Research On the Go - a fairy tale by Valerie-Anne Baglietto

Once upon a time...

...a woman of indeterminate age set off on a journey. This woman – with dark hair that was not entirely natural anymore, and dark eyes framed by black geeky glasses – was, and always had been, a Writer. The journey wasn’t as perilous as others she had embarked on, as it didn’t involve the M6; but the A49 proved eventful enough.

The cottage the Writer was staying in for a week had a wonderful, quirky name, yet she wouldn’t reveal it to anyone until her dying breath – or at least until it popped up in one of her novels.

The detachment of being away from home lent a fresh perspective to her research. She found herself taking lots… and lots… of photographs with her phone. (Thank goodness for WiFi and that one terabyte of cloud drive, she realised, as she made sure to back them up daily.)

Now, oddly enough, the Writer lived in a picturesque village herself. But somehow, it was easy to be blind to sights she saw regularly. The saying “familiarity breeds contempt” didn’t seem so cliched when she considered how a never-before-seen vista can spark inspiration, or a new outlook lift a story up out of the grey and into a rainbow of light.

Trying to capture the essence of a place in a photograph wasn’t easy, the Writer discovered, especially with a phone case that made the edges of certain photographs blurry and pink. But it was worthwhile and fun. Viewing the typical settings of her stories with a fresh lens meant creativity was stirred and new scenes imagined.

An old gate here (ooh, the possibilities of where it might lead!) or a pretty cottage. A crumbling, ancient gravestone remembering a tragic young life, or a war memorial marking the loss of so many others.

The Writer’s brain was never still, never silent. 

Without the infinite number of errands and chores she faced back home, it was uplifting. Only a finite number to tackle here. Such as feeding the dog. And the children. The writer might not be sitting at her desk slaving over her keyboard, but she was working, even while enjoying a break from the chains of deadlines or fitting in laundry (washing and hanging) between chapters. She was “on holiday”, and yet… she wasn’t. There was no need to feel guilty. She was free. Her mind was free. More importantly, inspiration was free – to run wild.

How fortunate Writers are these days, she thought, to be able to record their travels in pictures, storing them in albums on hard-drives or printing them out and pinning to study walls. Perhaps she would add her photographs to a Pinterest board. Or use a particular favourite as a screensaver. She would decide once she was home. There was no rush. No pressure. It was satisfying simply to be able to enjoy them and play games with the possibilities...

A whitewashed cottage for the heroine,
with flowers around the door.

A posh house - for a posh person? 
The hero's imperious mother, maybe?

'The Old Vicarage'. 
Does that mean an old vicar should live here?

An uber-modern interior for the posh house?
Interesting...

Who would want to walk along here on a dark night?
*shudders*

Every village needs a quaint church,
but just look at that impeccable lawn!
(Gardener with a strain of OCD perhaps?)

And of course, the village local.
Indispensable.

Once upon a time...

...a Writer went on a journey and finally returned home, if not with a tan (it was only the Forest of Dean, after all), then at least with a whole new village in her head.

The End

By day, Valerie-Anne Baglietto writes contemporary, grown-up fiction. By night, she clears up after her husband and three children. Occasionally she sleeps. During her career so far she has written rom-coms for Hodder & Stoughton, won the Romantic Novelists’ Association New Writer’s Award and been shortlisted in the 2015 Love Stories Awards. Valerie-Anne tweets @VABaglietto

Valerie-Anne's latest modern fairy tale for grown-ups is available from Amazon worldwide click here for more details.

Getting it Done and Dusted by Cheryl Lang

I’ve finished my book, Lemongrass, a contemporary novel of approximately 85,000 words, set partly among the Greek Islands. I’ve read through and altered, deleted and added words and sentences I think might improve things. All this has been directly on the computer. Now I’m printing it out and going through it again. So why is it that reading the printed word throws up so many more anomalies?

I’m finding silly sentences like this: ‘The wind was stronger by the lighthouse and just offshore cormorants were drying their outspread wings on some rocks.’ It gave me a laugh, imagining the cormorants detaching their wings and putting them on the rocks to dry! There has to be some fun in the process. I have changed it now.

I also find that I have a bad habit of repeating a word, either in the same sentence or close by. The trouble is, I don’t always pick it up.

I’m also, hopefully, aware of continuity. It’s a bit disconcerting when you get halfway through the story and wonder if you’ve changed a character’s name or given too much information in one go.

