My Sunlounger Experience by Valerie-Anne Baglietto

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It started with a handbag. Well, OK, no. It didn't. But a handbag does feature in this blog post. 

It actually started with an email from the lovely, industrious Belinda Jones early in 2013. Fellow Novelista Trisha Ashley had recommended me (and Louise Marley and Margaret James) for an anthology Belinda was planning called SUNLOUNGER. The criteria was, it had to be set somewhere foreign and preferably sunny, transporting the reader to exotic shores, cities, temples, mountains... anywhere but here. Pure escapism, in effect.

And so I took up the challenge, selected Gibraltar as my setting, as I was born there and still have a lot of family on the Rock, and decided there ought to be an unconventional genie in the tale. Of course. Why not? A brass lamp and a fit genie and a young woman desperately in need of a miracle.

Now I hadn't really written a short story in years. I always scribble on until it turns into a novel. But I took up the challenge (yes, I know I've said that already, but it really WAS a challenge for me) and penned a story under five-thousand words. And something wonderful and unexpected happened - I loved the experience! I loved learning to be brief and to spin a plot that would span a single day rather than months or a year. I relished keeping characterisation spare and painting a picture of the heroine's back-story that would leave the reader with a sense of heartbreak and hope. And from reviews I received afterwards, it worked.

Then, guess what? I was asked if I was interested in doing it all over again for SUNLOUNGER 2. So I bit Belinda's arm off and plucked Gran Canaria from a list of potential sun-soaked destinations. Again, it was a pleasure to write *coughs* - when it was going well - and I ended up with an eight-thousand word story this time. But I allowed my narrator to tell the tale, and that was the length she wanted. As it fitted with Belinda's new maximum word count, I gave my narrator a break. She deserved it; she'd pulled the story straight out of her soul and I think it was painful for her. Sometimes I feel as if I am a medium, and some spirit is telling me their story, murmuring their heartbreak and dreams in my head, especially when I'm working in the first person POV. Anyway, it got written, and now it's there in black and white, or sepia, or whatever colour you prefer for your eBook reading, for the world to hopefully enjoy.

And so now we come to the handbag. Seriously, I'm a bag-aholic (it's in my surname, after all) so there had to be a handbag coming into it somewhere. Directly below, in fact. 

I treated myself to it with birthday dosh, and took it proudly down to London when I attended the Sunlounger Party at Trader Vic's at the end of May. As bags go, I felt it perfectly encapsulated the whole Sunlounger ethos, and I got a few comments about it. I also took a man with an Hawaiian shirt to the party, but it turns out he felt surplus to requirements and went for a wander along Park Lane instead, where he promptly managed to get himself lost for an hour. I know, don't ask.

Made by the lovely Tracy of Tracy's T-cakes

With debut author Stephanie Wahlstrom (left)

So here are a few photos from the party, mainly involving cocktails and cakes. Unfortunately fellow Novelista Louise Marley couldn't come along to London with me, so I had to enjoy the Mai Tais and the gorgeous cupcakes on her behalf as well as indulging for my own sake. It was a hardship, which you can probably tell from my face. No? Oh. Well, hopefully, if it's repeated in 2015, I'll be able to drag her along.

Belinda Jones (left) and a few of the SUNLOUNGER authors at Trader Vic's

To make up for it this year, though, Louise and I are throwing a mini SUNLOUNGER 2 launch with our Novelista friends early in July. I hope the sun shines, and even though there won't be cocktails, as anyone familiar with the Novelistas can testify, there will definitely, categorically be cake!

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Inspiration by Anne Bennett

Many times I am asked when I am giving talks how I get inspiration to write my books and I have to say truthfully that in the main I don't know. 'A Girl Can Dream' came out on 22nd May and I wrote it because, reading round the research for the books about the war work woman took up in WW2,  the girls who enlisted in the Land Army interested me greatly, I found it was so much the Cinderella of the Services, they have only in recent years been included in the Remembrance Day Services for example and yet these intrepid woman from all walks of life fed the nation and without their valiant contribution Britain would indeed have been in dire straits.  Many of these woman were not brought up to the life they seemed to embrace with such enthusiasm.  Nothing seemed too beyond them, though the work was physically demanding and the hours long and yet most women when recounting their time as Land Girls claim they thoroughly enjoyed themselves. 

The name Meg Hallet sprang into my mind when I was in Malta on holiday a couple of years ago.  I don't know where it came from, but once I had the name the story unfolded in my head till I was forced to start putting it down.  I hope those of you who have read it like the finished product and many have asked if there is going to be a sequel and I would like it if there is one, but it all depends on the publisher. We will have to wait and see.

