A Mother's Duty by June Francis



Looking for Inspiration:
June Francis (left)
at a writers' party in London

I don’t often get inspired when it comes to writing the next novel. An idea doesn’t hit me like a bolt from the blue. I was really searching around for ideas for my novel, renamed A Mother's Duty, when it actually occurred to me to do what published writers are forever telling wannabes, and that is write about what you know. So this book is one close to my heart because it is about Kitty, a mother of three sons. I know what that is like. What it feels like to have someone poke their heads under the hood of a pram and say, “What is it?” And, when I answered the second and third time, “A boy,” a look would come over some faces and I would hear the words, “Another boy! Wouldn’t you have liked a little girl?”

Big sense of failure! Especially as my mother-in-law was one of those who longed for a granddaughter, having given birth to just twin boys, herself.

So Kitty, who just like me loves the bones of her lads, has a secret longing for a daughter. It’s not that she has a sense of failure, though, because she had given birth to a girl. Sadly it had been stillborn. Happily I never had to harbour such a grief.

We writers have to spend a lot of time thinking up obstacles to put in the way of our main characters achieving their aim. So Kitty is a widow who has passed thirty-five. I also wanted her situation to be a bit out of the norm so decided she would be the proprietor of a hotel. There were lots of hotels in Liverpool city centre during the period I had settled on ‒ the Thirties ‒ with plenty going on, ending with WW2 and the famous May blitz in 1941. I knew next to nothing about running a hotel, so I rang the doorbell of one on Mount Pleasant and hoped for the best. I was blessed because I was welcomed in by the proprietor’s son, which led to an interesting conversation with his mother. There is nothing like research for giving a writer ideas.

Hotels on Mount Pleasant, Liverpool

What about my hero? I didn’t want to write the obvious, such as him being a guest in the hotel. No, he’s an ex-medical orderly who had seen action in the Great War. Half-English, half-Scots, with a secret, he’s a bit of a wanderer and entertains cinema queues playing the fiddle.

How much were Kitty’s sons inspired by my own three? I never put real people in my books but I use the odd trait. So the eldest son has a sense of responsibility and is a bit of a worrier. The middle one has a touch of the rebel and the adventurer which gets him into trouble. As for the youngest, he has a real curiosity about people which can lead him astray.

Does Kitty get what she longs for? You’ll have to read the book to find out!

  

A Mother's Duty
Out now!

Creature Comforts

Trisha Ashley’s new novel, CREATURE COMFORTS, is out this week and we thought we would take the opportunity to ask her about any creatures she has owned over the years – and if any of them ever made it into her novels!

In Creature Comforts the heroine, Izzy, has broken off her engagement to her feckless fiancée Kieran and returned to her childhood home – the sleepy village of Halfhidden. She soon realises that life in the village is anything but peaceful – for one thing she’s living with her mad aunt Debo, who runs Debo’s Desperate Dog Rescue.

One of Debo’s rescue dogs is a black Newfoundland called Babybelle, who is supposed to live outside with the other dogs, but slowly insinuates her way into the house and the affections of Izzy, who until then hadn’t even realised she wanted a dog.

Trisha says: I have always loved dogs. When I was first married we got a dog from a rescue home in Liverpool. Sasha looked like a little fox and wasn’t housetrained or used to people, so she was a challenge, but she lived for thirteen years. After that we had a King Charles spaniel called Steffi, after the tennis player, Steffi Graff. She inspired Flossie in Every Woman for Herself and was very loveable, but had the intelligence of a cushion. If I called her, she would look around to see who I was speaking to and then gaze blankly at me as if to say “Me?” When I went out I would leave her spread-eagled in her bed, all four paws in the air, and when I came back several hours later she would be in exactly the same position, looking at me as if to say, “Oh, hello. Have you been anywhere?” She was the perfect pet for a writer!

For many years I had an Amazon Blue Fronted Parrot, too, who featured in Good Husband Material (only I changed him to a grey parrot). He would swear in Spanish and liked to bite men (a perfect character trait; you couldn’t fault that!) although he would always laugh afterwards! When I was a student I looked after him for a week and then somehow he stayed on. He was elderly, half-blind and he couldn’t fly, but he used to spend most of his time sitting on the outside of his cage where he could get a good grip and lean out to bite people. Sadly, after over thirty years together, he died just before I moved to Wales.

My current dog, like Babybelle in Creature Comforts, is a rescue dog, who was originally adopted by my son, Robin. When Robin went away to university, I said I would look after Dog (as I call him online: he is a very private dog and insists I refer to him by his title alone) and now he lives with me. He was the inspiration for Flash in Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues. Dog is completely mad and drives me totally crackers, but I love him dearly and wouldn’t be without him!

Dog in the bluebells

Serials or Novels? That is the Question by Juliet Greenwood

Most of the time, I don’t get confused by writing as two people...

Some days I sit down as Juliet Greenwood to write historical novels, and other days I sit down as Heather Pardoe, to write short stories and historical serials for magazines. I’ve got so used to it over the years I no longer think about it.

Over the past couple of months, however, I’ve been editing a novel as Juliet, while Heather’s serial Daughter of Conwy has been in The People’s Friend, and any free brain has been working on ideas for the next novel and the next serial. For the first time, I’ve found bits creeping to both and wondered if they are Juliet or Heather.

Daughter of Conwy - Heather Pardoe
(The People's Friend)

So what is the difference? It’s a question of genre. Lots of writers write under different names for different kinds of books, because your name, like your book cover, is a kind of pact with your reader – and yes, that applies to literary fiction, which is a genre just like the rest. And the term ‘genre’ is nothing to be looked down on, either. Some worthy critics might have the idea that readers need to be stretched and challenged, but, personally speaking, I find that’s known as life.

And in life – and particularly when life becomes very challenging indeed – the last thing most of us need is to always be ‘challenged’/‘educated’/‘improved’ in our few hours/minutes of spare time. Hence the pact. So whether it’s Miss Marple or the team from Welsh noir Hinterland putting the pieces of the jigsaw into place and the world to rights, or Scarlett O’Hara battling through whatever life throws at her, we all know what we are getting. Fifty Shades is fifty shades, and Elizabeth Bennett never stumbles across zombies without prior warning.

That doesn’t mean it’s a soft option. Ask Heather. Characters still go through the emotional mill and face life changing (and life-threatening) situations. Readers aren’t stupid. As a reader, I want to find a something I can identify with, which is usually an experience that relates to one I’ve faced. That’s the investment I have in the characters and in the story. A book might have won zillions of prizes, but if that investment isn’t there, I’m off.



Serials or Novels?

At the moment I’m in the slightly odd position of having similar subjects for my next serial and my next novel. There’s plenty of nastiness in the subject (no, I’m not telling!), which Juliet will be referring to, but won’t appear on the page in detail, because that’s not in the pact. Heather, meanwhile, won’t be referring to the nastiest of the nastiness at all. But that doesn’t mean her story will be soft, or that her readers are daft. Far from it.

It’s a question, as with all stories, of which part you tell. There’s a reason why Mr Darcy never grows old and dies, leaving his Elizabeth behind. You don’t need to inform your readers that’s what happens, or how. They know. That’s the thing about story telling: for that moment in time, both as readers and writers, we can choose the rules. They don’t have to be the same rules all the time, but in the boundless world of the imagination, as in life, they are a measure of safety. Don’t knock it: we all need it, and sometimes safety can give the greatest freedom of all.

Juliet Greenwood at her launch for
We That are Left