Once I’ve been through the printed version, I’ll transfer it all to my kindle and read it on that for a different perspective. I hope to pick up any inconsistencies at this time and check the timeline is tenable. At this stage I hope to have a viable story.

And oh, the doubts! Is my male character strong enough? Likeable? Is the heroine's story interesting? Is the whole thing workable? Have I given enough background for the pair? Too much? Too little? Have I trickled it through the story and not as an information dump? It’s her story, told from her point of view, but should I make it dual points of view?

Doing the research is something I really enjoy. I'm drawn to exotic locations and love finding out facts relating to the area I want to write about. That usually leads me down further, diverse paths, but I have to be careful to only pick out details which are relevant to the novel I'm writing. There is so much information out there. I love it when I have a sudden question, like, where would I be able to dock a super yacht in the Mediterranean? Somewhere that has depth of water, sea room - a marina perhaps? Or a harbour big enough and with facilities. If I dig deep enough I usually find the answers I want.

Photos are particularly useful. When you’ve never visited a place and want to set a scene there, there are endless sources for photos and videos to help you out. However, travelling to a location is far better, as long as you make notes.

So, for my next novel, I’ll really need to visit Malaysia, or maybe, Vietnam or Mauritius! The list goes on.

Y is for...? by Annie Burrows

On the first Friday of every month, Novelista Annie Burrows has been sharing a very personal view of what it is like to be a writer. And is dealing with themes in alphabetical order. This month, she's reached Y which is for...

OK, I have to confess that I resorted to going through the dictionary to find a word that began with Y, round which to write this month's blog. I could have cheated, and gone with "Why" which would have given me a lot of leeway. But I didn't want to do that.

Anyway, there aren't that many words in the dictionary beginning with Y, so I knew it wouldn't take me long to read through them.

Thankfully, it took only a few seconds to discover this little gem: Yesteryear which is a poetical or archaic form for "a time in the past". Which seemed appropriate, as that is where I set my stories.

I've always had a fascination for yesteryear. It started when I was a little girl, with family trips to various stately homes. When we got home, my sister and I would dress up as ladies of the manor, and romp round the garden on imaginary horses - or, if it was wet, we'd draw plans of our ideal stately home, complete with dungeons, secret passages, and of course, massive libraries.

I started reading historical romances at school, although I didn't know it then. I thought I was studying Jane Austen, and Thomas Hardy. I still thought I was studying English literature at University, without realizing that reading all those stories, written in the past, had given me a love of reading about people from the past. After I left university, I didn't want to keep on studying great literature, but I did still find myself gravitating towards stories set in the past.

At first, I devoured books by writers such as Norah Lofts. I absolutely loved the way she took us into the lives of relatively ordinary people and brought an era to life. And then carried that story to the next generation.

Then I discovered Georgette Heyer, and learned that historical stories didn't need to be dark and melodramatic, they could be amusing romps.

And then, much later, when I was doing a writing course and I began to research the market, I discovered the "Masquerade" line produced by Mills & Boon. And I fell in love with historical romance - as a reader and as a writer. These were the kind of stories that were already forming in my imagination - where simple country misses won the heart of an apparently cold, aloof, brooding aristocrat. Or survived kidnap by pirates, or ran away from evil guardians disguised as boys, and generally discovered they were far stronger and braver than they'd been given credit for.

So I began to write stories set primarily in the Regency era. Why Regency? Because there was an established market for that type of story, and because I thought I knew most about that era, having read so many others set in that time. Stories, I feel, should provide an escape from real life. And the Regency is a great place for many of us to escape to, since it is far enough away from Nowadays to feel suitably exotic, but familiar enough so that we don't feel all adrift when we get there.

The only trouble is, once I began to write Regency romance, in earnest, I began to discover just how little I knew. When I sent my first heroine on a journey to find her long-lost brother in Spain, for example, I had no idea what route she might take, or how she'd get back to England once he died, either. I didn't know a thing about troop movements in the Peninsula, or how wounded soldiers were looked after, or what happened to their effects once they'd died. What was worse, it was extremely difficult to find out. I would go to the library for a book on a specific topic, and read lots and lots of them without finding out the one thing I wanted to learn. (Although I picked up a lot of other interesting facts instead). The only way round it, at that time, was to plough on, and hope for the best. Anything I didn't know, I skirted round, but even so, I'm sure I made a lot of mistakes.

