Historical fiction anthology

 
Where do works of historical fiction find their starting points? How are those seeds refined into story? What are the gifts and challenges of using the past as source, and how can both be most inventively addressed? Where does historical accuracy end and fictional power begin? How do authors today make a given moment in history compelling to contemporary readers?

These are the questions posed by Stories of Inspiration: Historical Fiction Edition edited by publishing industry veteran Suzanne Fox, and I was delighted to contribute an essay.

Fox has collecting insights from both established authors and new voices and charts the often surprising journey from an original point of departure to a finished work of historical fiction, spanning the genres from literary fiction to mystery, romance, and more.

Stories of Inspiration is available from Amazon UK, Amazon USA and other good booksellers.

In search of the Lavender Field

 

There are many true stories within the pages of The Sea Garden, though all are filtered through the distorting mirror of fiction. The area of Provence I know well was a stronghold of the French Resistance during the Second World War. It’s the kind of country place where people are proud of their past and stories are passed down in everyday conversation. The Resistance years are spoken about – to British, American and Canadian visitors in particular – with considerable pride and a sense of shared history.

One of the most exciting stories concerns the clandestine airdrops of arms and agents by the RAF, and the secret landings of planes while France was under Nazi Occupation. When I began research into these air operations, I discovered a poignant detail in the memoir We Landed by Moonlight written by one of the RAF’s finest Special Operations pilots, Group Captain Hugh Verity. On the makeshift landing strip known as “Spitfire”, close to the great lavender fields of Sault, a Dakota was flown in carrying key French personnel just before the Allied landings on the south coast in August 1944. The plan was to land, drop the passengers and collect a group of escaping American airmen who had been on the run.

 







But the Dakota was too heavy, and the makeshift runway too short. On the run-up to take-off, the undercarriage snagged on a wide strip of lavender that had been planted to disguise the length of the field from the ever-vigilant occupying authorities. Before another attempt could be made, some of the US airmen had to disembark. Promises were made to come back for them the following night, but it was too late. The botched operation had taken too long, the Nazis and their Vichy enforcers, the Milice, were now aware of it and took brutal reprisals. The next night, the Dakota returned but there was no Resistance reception team waiting to signal it down.

 

This was the starting point for The Lavender Field, the mid-section of The Sea Garden. In the present day, on the ground, there are no indications of the drama that took place but a hunt for its setting and exact location has a certain satisfaction, even so. It sits on the Albion Plateau, south of Sault (where the top photo was taken), north of St Saturnin-les-Apt and west of St Christol.

 

 

The village of St Christol is quiet and shuttered. Like so many hill villages in Provence, it is a place of narrow streets that offer shade from the sun and for secrets. You can't help but wonder how many people looked up at this clock on a night of vital activity.

Not far outside the village are little-used roads and fields of lavender that are relatively flat. The landing field codenamed "Spitfire" would have been very similar to this one, long enough for an RAF plane to land and take off again with only torches held by the "reception committee" on the ground and the moonlight to navigate by.

 

The actual field is known as Champ Long (Long Field) to the locals, and the exact co-ordinates for a walk to find it from the small village of St Jean de Durfort can be found in this lavishly illustrated guide I've found online: Balades dans les lavandes. There is some very good information about the wartime operations, too, including verses by the poet Rene Char, mainstay of the Vaucluse Resistance.

If you don't read French, here is another guide in English from the En Provence website, though it only mentions Champ Long in passing, and gives no indication of its fascinating history.

 



PS. Not perfect, this post, with the spaces between text and photos, but Blogger has driven me crazy this afternoon - giving me strange fonts and type sizes, refusing to place the photos in the centre with text aligned left as usual. After I finished writing, publishing this post has taken an hour and a half! Something not quite right.

An old postcard from Céreste

To celebrate the paperback publication today of The Sea Garden, I'm taking you to Céreste, a quiet village at the eastern end of the Luberon, on an intriguing trail.

This charming backwater plays a crucial part in the middle section of my novel, where we renew acquaintance with Marthe Lincel, the perfumier who first appeared in The Lantern. Just up the road, the Vaucluse ends and the signs announce the department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. In real life, as The Sea Garden, Céreste was a Resistance stronghold during the Second World War, secret headquarters of "Captain Alexandre", the poet René Char, as I wrote here in a previous blog post.

