That Winter in Wales

Susanna here, feeling nostalgic. It’s really the fault of our round up a while ago here of our various Christmas books. I’ve only written one: Named of the Dragon.

And whenever I think about that book it makes me think about the winter I spent writing it.

In 1996 I’d just turned 30, and for me it was a restless time.

Reading James Michener’s autobiography, The World Is My Home, had left me wishing I could do what he did—pull up stakes and move to where my next novel was set, and live there while I did the writing. It just sounded like the most wonderful thing for a writer to do.

And then, while I was wishing, I started to ask myself, “Well, why not?”

I had some money saved, and I knew exactly where my next book would be set.

The view from my front door

A few years earlier, while researching my book The Splendour Falls in Chinon, France, I’d met a couple who were also touring through the castle ruins, and we had stayed in touch and become friends. They were from Pembroke, and when I’d finally taken them up on their invitation to visit them there and see their castle, I’d fallen instantly under the spell of that corner of Wales. A group of characters had risen in my mind and started moving, and I knew I’d found a book that wanted writing.

So here was my chance, I decided. I wrote to my friends, and they found me a farmhouse to rent for the winter, with a dovecote just behind it and a ruined 14th century tower standing literally a stone’s throw from the door, in the village of Angle.

I adored that house. The kitchen had an Aga which, like the fireplaces, ran on coal, so learning how to make a good coal fire became my first challenge, since the Aga in its turn fueled the water heater, and cold baths are not my thing.

I also had to learn how to master my coin-fed electric meter, which I had to climb on a chair to reach so I could feed its insatiable hunger for 50p coins. There were times I’d get wrapped up in writing and forget to feed the meter and find myself suddenly sitting in darkness when all of my power shut off. So I kept the coins handy and tried to remember.

My writing room

It was the best time. In the mornings I’d walk through the village or down to the wide sweep of beach to the west, or I’d tackle the coast path that took me across the green field with the bullocks and into the woods at the top of the hill, where I had a broad view of the sparkling sea and the Haven.

And afternoons, I’d settle down in my front room and follow my characters down those same paths.

My friends' dog made it into the book

Every Sunday my Pembroke friends came and collected me and took me home for a full Sunday lunch, and we’d sightsee a little bit farther afield to the places the locals knew better than tourists. And all through the rest of the week I had the help and company of my landlords, who owned the farm and tower, lived in the adjoining house, and made me feel so welcome it was honestly like having extra family.

They kept my coal box full, took me down the pub when I looked lonely, and at Christmas turned up with a tree for my front room—a living tree, still in its pot, that they said they’d plant afterwards somewhere out back.

My coin meter

All these moments, as moments in writers’ lives do, wove their way into my manuscript, and those that didn’t fit the story waited for a different book. My Aga and the 50p coin meter will be recognizable to some of you who’ve read The Winter Sea, where they provide some entertainment for my heroine in her cottage.

It’s how I hold that winter, and the people who were part of it, within my memory and my heart.

And it’s the rare December when my thoughts don’t slip a little, and I’m back there for a moment with the coal fire glowing on my hearth, the wind a living thing against my window panes, and the blank paper on my writing table turning slowly to a story.

Where do your own thoughts turn, at this time of the year? Was there a holiday season that still holds a place in your memory? Or if not, have you ever followed your instincts and just gone somewhere or done something that seemed, at the time, to be crazy, but turned out to be—like my winter in Wales—the best thing?

(I’m travelling today, so might not be able to reply straight away, but I’ll be here as soon as I can be)

Comments

[Kathy K]

I travel by reading. This time of year is always tied up with the Lord of the Rings movies for me. My hubby, his father, and I had been wild fans of the series from the mid 1960s and we were so excited when the Peter Jackson movies were announced. Dad's health was failing but he wanted to see those movies and he determined that he would live to see them. The Christmas that the first movie came out we trekked to an elegant theatre where there were reclining seats. Unfortunately one had to climb a steep set of stairs to get to said comfortable seats. No sooner had we found places than Mom, who was pretty far gone in dementia, said she needed to use the bathroom. So down the stairs we went, and back up again, mission accomplished. We watched the show, transfixed by it all; at least most of us did. When asked later what she thought of the movie, Mom said, "That wasn't very Christmassy, was it?" So I always think of my parents-in-law, who have since gone to their rest at Christmas.

[StephanieL]

I've never traveled much at Christmas. My mind always turns to the days standing on a stool and helping my Grandmother with her extensive preparations. Trees and sweets and breads and pies and all of the lovely things. She's been gone 18 years and I still can feel her each season as I wrap her old apron around me, get out her recipes and sink myself into preparations. Nothing is as elaborate and the groups of relatives are smaller but the feeling survives. I recognized the scene from Winter Sea immediately LOL I love to live in your books and can only covet the experience of actually BEING there!

[Mary M.]

That was lovely, Susanna, thank you for sharing it with us!

[Anne Gracie]

Susanna I'm so glad you shared this story. I love the idea of escaping to another country and holing up in a little cottage to research and write. I'd love to do that one day.

