Lucy’s best friends at the café, they all rang true and their journeys were convincing. For me the icing on the cake was that the book is set in my native South Wales, but it would be a delightful read for anyone who enjoys a satisfying romance.

 

SISTER SCRIBES GUEST: JAN BAYNHAM ON WRITING HER DEBUT NOVEL

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Jan Baynham is a good friend to all the Sister Scribes and here she provides an insight into writing her debut novel, Her Mother’s Secret: The Summer of ’69. Susanna Bavin asks the questions.

You started out as a short story and flash fiction writer. What made you decide to write a full-length novel?

On retirement, I joined a writing group where I wrote my first short story. Very soon, I could see my stories getting longer and longer. After enrolling on a novel-writing course at Cardiff University, I enjoyed being able to explore characters in more depth and delve further into their stories. I still write shorts but now it tends to be when I’m editing or doing research for a novel. When writing a novel, I love getting to know my characters so well that I miss them when I come to the end and I enjoy visiting new locations with them. The length of a novel allows me to create more involved plots and sub-plots for the characters to experience than I’m able to do in a short story or piece of flash fiction.

What was the initial idea behind the story from which it all grew?

The novel started out as a short story. At the time, I’d been reading a novel where the rustling in the trees sounded like whispers and inanimate statues took on the form of the ghosts of people they represented. Combining both ideas, I asked myself what if the whispering could show the presence of a past family member. Always fascinated by family secrets and the bond between mothers and daughters, I knew I had the basis for a story. In both the story and the novel, I leave it to the reader to decide what the whispering represents. In the short story, Alexandra’s search for the truth was resolved quite quickly whereas in the novel there are many more twists and turns, obstacles and setbacks before the story concludes.

Tell us about the places that feature as the backdrops of the story.

Once I’d decided that my main character Elin would be an artist, I chose a setting where the surrounding colours would be more vibrant and intense than in her home country of Wales. Having visited many times and being struck by the wonderful palette of colours seen in every landscape, Greece was my choice of background. The island is not based on one particular place but is an amalgam of areas I’ve visited. Every holiday has contributed to the whole backdrop where I’ve tried to show the climate, the vivid colours of the sea and the flowers as well as the warmth of its people.

How important is the mother-daughter dynamic to the story?

The mother/daughter relationship is central to the novel. Alexandra is grieving after the untimely death of her mother, Elin. She experiences a whole gamut of emotions from deep loss and its accompanying sadness, through to anger that her mother has abandoned her. When she learns there is part of her mother’s life she knew nothing about, Alexandra goes to Greece with the hope of finding answers.

What have you learned about the writing/editing process? Is there a piece of advice you’d like to share?

Everything suggested by my lovely editor at Ruby Fiction was very clear and straight-forward, but one thing stood out. I hadn’t always got the dates or passing of time issues right. Elin’s story is interspersed with diary entries and these didn’t always tally! The way I dealt with these continuity edits was to have a calendar in front of me and highlight the dates as events happened. Although a diary may not feature in another novel, I will definitely use a calendar to check the passing of time in future.

 

SISTER SCRIBES GUEST: STEPH HAXTON ON MOVING THE MUSE

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Steph Haxton was one of the first local writers I met when I moved to Cornwall. Historian turned author (or gamekeeper turned poacher, as she’d have it), her research is meticulous and her wit legendary. Unfortunately for me she’s now moved to Scotland, but how would the sometimes elusive Mrs Muse take to the change?

 

Mrs Muse, plugging a new novel set in Scotland, by June should have been sitting on the doorstep of our new home. But I’d had not a peep for weeks. She’d showed briefly at Holyrood Palace; she’s a sucker for anything royal. But after a quick tap on the shoulder, she scarpered again.

A month later I decided to head up the M90 to Innerpeffray Library, a place highly recommended by a fellow bibliophile. With an overview of where I was headed, I let the Sat Nav tell guide me. My relationship with it being troubled, when it directed me off the dual carriageway not far outside Perth, I was immediately suspicious.

‘Turn right to Roman Road.’ It didn’t look likely, was signposted something else.

But round two sharp bends, there it was! Only a bloomin’ Roman road; straight, classic width, ditches either side bordered by beautiful woodland. Wow!

I had to stop a few miles on, when the trees dropped away.  On a ridgeway, I faced a breath-taking view over the Strathearn. Thirty seconds later, four police motorcyclists in formation swept past, easily doing 50mph. Incongruous on a rural lane, they were clearly enjoying a Roman road too!

Before long the brown sign for Innerpeffray Library sent me down a potholed track. A turf path though trees, a red squirrel bouncing ahead of me, led me past ancient yews surrounding a tiny chapel where a rash of goose-bumps swept me from head to toe. Around another corner stood the Library.

‘Hello! You took your time!’ said my precocious afflatus.

Beautiful books and friendly faces greeted me. A lovely volunteer explained the Roman origins of the site and the library’s history. I took a sharp intake of breath: 1680, a date central to my next novel. I had been looking for somewhere to ‘place’ the female protagonist. Even if Mrs Muse hadn’t been elbowing me in the ribs, I’d have known – this was it!

The weird coincidences continued: the gentleman giving me a tour of the reading room originally came from the Roseland. That might account for his choice of pages in Camden’s ‘Britannica’. But his finger, pointing straight at Pendennis, the castle at the core of my books? No. THAT was extraordinary. There was more.

The exhibition in the display cases was on ‘Emigration’. A member of the Library had researched and highlighted a name amongst the many hundreds in the borrowers’ registers.  Haxton. Ours is not a common surname anywhere so, of all the names in Perthshire, the odds of that had to be pretty long.

I was still shaking my head in disbelief when a charming couple came in. We were introduced. Roman re-enactors, they live about 500 yards from our new address. When they shared an experience that Mrs Muse began applauding with gusto, I beat a retreat on ‘overload’!

Deliberately taking a different road back to the A9, I found myself approaching the junction that I’d taken so warily almost exactly two hours earlier, but from the opposite direction.

There, sweeping across the carriageway ahead and disappearing into the trees, were four police motorcyclists. The same ones? I’ve no idea.

All I could hear was Mrs Muse yelling, ‘They aren’t police riders! They’re the ghosts of Romans, horsemen, and they continually ride the same route on one day every hundred years. They’ve just updated their steeds …’

I don’t care where she’s been, but Mrs Muse is definitely back!