A couple of years ago, while I was writing the novel, I found a stall selling old postcards at a market in Simiane-la-Rotonde. Naturally, I stopped to sift through the boxes marked with the names of places I knew, and pulled out this one of Céreste:

 

Now this may sound a bit crazy, but when I'm writing a book, I always look for signs that I'm on the right track. I'm sure there are plenty of people who will say that we see what we want to see, and it's all a lot of nonsense. They are probably right, but that doesn't stop me enjoying a nice moment of coincidence, synchronicity, call it what you will. But look at the name on the right: Monsieur Gabriel Brachet, Marseille. If you haven't read the book, I'm not giving anything away, but be sure to make a note of the first name. If you have read the book, I hope it gives you a pleasant frisson!

The words were written on July 23, 1931, and they're not terribly interesting - it seems to me they could well have been written to a child, as the sender urges "Gaby" to take care to fill in a form and to write with news of what he's been doing. The intriguing part is that the sender gives his own name, "Mr Et. Paul" - Etienne? - and address as the Château des Guis at St-Martin-de-Castillon.

St Martin de Castillon is another lovely, quiet village that sits opposite the ripples of the Great Luberon, a few kilometres along the road and higher in the hills than Céreste. I know it well, but I'd never heard of the Château des Guis. Of course, I bought the postcard and scoured a large scale map when I got home. I couldn't find the château. An internet search found nothing, either.

But I never like to give up...and when I was looking at the my files of photos and background info the other week, wondering what I could use for my blog, I remembered this postcard - and this time, with a bit more online detective work, I managed to find the property in St-Martin. It is a grand old residence, though it's not called a château but a "bastide", which is denotes an imposing old house, possibly once fortified.

And here it is, The Bastide Les Guis:

 

 

The Bastide Les Guis is even available to rent, and there are details and more pictures on the Janssens Immobilier site and on Made in Provence. 

A box of lavender

I saw this old box of dried lavender at the Friday market in Bonnieux during a flying visit last month, and I post it here as an article of faith that I will be getting back to regular blogging over the next few weeks. The US paperback edition of The Sea Garden is due out on Tuesday, and I have been saving a photos and few intriguing background insights to add to the read. Watch this space...

I'd also like to say a big thank you to all my blog friends who have written such generous and supportive comments here over the past months. I'm sorry I haven't always replied, but I have appreciated every word.

Dangerous messages

"By 1943, the life expectancy of a wireless operator working for the French resistance and the British agents on the ground in Nazi-occupied France was down to six weeks. Sending and receiving vital messages between the sharp end and London to organize secret drops of agents and weapons, and provide the link between sabotage operations, was dangerous work."
 
This is the start of a post I've written this week, Communication in Wartime: Between the Lines, for the Reading the Past blog, written and curated by Sarah Johnson. If you'd like to continue reading a salutary tale of how, despite the part women were playing in secret missions, the opinions and instincts of the women who worked in the secret London office were disregarded, leading to fatal consequences, then click on this link.

Secret weapons

 

It's an extraordinary thing, actually to see the tools of the trade of the secret operations that took place in Nazi-occupied France. Impossible to look at them, as here at the Musée de la Résistance at Fontaine de Vaucluse, without imagining the fear and sheer courage that went with their use in the darkest days of World War Two.

 

Here is an SOE wireless set disguised as a small leather suitcase. Operators knew that if they were challenged to open the case during a security check on a train, for example, it was as good as a death warrant for there could be no other explanation for it other than the owner's occupation as a spy or active resistant. And neither spy nor resistant had the protection of a uniform under the Geneva Convention.

 

At the Tangmere Military Aviation Museum (see my previous post here), more mundane but still vital equipment is on display. The disguises were intricate and ingenious: a compartmentalised fountain pen contains a silk map and compass. Compared to the basic magnetised compass in the tip of a match it's a de luxe item - a precursor to James Bond's armoury, perhaps...

 

Special agents were issued with British-made imitations of French cigarettes and matches to make their "French" identities more plausible. Their pockets and bags were carefully checked before they set off across the Channel for any clues that would give away their true nationality. The fabric of their clothes, their buttons and jewellery and shoes: all had to be right. The British even cooked special soap with ashes to mimic the poor tablets that most French had to use during the war. 

 

But among the artefacts from a deadly serious time, there are still moments of humour. This one tells you a lot about how the British saw the ordinary French: a bar of French Menier chocolate "modified to produce a garlic odour on the consumer's breath"! A classic worthy of Fairfax and Carstairs in Allo Allo...

 

Liberation of Provence

Seventy years ago today, the American-led liberation of southern France reached the town of Apt. The previous day, the tanks and Jeeps had rolled into Aix-en-Provence (above), chasing the fleeing German army of occupation. But today is the day remembered in Apt, with a plaque on a small roundabout planted with cypresses and flowers where the main road, the old N100 now the D900, arrives from Céreste.