[Quantum]

Susanna,I have actually been to Angle and seen the old Peel tower! I was actually staying in the comfort of a hotel at St Davids, but can understand the appeal of staying in the location and circumstances of your characters. I have a fascination for prehistoric Britain and walking close to and touching neolithic standing stones at places like Avebury can really fire the imagination. Alas, I don't have your talent for crystallising ideas into stunning stories otherwise ..... !

I like to visit places where favourite stories are located and must read 'Named of the Dragon' before next summer. It might give me an excuse to visit the Pembroke coast again .... not that I really need an excuse! :)

[Nancy]

I only spent 4 days in Wales and that was in summer with two of my children. I have never been able to go off to live in a place in which I want to set a story. I sometimes see stories about small villages for sale and wish we could set up a writers' colony.
The movie that means Christmas to me is How the Grinch Stole Christmas -- cartoon version, A version of the Christmas Carol comes a close second. Also need to have Poinsettias as they were the plants decorating the church when we married on December 21st.

[Faith Freewoman]

This was my first Susanna Kearsley book, a used bookstore find, and it remains one of my favorites, not least because of the vivid presence of mysterious and magical Wales and its lore. In fact, I think I'll go right now and get it off my virtual bookshelf to read again...

Cheers,

Faith

[Margaret]

Susanna, that was such a beautiful piece. Thank you. I have little similar experience, although I did visit my sister when she was studying at St. Andrews, and I thought I'd freeze to death in the damp cold. I kept putting my coins in the heater and remember wishing I could put in a whole pound at a time and really warm the room up! I haven't read Named of the Dragon yet, but I'm moving it higher on my TBR mountain. Have a wonderful Christmas!

[Mary Jo Putney]

Susanna, what a wonderful reminiscence! While I appreciate in theory moving to a place where you're writing a book, in practice I like my comforts. I remember those 50p electrical meters with NO fondness whatsoever! But NAMED OF THE DRAGON is suffused with your wonderful experiences, so I'm glad you were willing to brave the Aga!

[Shannon]

I'm adding to my list of books to get when my Kindle arrives back from its own travels.

I think of my college towns: Syracuse and ridiculous amounts of snow, where I wore a long skirt over thermal underwear and changed from boots to shoes; and Austin Texas where we fried a turkey and ate out at the picnic table because it was 70 degrees.

This year I moved to another country. Because I hadn't made good enough friends to get a Christmas invitation by October, I planned in early November to go to a historic city with a cathedral and have plans to eat out a highly rated restaurant. I also have tickets to a show for the day after Christmas. (Trains don't operate on Christmas Day or the day after.) Based on advice from the cathedral staff to arrive early and dress warmly, I do have thermal underwear but not the long skirt.

[Teresa Broderick]

Sophia's Secret is the title of it here and I absolutely love it. I've had it in paperback for a long time but recently it was on bookbub and I bought it for my kindle. It's my favourite of your books. I'm actually there in the novel when I'm reading it. These are my favourite type of books.
I very seldom travel anywhere so live through my reading. As I adore time slip and time travel, the sooner they invent a time machine the better as historical fiction is mostly what I read :) Looking forward to your next book.

[MaryJoPutney]

Ridiculous amounts of snow! Yes, that's Syracuse. *G*

[Louisa Cornell]

What a lovely memory! Thank you for sharing it with us. I lived in Germany for a number of years so I understand having to feed the meter and I had a heater that turned off at 8 PM and turned back on at 8 AM. Fortunately I was traveling a great deal with the opera company and didn't have to spend all of my time in the little cottage I rented. I did, however, get snowed in one December. The cottage was in an apple orchard well below street level. A sudden snowstorm buried the entire orchard up to the street. I woke up to find all of the windows and the door snowed shut. All I saw was white! I had no phone so I had to wait for my landlady to realize I had not come up to the main house for my mail. Her son walked across the snow, dug down to the roof of my house and knocked. It took most of the day for them to dig me out! Thank goodness the heater worked and the power never went out!

I would love to move to Wales for a year or two. My father's family immigrated from there in 1892.I am still working on locating all of the family records and when I am certain I want to visit the village where my great great grandparents were married.

I speak a number of languages and I have decided to take on Welsh. Wish me luck!

[Kareni]

Thanks for sharing your memories, Susanna. I hope this winter will be filled with joy.

[Karin]

It sounds lovely, and how handy that you can get a good coal fire burning. It's quite tricky! I once lived in a house where we had a coal stove, and being on the East Coast of the U.S., we burned that good Pennsylvania anthracite coal, which takes forever to catch, but once it gets going it lasts for a good long time. I think one of my favorite Christmases was getting snowed in, right in my own home. I do enjoy a good blizzard, as long as the power doesn't go out!

[Susanna Kearsley]

Kathy, as a fellow Lord of the Rings fan, I'm glad your father-in-law got to see the first film. And glad, too, that it's left you with fond Christmas memories.