Fortunately, Nowadays, I have access to the internet. If I want to know how long it would take to travel by stagecoach from Yorkshire to London, I can probably find out within a matter of minutes. And what coaching inns my characters would be likely to have changed their horses, too.

Annie's latest book is a sort of road trip, through a section of fictional Regency countryside, since she is still wary of sending any of her heroes to a coaching inn in a real town which didn't exist in Real Life. However, the heroine does discover she can survive no matter what the villains try to do, and impresses the hero with not only her bravery and ingenuity, but also her singing voice.

You can find it at Amazon, and Mills & Boon

Writing What You Know... by Annie Burrows

Continuing Novelista Annie Burrow's monthly alphabetical rambling though the writer's life.  This week, she's reached the letter K, which is for...Knowing.  (Or not)

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." (Donald Rumsfeld)

When you first start writing people advise you to write what you know.  The argument goes that you cannot write a convincing story unless you know your subject inside out and upside down.  The trouble is, I wanted to write fiction set in Regency England, which is a place I have never been, and never can go to.  All my knowledge of the era comes from books.

However, when I started attempting to get a publishing deal, I felt fairly confident that I knew enough to be able to create a convincing fictional Regency world.  I've read stacks of Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen and the like.  And whatever I didn't know enough about, I could look up, right?

So I bought loads of books about every subject I thought I might need to know about - fashion, the army, the navy and biograpies of people who actually lived in the time which would hopefully give me an idea of the mindset of people living back then.

I even go round stately homes to get an extra "feel" for the era, especially ones where I can dress up in period costume, or have a ride in a carriage.

All the little details of dress, manners, and so forth, help to create a world that strikes a reader as "real".

For example, an author may set a scene by having the hero check his cravat in the mirror.  The heroine curtsies to him.  Instantly we're in an age where manners are more formal than today, and the costumes easily dateable.  The hero asks the lady to dance the waltz.  She refuses lest she be thought "fast".  We're very firmly in Regency territory.  So far, so good.

The trouble is, there are things about the Regency world that I never knew I didn't know.  I didn't know, for example - until it was mentioned on an author loop I belong to - that a girl couldn't waltz in public until she'd been granted permission, by one of the patronesses of Almack's, within those hallowed walls, to do so with an approved partner.  I'd had no idea how close I'd come to the brink of writing one of my heroines into committing such a social gaffe.

And a lot of authors fall into the same trap.  As a resident of the UK, I cringe whenever I read of Regency bucks going down to Dorsetshire to sample the local whiskey.  Or having to banish their dogs to the stables after an encounter with a skunk on the South Downs.  For me, such slips of the pen ruin my belief in the Regency world the author is trying to create.  Though I don't suppose it has any effect on readers who don't know that in Dorset the local brew would most likely be cider, and that the only way a skunk would wander onto the South Downs was if it had escaped from some local eccentric's private collection of rare species.

Which brings me back to the inimitable Donald Rumsfeld, who has been soundly mocked for warning the world about the danger of the "unknown unknowns".  As an author, I can vouch for the peril of those pesky facts that hamper us in our creative endeavours.  I have had my own heroes and heroines unwittingly do and say things that a person living in 1815 would not have done.  I have had them use the word "hello" - which was not in common use until the 1880's except on the hunting field.  I have also had them perform a twentieth century waltz, having had no idea that in the Regency era, the waltz was nothing like the rather tame dance performed today.

Only look at the way these couples are cavorting in each other's arms...

However, if I was now to describe the dance with complete accuracy, I suspect that editors and readers alike would find it hard to believe in it if my hero performed an acrobatic leap while the heroine hopped to one side.  It would strike them all as bizarre, and would ruin their belief in my Regency world just as surely as it would had they arrived at the ball in question in a porsche 911.

So - I'll probably need to disguise what I actually know, so that a reader will be convinced I do know what I'm talking about.

Donald Rumsfeld might have fared better with the world's press if he'd done the same.

Annie's next book, "A Mistress for Major Bartlett" which is part of a trilogy "The Brides of Waterloo", will be out in July 2015

I is for...Internet by Annie Burrows

On the first Friday of the month, Novelista Annie Burrows shares snippets from her writing life.  In alphabetical order.  This month she's reached the letter I

When I first started writing, I used a small word processor which I got second hand.  I used floppy disks (which regularly got corrupted) to save my work.  And when I wanted to do any research I went to my local library.

