Hi, this is Nicola, and today it is my very great pleasure to welcome Susanna Kearsley to the Word Wenches. For those who have not already come across Susanna’s wonderfully evocative books, she writes “old-style romantic suspense” with a historical mystery running parallel to the contemporary story.
Nicola: Susanna, welcome to the Word Wenches! Please tell us a little about yourself.
Susanna: This is the part where I always wish I had a Fascinating Biography to share… No such luck, though. I’m simply a Canadian writer whose first novel, Undertow, was published in 1993. Since then I’ve written 8 more books, including one – Every Secret
Thing – written under the name Emma Cole. That one, a thriller, was shortlisted for the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel, and might be the start of a series. I’m also the stay-at-home mother of two young children, who keep me very busy and well-grounded.
Thanks so much, by the way, for inviting me here to the Word Wenches blog!
N: I’m thrilled you could join us! Now, your most recent book, The Winter Sea, was short-listed for both the UK Romantic Novelists’ Association Romantic Book of the Year Award and the Romance Writers of America RITA Award in 2009. It’s a terrific read, evocative and romantic. I always love to hear what the inspiration was that gave birth to particular books. Where did the initial germ of the idea for The Winter Sea come from and what was it about the idea that made it demand to be written?
S: I’m so glad you liked the book. The first idea for it started forming twenty years ago, when by pure chance I found a little book called Playing the Scottish Card, by historian John S. Gibson, detailing “The Franco-Jacobite Invasion of 1708”. I’m always intrigued by episodes of history that I’ve never heard of, and this one began with an irresistible quote from Lord Dacre: “History is not merely what happened: it is what happened in the context of what might have happened.”
How could I resist? And having read Gibson’s history of the invasion attempt, I was driven to search out the original sources he’d used, like the memoirs of Nathaniel Hooke pictured here – to read the letters for myself and find out more about the people who engineered this nearly-successful attempt to restore James Stewart to his throne, and once I did that I was hooked.
Reading the actual words of the people and “hearing” their voices, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to rest till I’d written their story.
N: Your award-winning book Mariana was reissued earlier this year in the UK and there is a new edition of The Shadowy Horses out this month. Are there plans to reissue your other books as well?
S: I’ve been very fortunate with Allison & Busby buying up my backlist and giving my earlier novels a new lease of life. Along with Mariana and The Shadowy Horses they’ve bought Season of Storms, which was never released in the UK, and they’ll be bringing that one out in February 2010 (I’ve just been shown the cover, and it’s beautiful). If those reissues do well for Allison & Busby, they may pick up the remaining two: Named of the Dragon and The Splendour Falls.
And in the States I’ve just signed on with Sourcebooks, who’ll be bringing out The Winter Sea next autumn, and they’re also looking through my backlist with an eye to maybe doing some re-issues. We shall see. For now, I’m just happy to see my books being brought out with such care and in lovely editions, and getting a second chance.
N: The covers are stunning! Do you have a favourite amongst your books?
S: If you’d asked me this two years ago, I would have answered “no”, although Mariana has always had (and always will have) a special place in my heart – not only because it was such a lovely story to write but because it was my first “big” book; the one that opened all the doors for me. But really, I had no clear favourite book among the ones I’d written…till I wrote The Winter Sea. I think that maybe, craft-wise, it’s the best and most mature work that I’ve ever done, and I just loved the characters and how they came to life for me and how the story shaped itself. I’m still so pleased with how that book turned out, and I’ll admit that for the moment it’s my favourite.
N: One interview I read described your books as a wonderful mixture of romance, mystery, history, suspense and emotion. How would you describe your books?
S: If anyone asks me, I say I write old-school romantic suspense with contemporary characters who have to deal with mysteries that are rooted in the past. My husband tells his friends my books are sort of like old Hitchcock movies, in that there’s a mystery but not always a dead body or detective; there’s a romance but it’s not the only focus of the story, and there’s often something spooky going on. In short, they’re a nightmare for the marketing department of any publishing house, since they don’t fit neatly into any category.
N: One of the reasons I enjoy your books so much is that mix of history and suspense and romance! The past and its bearing on the present is a fascinating and recurring theme in your books. Can you tell us where your interest in history and memory springs from and how it has influenced your writing?