[Susanna Kearsley]

Stephanie, I still make one of my grandmother's signature jellied salads every Christmas, as part of our big dinner. I can't match the elegant Christmas dinners she put on the table, but that one salad always brings the memories flooding back for me.

(And thanks for your kind words about my books)

[Susanna Kearsley]

Oh, you're very welcome, Mary. I enjoyed reliving those months in my mind as I worked on this post!

[Susanna Kearsley]

Anne, I highly recommend it. It was marvellous. Of course, I was single at the time, which made it easier to pull up stakes and move house when I wanted to. It would be much more difficult to do it now, with kids and husband :-)

[Susanna Kearsley]

ANY excuse to go to Angle (or anywhere in Pembrokeshire) is a good one, I agree! I hope you get a chance to go back soon.

And Avebury, incidentally, was the setting for my novel Mariana (though I changed the name of the village for that book, since I couldn't find a good use for the standing stones, one of which was right in the back garden of the house I gave to my heroine). So if you ever read that one, you'll know that setting, too!

[Susanna Kearsley]

Nancy, how nice that your anniversary falls so close to Christmas!

And I also have to watch the Grinch each year, along with THREE versions of A Christmas Carol: the Alistair Sim one, the musical one with Albert Finney, and the Muppet one with Michael Caine.

My family thinks I'm nuts.

[Susanna Kearsley]

Faith, I'm glad you like the book. Wales is indeed a magical place, and I was so lucky to live there for even a short while.

[Susanna Kearsley]

Happy Christmas to you, too, Margaret! I'll admit I was fortunate to have my Aga and my open coal fires in my rented house. They kept me cozy, even when I forgot to feed the electric meter :-)

[Susanna Kearsley]

Mary Jo, I loved my Aga. It had a stubborn mind of its own but when it got going properly it was wonderful to have (and gave me some beautifully hot bathwater!).

It's still a dream of mine to own an Aga here, in my Canadian house, but I know it would never be the same.

[Sue McCormick]

As someone else has said, Named of the Dragon has just moved up to the top of my reading list, just as soon as I finish the Betsey Davenport Minnesota needlework mystery I am currently re-reading.

I don't have much in the way of specific Christmas memories or specific location memories for this time of the year. But one of my very favorite memories is of a puzzle I bought to share with my children. A round puzzle with quotations from Shakespeare, we got it out every Christmas and put it together. I still have the puzzle, but alas, it has now lost too many pieces to be assembled!

[Susanna Kearsley]

Shannon, I hope your Christmas in your new country is a great one! (And as a Canadian, I can attest that thermal underwear does come in handy for a multitude of things...)

[Susanna Kearsley]

Thank you, Teresa. The Winter Sea/Sophia's Secret was a special book for me to write, and I enjoyed giving my heroine, Carrie, some pieces of my own rented winter home.

I'll try to write a little faster for you so you won't have to wait so long for the next book :-)

[Susanna Kearsley]

Louisa, thank YOU for sharing your snowed-in story! Loved it.

And I hope you get to Wales. As for learning Welsh, you might want to take it carefully :-) Here's a great cautionary piece by one of my favourite comedians, Rhod Gilbert (who, incidentally, has the same accent as the hero of Named of the Dragon): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvScUgHcA8Y

[Susanna Kearsley]

Thank you, Kareni. I hope yours is, too!

[Susanna Kearsley]

Karin, I grew up in a particularly snowy part of Ontario, Canada, where we got blizzards and whiteouts on a regular basis, and I admit I still love to hear the wind blowing and watch the snow fly while I'm safe and warm inside--preferably curled up under a blanket with a good book!

[Susanna Kearsley]

Sue, the puzzle may be missing some pieces, but it sounds like it holds some incredible memories. How lovely.

[Anne Gracie]

Loved the "learning Welsh" video clip, Susanna. The mother of one of my oldest friends (who was like my deputy mum when I was a kid) was a native Welsh speaker. When she got really cross she'd mutter darkly in Welsh. It's a great language for muttering darkly. ;)

[Christine]

I'm a little late to the party but I wanted to comment because Named Of The Dragon has been a favorite of mine since it was first published in paperback here in the U.S. I had discovered your work when I saw the paperback of The Shadowy Horses on the shelf in (the now defunct Barnes and Nobles) with large letters on the front that said "In The Style Of Barbara Michaels". And it certainly lived up to the claim. I eagerly scooped up Named Of The Dragon when it came out as I had been looking for more of your works. I have re-read it countless times over the years and still have my well loved paperback copy, even though I have since treated myself to a kindle version as well. The time and care you put into your time there and research really came through in the novel. It has such a wonderful sense of place and the reader feels they are discovering that part of Wales along with Lyn your heroine. It's such an understated and classic kind of a romance with the emphasis on "romance" and I can't think of any other story of its type that I would find so compelling without even so much as a kiss between the main "couple". I will certainly be re-reading it yet again this Christmas season. Thank you for a glimpse into the real places and experiences that inspired it.