I used to spend hours browsing around the stacks, desperately searching for that one nugget of information I needed, and getting pretty frustrated in the process.  I never did find a book that could tell me where troops used to embark during the Peninsular War, or how often injured officers got sent home - though there were half a dozen biographies of Lord Wellington.

Eventually I realized I was going to have to cut back on the time I spent doing this sort of research, and concentrate on writing the story, or I was never going to get anywhere.  So - I couldn't find out where the troops disembarked from - did I really need to put it in my story?  Couldn't my heroine just receive a letter saying that her brother/uncle/sweetheart had sailed?

I still spent a lot of time going through second-hand bookshops, hoping to find that one book which would have the specific bit of information I wanted, and in the process learning all sorts of things that might come in useful one day (and subsequently have).

The next computer I bought (again, second hand so it was practically on its last legs) had a button I could press which would connect me to the internet.  Which opened up a whole new world of research possibilities.  Whatever I wanted to know about, you could bet someone had written an article (or blog, as online articles are known - mad, eh?) about it.

And now came a whole new form of time-wasting.  Instead of getting on a bus and going into town, where I would spend hours finding out virtually nothing useful, I could now waste an entire morning finding out a whole lot more than I ever actually needed to know.   Because every article (sorry, blog) seemed to have a link to another blog about something connected to the topic, which looked absolutely fascinating.   So I may have started out wanting to find what kind of rifle a soldier would have carried in 1815, and instead found a page which told me all about the parlour games people would have played during Christmas of 1814, and then stumbled upon all the information I'd wanted to find out about troop movements in the Peninsula three books ago!

I now regularly use one site to find colourful phrases for my characters to use, another to make sure that the language I put into my character's mouths was actually in use at the time they were alive, and another when I want to describe a Regency dance.

So - internet - good for research?  Yes, in that it's easier to find out exactly what I want to know.

However, I now have to be careful that I don't just end up wandering through the stacks of knowledge available to me from my own armchair, instead of getting on with the story.

And don't get me started on facebook.  Yes, it's a great way to keep in touch with readers and friends.  But do I really need to watch that video of a dog going berserk in obedience school?  Again?

Or post a picture of myself in the style of a French impressionist?

To find out more about how Annie wastes her time, you can find her on facebook.

Her latest book, a Regency romance, is "Lord Havelock's List" and can be purchased from Amazon UK

Writing What You Don't Know - Researching Locations by Louise Marley

The first time I heard 'write what you know', I was a teenager working as a typist for the local council. Did that mean I could only write about typists? How incredibly boring! But as it turned out, I 'knew' quite a lot. I knew what it felt like to fall in love, to be dumped, to lose a much loved member of my family - all those life experiences authors recycle into their books. When I crashed my car, I wrote about it in A Girl's Best Friend, along with my own experiences of what it felt like to be betrayed by a friend. When I lived in Bath I wrote about that too (along with all those movies and TV dramas I had seen filmed there), in Why Do Fools Fall in Love. And, being a writer, what I didn't know I made up.

So far, so good. But what happens when you have to write about something you don't know? When you have to do some actual *whisper it* research?

When I was asked to contribute to the Sunlounger anthologies (along with my fellow Novelista, Valerie-Anne Baglietto), the brief was to write a story set in a holiday destination. No problem, I'd just come back from a holiday in Sorrento, I'd write about that (The Indecent Proposal). Well, as it turned out, it's one thing going on holiday somewhere, quite another to have to write a story about it. I dug out my holiday photos and wrote notes about everything I remembered, but it wasn't enough. I had to do some research.

In the old days I'd have headed for the library; nowadays everything is easily available online. Maybe a little too easily, because there is one huge problem with information on the Internet. It's not always accurate. (Shocker!) So I have a rule of three - check facts three times from three different sources.

When it came to writing my story for Sunlounger 2 (The Accidental Proposal) I approached it differently. I'd have my characters arrive in New Orleans as tourists and I worked out an itinerary for them. (You can see my original notes for that here). Of course, that threw up a whole load of new problems. In my original story I had them visiting one of the famous cemeteries at night - it turns out they shut at night! There was a scene where the characters are standing in the street drinking cocktails. In some States that's illegal but fortunately (at the time of writing) it wasn't illegal in New Orleans. There was another scene I'd set beside the tomb of the famous Marie Laveau but vandals had just painted it pink! So, should I make the tomb pink in my story - to prove I'd done my research and show how clever I was? In the end, I decided the authorities were just as likely to repaint it white, and even mentioning the fact that it had ever been pink (no matter how deliciously quirky) it was likely to detract from the story.