S: I’ve just always liked history. I remember when I was ten years old and our family was heading to Britain on holiday for the first time I “prepared” for the trip by reading an old book called A Shorter History of Scotland (it’s still on my shelves) and learning all I could about Mary, Queen of Scots, so even then I was obsessive with my research…
I suppose, though, it goes back to my parents’ love of genealogy and the fact that, from a very early age, I’ve been very aware of my own family history – my ancestors, their lives and where they came from, and the historical events they were part of. I had several ancestors on the Mayflower, another who captained a ship for the East India Company, and still others who were silk-weavers and miners in the north of England during the Industrial revolution, so studying all those things at school became more interesting and personal for me. (As a bit of trivia on the side, I’m also a direct descendent of Elizabeth Winthrop, immortalized by Anya Seton as The Winthrop Woman). The picture is of Thomas Peter Marter, one of my favourite ancestors, who was at the battle of Waterloo
Walking where my ancestors lived and walked themselves, seeing their houses or reading their letters or meeting their eyes in a portrait, I feel a connection that’s hard to explain, but it makes me feel part of a much larger entity; one tiny link in a chain that’s been forged over centuries, and maybe that’s what shows up in my writing.
N: You have travelled extensively to do research for your novels and have some lovely photographs on your website to show for it. What was the most fascinating trip you have taken?
S: I’d have to say the trip I made to Chinon, in France’s Loire valley, back in 1993 when I was doing research for The Splendour Falls. I’d written Mariana by that time, but it hadn’t been published – it was still sitting in the pile of manuscripts being judged for the Catherine Cookson Fiction Prize – but I’d recently sold my first novel to Avalon Books in the States and for the first time I felt brave enough to call myself a writer.
When I’d travelled for research before I’d never thought of telling anyone that I was writing a book, but in Chinon when my hotel owner asked me what had brought me there, I took a deep breath said I was a writer. And the doors just opened. Suddenly I was being shown round the back corridors and private places, and my hotel owner was digging out documents about the German occupation of Chinon in the Second World War, and I picked up all these fascinating details I would never have found otherwise. So all through the rest of that trip when I introduced myself I started with, “I’m a writer, and…” What an epiphany. I climbed down an old holy well in a troglodyte chapel, a freedom not granted to ordinary tourists. Transplanted American artist Paul Rhoads kindly showed me around his adopted French home, introduced me to friends who invited me into their homes, and allowed me to watch him at work, since one of my characters was, like Paul, a painter. I went home with piles of notes, rolls of photos, and most of all, memories. All of my research trips, really, are wonderful, but Chinon was the first time I felt like a writer, and that made it special.
N: You often choose wild places such as the Scottish Borders as settings for your books. Is there something about that wildness that appeals to you?
S: May I go all poetic for a moment? Because Byron said it best:
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture in the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.
So, yes. What he said. But then again, most of my settings are dictated by where the history took place, and a lot of the history that interests me happened in places that were, by design, far removed from the eyes and the ears of the court. It was easier for the Jacobites to intrigue for the king’s return from Slains – the castle on the northeast coast of Scotland where The Winter Sea is set – than from the crowded streets of Edinburgh where every move and meeting would be noticed by the agents of Queen Anne. But you’re right, Nicola, it was probably easier for me to write about Slains than Edinburgh, since by nature I’m drawn to those more remote, wilder settings.
N: One of the hallmarks of your books is that you establish background and setting so vividly that they are almost another character in the story. How do you set about achieving that?
S: First, thank you for the compliment. It’s something I do more by instinct than design, but I learned at the feet of the master, I suppose, by reading Mary Stewart’s novels, because all of her settings are beautifully rendered. I’m very visual; I’m deeply affected by my surroundings and can sit for ages on my own just watching the play of clouds at sunrise or the seagulls at a harbour or the shadows chasing down a windblown field.
Like my characters, I’m most often a stranger coming into a new setting, so I try to focus on what little details are specific to that place – what tells me I’m in southwest Wales and not in northeast Scotland – then I try to work those details in, to use my readers’ senses to create a picture in their minds that’s close to what I see, myself.
