Meet Alison Stuart

Anne here, introducing Alison Stuart, a fellow Australian writer and a former President and lifetime member of RWAustralia.
After publishing a number of historicals in a variety of time periods and settings, Alison has recently branched into two new areas; Australian set historicals published by Harlequin Mira (Australia) and, as A.M. Stuart, two historical crime novels set in 1910 Singapore, published by Berkley USA.

Anne: Alison, after writing historical romance and historical novels, what drew you to writing historical crime?

Alison: Thank you so much for inviting me to join the wonderful Word Wenches, particularly as the answer to your question is one of your number. I will be eternally grateful to the wonderful Mary Jo Putney for sowing the seed… We were having a writerly chat over dinner and the topic of reading matter came up. Mary Jo asked me what I liked to read and my answer was ‘crime and mystery’… ‘So why don’t you write it?’ came the response. That got me thinking and I realized I had already been writing it in the guise of historical romance (both Lord Somerton’s Heir and Gather the Bones are probably as much mystery as romance) and it was fun so I should probably give it a proper go!

Anne: And why not? When I first met you, you were living in Singapore, so the choice of that location for the crime novels is very understandable. Was there anything you learned about Colonial Singapore of 1910 that surprised or fascinated you?  Did it make it into the books or not?

Alison:  I took my three years in Singapore (as a trailing spouse) to explore firstly my commitment to writing and also Singapore itself. I realized from a western historical fiction perspective, the only period of any interest is World War 2, but I was fascinated in the earlier period – the height of Empire – what drew people to the ‘Far East’? I’m not an apologist for colonization but I am fundamentally a historian and people are people of whatever time or race. I lighted on 1910 precisely because NOTHING HAPPENED of any significance except the opening of a bridge (which makes it into Book 1). This left me free to play with ‘Harriet’s World’ and anyone familiar with modern Singapore will know that recreating the Singapore of 1910 is a true world building project!

Anne: Being familiar with Singapore myself, and having travelled in the back-blocks of Malaysia when my parents lived there, I think you evoked the atmosphere very well.
Both novels feature the "team" of Harriet Gordon and Inspector Robert Curran. Tell us about them.

Alison:  Harriet Gordon, widow (lost her husband and son to typhoid in India), failed (in her mind) suffragette, unpaid assistant at her brother’s school and shorthand typist is based on an advertisement I found in a 1905 edition of THE STRAITS TIMES… Mrs. Howell offered up her services as a shorthand typist with ‘absolute secrecy and confidentiality’. Irresistible!

Her partner in crime, Inspector Robert Curran of the Straits Settlements Police, had his genesis in a writing exercise during my time in Singapore. I suppose fundamentally I still love a good relationship in my books (and I also need a good hero to fall in love with myself).

Harriet and Robert’s relation is ‘complicated’. At the moment they are ‘just good friends’. 

Anne: Could you share a snippet from one of the books, please? 

Alison:  I hope this isn’t too long… It’s the ‘when Curran met Harriet moment’ from SINGAPORE SAPPHIRE… 

Curran turned toward the house, pacing the distance in easy strides. What had the boy called the place? Bukit Hantu? The haunted hill.

He made a mental note to ask one of the Malay constables how the place had acquired that name. The name on his notes just said Newbold—Mandalay.

He approached the steps leading up to the verandah. Beyond the wide expanse of warped and broken boards, the front door stood open but the bulk of his sergeant, Gursharan Singh, loomed out of the gloom, obscuring any view into the house.

“Who found the body?” he asked Singh.

“She did, sir.” His sergeant indicated a European woman who sat bolt upright in a rattan armchair on the verandah, her hands clutching a leather handbag. A fall of pink bougainvillea that climbed across the verandah and threatened to engulf the house had hidden her from sight.

The woman looked up at him from beneath a sensible pith helmet swathed in a net and he had an impression of a youngish woman, with brown hair, coiled, as was the fashion, at the nape of her neck. She wore a plain white, high-necked blouse fastened with a brooch at her throat and a skirt of an indeterminate dark color. A thoroughly respectable woman who seemed at odds with the decayed house.

Beneath a complexion far too unfashionably browned to have ever graced his aunt’s drawing room, she looked grey and drawn. Although he was yet to view the corpse, Curran knew it would be no sight for the fainthearted. It surprised him the woman had not succumbed to the vapors. Instead she sat waiting for him, pale but perfectly composed.

“What’s her name?”

“Gordon. Mrs. Harriet Gordon,” Singh said.

(Anne notes that at the time of posting Singapore Sapphire was still at a very special kindle price)

Anne:  As Alison Stuart, you also have several novels set in early colonial Australia? Can you tell us a little about them?

Alison:  I had felt for some time that the time was right for Australians to start telling our own stories in our own voices, and years of travelling the bush and the outback had provided me with a fund of experience and on a camping trip on the Snowy River, the ‘Maiden’s Creek’ stories were born. There are two books in the series (so far) which is set in a fictional gold mining town in Gippsland starting in the 1870s. The town may be fictional but I lean very heavily on the very real township of Walhalla which is a place very dear to my husband and I. In this series, the town itself is the continuation character and the stand alone stories follow the trials and tribulations of a different cast of characters – with a HEA! The first book is THE POSTMISTRESS and the second THE GOLDMINER’S SISTER. 

Anne: You use (and advocate) Scrivener as a tool for writing. Why do you like it so much?

Alison: It appeals to my Capricorn desire for order and organization. I think the big mistake with Scrivener is to look on it as word processor when it is in fact a whole project management system. Particularly now I am writing series, it just makes my life so much easier being able to move from project to project with all the information I need on characters, locations etc. at my fingertips.

Anne: (Chuckling at the Capricorn desire for order and organization, as Alison and I share a birthday, and that does not at all describe my process. *g*)
Alison, what are you working on at the moment, and what excites you about it?

Alison: In this funny old year we are having, I am delighted to have signed two new contracts. The third ‘Harriet’ book, EVIL IN EMERALD, is my current WIP and I am looking forward to making a start on the third Maiden’s Creek book (as yet untitled) which will be bringing two characters from the previous two books together and MAYBE spinning them off into what, a life of crime detection… we’ll see! 

Anne: Sounds exciting. Thanks so much for visiting us on WordWenches, Alison. 

Alison will be giving away a signed print copy of SINGAPORE SAPPHIRE – Book 1 in the Harriet Gordon Mysteries to someone who leaves a comment or answers this question:  Are you a reader of historical mysteries and what do you like about them?