So the moral is, always check your facts. It's no good assuming an editor will spot any mistakes in your research - it's not their job! If you're not careful, the first person to spot them will be your reader - and they won't hesitate in pointing them out to you - usually in a one star review.

But no matter how brilliant your research, nothing compares to visiting a location yourself! If you do get that chance, then I recommend taking lots of photos and making lots of notes - and it is the perfect excuse for a holiday!

Online Resources

Google Earth - Perfect for 3D images of locations. Many of cities also have 'street view' allowing you to 'walk' about. Bear in mind the images are often a few years old - if you look for my house, all you'll see is a field!

Pinterest - A great resource for images and you can create mood boards (I've blogged about Pinterest here). The photos often link to blogs.

Travel blogs - A brilliant resource but remember they are opinion pieces, read more than one if you want to view your location through your character's eyes, not the blogger's!

Travel agent websites - for hotels and tourists' itineraries (if you're writing about tourists!)

Tourist Board websites - Obviously!




Running Away with the Chauffeur by Juliet Greenwood

I first began using newspapers for research to find genuine recipes from WW1. It was a comment in one of my research books that recipes and advice began appearing in newspapers as shortages began to bite, that led me to the brilliant British Newspaper Archive.

The Archive is a partnership between the British Library and Find My Past to digitise up to 40 million newspaper pages from the British Library's collection over the next 10 years. It means that from a home computer you can search by keywords, name, location, date or title of the subject you are looking for, and the results appear in seconds.

What I loved most was seeing the actual digitised versions of newspapers, just as the original readers would have seen them. However focused I tried to be on recipes, and tips to make tasty meals out of vegetables and the odd cut of horsemeat, the eye strayed to the articles and the advertisements all around. This was when I discovered just how valuable these newspapers are to getting a real feel of the time.

It was eerie looking back with modern eyes at a passing reference to a place called Gallipoli, between advertisements for soap, tips for using the best from your allotment, and the scandal of a divorce. It was heart-breaking seeing the lists of the fallen and obituaries of local men, with a faded photograph of a man in uniform. I began to dread seeing them. How much worse to have been the first reader, waiting and dreading, or maybe already traumatised by grief.

The Mausoleum at Bodnant

What was also strange was the way life carried on, as it does, and how life really is stranger than fiction. Looking at divorce cases hinted at so many stories of both misery, and triumphant bids for freedom. There was the barmaid who didn’t take to running a household (wise girl) writing to tell her soon to be ex-husband in 1911 ‘Don’t be foolish over this, because if I returned I would only have to tell you what I am telling you here. I am not returning,” as she sailed off to America to train as a nurse – and maybe to serve in a field hospital like that of The Crimson Field during the war.

And if you thought Lady Sybil of Downton Abbey was reckless running off with the chauffeur, there is hint of a story of misery overcome by a woman who left a husband she claimed only gave her misery to elope with their chauffeur and finally find true love and companionship. Her husband’s divorce (women weren’t able to do the divorcing at the time) didn’t go through as he had left it too long, claiming he didn’t have the money. All the more cause, in my book, to root for the lady and the chauffeur to live a long and happy life together!

Juliet Greenwood

Newspapers are so much about ordinary life, and ordinary interests, that they made a fascinating insight into lost world – one that isn’t really so very different from our own. I shall certainly keep referring back to the digitised newspapers of the British Newspaper Archive time and time again.

You can find out more about divorce cases here on Juliet’s blog.

You can find out more about the lady and the chauffeur here on Juliet’s blog.

Juliet's latest novel, We That are Left, is out now!

I Heart Pinterest by Louise Marley

I know what you’re thinking: ‘That Louise Marley has never met a social networking site she didn’t like’. Well, that’s not strictly true. I’ve never been able to get on with Goodreads. I know how much a one star review stings, so why would I inflict it on another author? My Tumblr account consists of reposts from my Instagram account, and my Instagram account consists of photos of cake. I do, however, love Pinterest.

Ooh 'secret' boards!

What is Pinterest? I think of it as a giant, interactive mood board. You create an account and then you create a ‘board’ for a subject that interests you - books/fashion/whatever. You can create more than one board and you can also have ‘secret’ boards so no one can see what you’re up to. 