Interestingly enough, speaking of Wales, the one time I had an editor tell me he couldn’t “see” the setting of a story I was writing was when I turned in the manuscript for Named of the Dragon, the book I set in Pembrokeshire. The problem was, I was actually living there at the time, and without meaning to I’d lost what I refer to as “the stranger’s eye” – I’d grown so used to everything around me I’d stopped seeing it. I had to stay away awhile, then go back down to Pembrokeshire as though I were arriving for a holiday, and then I saw the little things I’d missed, and I could put them in the novel.
N: That’s fascinating! Do you think that your “previous life” as a museum curator influenced your writing in any way?
S: In unexpected ways, yes. Being a curator taught me how subjective our portrayal of the past can be – what we choose to preserve and display is invariably influenced by our own sensibilities and politics, and yet it shapes the way we see our history. (If you doubt this, just look at how Native American culture was portrayed in museums during the era of Western expansion). As a writer, I try not to be confined by what historians deem worthy of recording; I try constantly to look for those more commonplace events that the historians have missed, the stories no one’s ever heard about, and start from there.
N: I noticed on your website that you name Mary Stewart as one of your favourite authors. You’re in good company! Who are your other favourites/influences?
S: Oh, so many. Nevil Shute’s a writer I can always count on, and I love the books of Jan Cox Speas, who wrote wonderfully romantic historicals. I like the imagination of A.A. Milne, the humour of Canadian essayist Gregory Clark, and the dark wit of Kurt Vonnegut. In fact, many of my favourites seem to have a sense of humour, something I know you appreciate as well! And I’m discovering new favourites all the time.
N: What would you say is the most challenging aspect of writing a book that combines a historical and a
contemporary story?
S: The challenge is always to find the right balance, so both remain interesting. I don’t want to drag my readers back to the present when they’d rather be in the past, and usually as the book progresses the past story comes more and more to the forefront, because of this. But it’s important that the present story have a sense of purpose, too, and that the reader cares about those characters as well, that they’re not simply a device to frame the history.
N: Do you have any plans to write a “straight” historical novel?
S: I actually do have a fairly well-developed idea for one, and I’ve been keeping notes and delving into research for it for a few years now, but to do it proper justice it will need a lot of time and likely be a larger book, and that’s not practical for me to tackle now, with both my children still so young. But one day, yes, I’d like to take a crack at it.
N: What is the best part about being a writer for you?
S: Taking a blank stack of paper and turning it into a story is rather a magical feeling. Being allowed to do what I love, anywhere, anytime, while drinking coffee and wearing pajamas is also a definite plus. But the best part, for me, is when somebody takes time to write me a letter and tell me their thoughts about one of my books – that’s a wonderful moment.
N: Do you have any tips for aspiring authors?
S: The best help to me when I was starting out with my first novel was a little book called Guide to Fiction Writing, by the late Phyllis A. Whitney. It’s a slim volume bursting with great advice, and I still turn to it when I have problems with my writing.
In her section on work habits, she stresses the importance of self-confidence, especially when it comes to convincing those around you that you need the time to work. “In the beginning,” she writes, “they’ll feel that you have no right to sequester yourself. Who do you think you are – a writer? So you say to yourself, and to others, ‘Yes, I am a writer. I write, and I’m a writer.’”
If you follow that one small bit of advice, you will have made a huge step forward on your path to publication.
N: Can you give us a preview into your next project?
S: I’m just finishing a new novel at the moment. It doesn’t have a title yet, but it’s a time-travel story that follows a woman who comes to the south coast of Cornwall to stay at a house overlooking the sea, and soon finds herself sharing the rooms with a man living there in the 1700s. I hadn’t planned to write a time-travel book, but that’s what the story decided to be, so we’ll see what my publishers think of it when I deliver it later this month.
After that, I have two projects waiting: my half-finished sequel to the thriller that I wrote as Emma Cole, which has been patiently waiting for me to get back to it, and a new book idea that follows The Winter Sea’s characters further through history. But first, I’ll be taking a couple of weeks off between books to read, and I’ve got your Brides of Fortune series waiting for me!
N: Thank you very much for joining us today Susanna! It's been a fascinating interview. Susanna's website is at http://www.susannakearsley.com/ and today she is offering three signed copies of her award-winning book Mariana to three people who comment. I can promise you it's a superb read!
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