Now we come to 'A Strong Hand to Hold' and this time I know when this book began.  I lived in the inner ring till I was nearly seven, born in the road I placed the Hallets family in 'A Girl Can Dream' and when we were moved under slum clearance my mother asked for the north  of the city, as my father was working at Fort Dunlop, and we moved to a big council estate called Pype Hayes.  It had had its share of bombing and across the road from our house one house stood on its own.  Since it was not Birmingham City Council's policy to erect detached houses on their estates, the house fascinated me.  I was married and had moved away when they realized the houses were sinking and all the people had to be found alternative accommodation.  As a result of that, reminiscence sessions were held at the library chaired by local historian and broadcaster Carl Chin and the people's memories were compiled into a book, and there it was, the history of the estate before we moved onto it.  The house on its own had once been in a terrace of six and the others had been destroyed in a raid on 19th November 1940 when 350 bombers attacked Birmingham and few areas were left unscathed.  Immediately, my head began to fill the ruined houses with fictional people and 'A Strong Hand to Hold' was born.

I was with Headline publishing then and this book was the third book I wrote for them and it was first published in 1999.  In 2001 I joined Harper Collins and over the years the 4 books I wrote for Headline went out of print and the rights were returned to me.  Last year, Harper Collins bought them and will be re-issuing them all in due course.  This does mean though that people might not realize they have already bought this book earlier, for while the title is the same, the cover is very different and I am doing my best to advertise the fact that it is a re-issue, and that is part of the reason for this blog.

One part of that book was very difficult to write and shows perhaps how much I live with my characters through all their trials and tribulations and without spoiling the story it transpired that Jenny O'Leary as an ARP warden was the only one small enough to crawl into a really confined space to try and reach a trapped child.  I was with her every step of the way as she inched her way forward over fractured lumps of wood and mangled iron, broken bricks and plaster and shards of  glass.  Sometimes the space was too tight for her to raise her head and her face would scrape along the ground, and writing it I sometimes found it so difficult to breath that I had to stop writing for a while and return to it later.

So that's it, two books out in the market place at more or less the same time, and I hope anyone who reads them does enjoy them because my readers and their comments and reviews are really important to me.

Finding Your Point of View by Juliet Greenwood

Now that I am well into my next book, I’m facing the same dilemma as in all my previous stories. I have all these characters (some of whom have appeared out of nowhere, quite of their own accord, if you please) clamouring to be heard. Which point of view should I follow? And when? It’s a tricky one, an aspect that can change the entire flavour of the book, if not dictate what kind of book it is going to be.

In ‘We That are Left’ the choice was simple. I knew from the start that I wanted this story to be the First World War seen through the eyes of one woman, and therefore it was always going to be Elin’s voice telling the story. But even that had its doubts at times. There was a brief wavering at one point at whether there should be Mouse’s voice, in letters or in a point of view, contrasting the civilians’ experience at home with that of those working amongst the battlefields. My instinct was almost immediately that it would be a mistake. The horrors of the trenches are so overwhelming I felt certain they would overtake the less dramatic griefs and horrors of the civilians. Besides, seeing through one individual’s eyes doesn’t necessarily mean avoiding or shutting out the horrors and injustices, even if they are beyond the understanding of the protagonist. Just think of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’.

In my previous book for Honno, ‘Eden’s Garden’ I had two points of view: two women living a hundred years apart. That had its own complexities – who should speak when, how much should they reveal? How much would the reader guess before I wanted them to? And as for keeping the balance between the two… But although the final drafts drove me mad at times, I know it was the right decision, because in my original draft the point of view was that of Carys, the contemporary heroine, as she unravelled a mystery. I was constantly struggling with something being not quite right, and I can still remember vividly the thunderbolt when Ann, the voice from the past, began to speak. That was when I could finally feel the story coming alive and just knew I had to go with it.

And so what of my current dilemma? Well, instead of beating my head against a brick wall, and trying to round up my characters into their allotted places, I have decided to let them get on with it for now. This time I have gained enough experience to know that I can always prune out the bits I don’t want. After all, they’ll all still have their point of view, even if it’s not expressed, so it will never be a waste, even if some of them end up in another book at the end of it all.

Meanwhile, we’ll wrestle it out together, experimenting, seeing what works, going off on a tangent every now and again. This is the bit no one will ever see, so it doesn’t matter if a character changes age or hair colour – or even gender, come to that. It’s having them all there, with all their potential, that counts. It’s once the story is assembled that I can stand back, look at them long and hard and gently, but firmly, put them in their place. With a large helping of ruthless pruning, of course.

Now where did I put my shears …