Then you add your photos, or ‘pins’. These can be re-pinned from other users or you can upload your own. (If you do upload your own photos, I would recommend adding a link back to your blog/website).

Mashable have a great Beginners Guide here.

Now you know what Pinterest is, why would you use it? What’s in it for you?

I use it as a reader. If I want to know what the character of a book looks like, or the house they live in, I check out the author’s Pinterest account.

I also use it as a writer. Each of my books has its own board with the photos of the people and places which inspired it.

Thirdly, and this is the best of all, Pinterest can be used as a research tool. If you’re looking for a hero (aren’t we all), or a location - a house, a restaurant, a city - you’ll find them all on Pinterest. If you’re writing a scene set in a thunderstorm, a spooky forest or on a sandy beach, you’ll find photographs to help inspire you. Do you get the idea? Also, Pinterest is not just about pretty pictures - many of the pins are linked to the original pinners’ websites and blogs. If you click on a pin of Paris, for example, it could take you to a travel blog about the city.

There are apps which allow you to use Pinterest on your phone or tablet, which mean you can pin in any odd moments of free time, rather than get sucked in. Like Twitter, you don’t have to follow people back if you don’t want to, or you can just follow a board rather than a person.

So there you go, what are you waiting for? Start pinning!

You can check out my own Pinterest boards here. I promise, there are no pictures of cake!

Sorry, no cake!

A writer's holiday... by Annie Burrows

Novelista Annie Burrows writes historical romance for Harlequin Mills & Boon.  This month she shares how research doesn't stop, even when she's on holiday...

One of the great things about being a writer of historical romance is that it gives me the perfect excuse to visit the many historical sites of England - under the guise of research.

 

But even when I go abroad on holiday, I can't resist poking around in museums to find out about the history of wherever I am.

 

This year I went to Madeira, and took a look behind the scenes at Blandy's wine merchants.  Not being in England, there were no scones, but I managed to tempt my husband onto the tour by pointing out we got a tasting session of the various wines at the end.

Our tour guide told us that John Blandy (whose life could serve as an example of how Regency men made their fortunes) was first posted to the island in 1807, as part of the British garrison which was guarding the island from Napoleon.  But there is also a letter to some wine merchants of the day, giving another explanation: 

‘Sirs! At the desire of our particular friend, Richard Fuller Esq., Banker in this City, we beg leave to introduce Mr John Blandy who visits your Island on account of ill health, and wishes to obtain employment in a Counting House. We shall be obliged if you can promote his views, and accordingly recommend him to your attention.’

The letter is dated 23 December 1807

Well, however the company started, Blandy's is now world famous as a producer of Madeira - which is a type of fortified wine.

 

The island of Madeira started supplying wine to the New World (or the United States as we like to call it nowadays) almost as soon as it was discovered.  But the voyage across the tropics sometimes caused the wine to "cook" in the barrels.  Although early customers complained this had spoiled the wine, and returned it, the suppliers realized that in fact it preserved it.  In its "cooked" state it would keep almost indefinitely.  Our tour guide told us that an opened bottle would last eighteen months.  (Not in our house it didn't!)  It soon became very popular in America, particularly in the hotter states where it was difficult to store wines in the cool conditions most of them require.  Madeira wine was the drink used to toast the Declaration of Independence.  George Washington apparently drank a pint of Madeira at dinner daily.  (Which made me feel less bad about getting through our souvenir bottle in less than a fortnight).

 

Nowadays the wine is not sent on a long voyage across the tropics to "cook" it.  Instead the process is done in the winery itself.  In fact the day we went round, they were pumping wine from the massive holding casks into the smaller oak barrels where it is naturally heated by the power of the sun.  The air smelled so rich and fruity it was like inhaling Christmas cake.

They've also made some changes to the process of making the wine.  The early growers of grapes used to be scattered all over the island.  They would each have their own press, and would send the juice down the mountainside in goatskins, carried on the backs of farm labourers.

 

 

When they set out, each goatskin would hold about 40 litres of juice...but there was often hardly anything like that on arrival as the thirsty labourers would drink it on the way down.

Hence the expression "having a skinful"

Nowadays, growers send grapes down the mountainside to be pressed at a central location.

(Annie's next book to be released in the UK is a short, spicy story in an anthology called "A Scandalous Regency Christmas"  For more details, visit Annie's website )