This plaque is no anniversary special; it has been here for as long as I can remember, passed daily by the locals as they go about their business, and the tourists who swell the town's life during the summer. It is a poignant reminder not only of the event itself, but that - contrary to myth - the French remember it with profound gratitude. In the villages and small towns of the Luberon, the wartime cooperation between the brave members of the resistance and the RAF is recalled with pride and enduring mutual respect. Should the war be discussed with visitors from Britain, the US and Canada, it is with a sense of shared history.

This was the starting point of my novel The Sea Garden, in which the story plays out against the background of the Liberation which began with the Allied invasion on the coast at St-Tropez. The settings in the book can be seen here: the island of Porquerolles just below Hyeres, and Manosque to the north-east of Pertuis.

For weeks, the local newspaper La Provence (from which this map is taken) has been telling the story day by day. Yesterday's page included a fascinating piece by Yves Reynaud about the day the Americans arrived in the village of Tour d'Aigues near Pertuis on the southern slopes of the Luberon mountains.

What the French noticed first of all was that the harsh sound of hobnailed Nazi boots had gone from the silent streets, to be replaced by the soundless rubber of the American footwear - and music! The "Yanks" chewed gum nonchalantly as they offered cigarettes and chocolate to the villagers - the French offered fruit in return. In the village centre, the whole population clamoured around the Jeeps and Dodges, vehicles so modern as to be curiosities in themselves. Upbeat tunes were playing from the Jeeps: songs they had never heard before.

The momentous day ended in the Café Innocenti - today, the Café du Chateau - with laughter, talk, drinking and dancing. One of the GIs sat down at the old piano and started pounding out Boogie-Woogie. Two days later the Americans had pushed on north, but the villagers continued the party by collecting eggs from every farm and smallholding. An immense celebratory omelette composed of more than a thousand eggs was cooked and shared by the whole community.

This evening in Apt, the town's liberation will be marked by two parades through the town with some of the original vehicles; the laying of wreaths and honouring of the dead; the unveiling of a new memorial plaque in the Place de la Mairie in the presence of Lieut-Col Tim Stoy and Captain Monika Stoy, representing the US Army; a showing of a newsreel film of the event; an aperitif outside the Hotel de Ville; and dancing under the trees to a swing band.

For more about the activities of the French resistance in this area, you can read more in these past blog posts about Céreste, and Samuel Beckett at Roussillon. More on Apt tomorrow.

News of the lavender harvest

 

 

The lavender cutting has begun. When the wind catches the fields, warm gusts of scent rise into the air. And when the harvest is in, and distillation begins the other side of the hill from our terrace, the fragrance of lavender will get stronger.

 

I took these photos with a zoom lens from the track that leads to our property, when the crop was still blooming. We're not as close as it looks, but imagine what it would look and smell like to live in the hamlet with a vista like that sea of lavender!

"Marthe went to live with the Mussets at the farmhouse surrounded by lavender fields halfway between the plateau and the town." 

                       from The Lavender Field, part II of The Sea Garden

       "Iris pulled off the wrapping. It was a bottle of perfume: a voluptuous lavender scent with the label Distillerie Musset, Manosque.

          ‘Was there a message?’ she asked, desperately trying to damp down her hopes.

          ‘No card, Miss. But the gentleman who brought it did say something.’

          ‘Yes?’

         ‘This is from Xavier.’"

                               from A Shadow Life, part III of The Sea Garden

 

In the novel, the unexpected gift is wrapped in a tatty Francs-Tireurs propaganda sheet on which Iris’s name was scrawled. Today, the newspaper might be La Provence, on which the lavender harvest was front page news the other day: the "blue gold of Provence".

 

 

And the feature on the inside pages actually shows the present day harvest on the Valensole plateau, close to the location of my fictional farmhouse belonging to the Musset family. The rest of the caption reads: '...where the lavender fields spread out as far as the eye can see'. When there's such dreadful news in so many national newspapers, the sense of tradition and continuity is as comforting as the scent of lavender itself.

 

 

The industry is nothing like as large-scale around our way, but I wrote a post about the tiny Distillerie les Coulets, close by, a few years ago before The Lantern was published. You can find it here: The lavender distillery.



Six days to go...

 

Six days until The Sea Garden is published in the United States, and the nerves are kicking in. It's always the same, each time a book is sent out into the big, wide world. Some readers will like it, some won't. Some who like it the most will stay the quietest, while those who didn't will be ferocious in letting others know.

 

Either way, the novel won't come to life until a reader starts reading the words on the page and joins in the creative process by allowing the sparks to reach the imagination, to form pictures and soundtrack in the mind. It won't be exactly what was in my mind when I wrote them, but that's the magic of reading: when we read, we make the scenes suggested by the words personal to ourselves. With any luck, the experience will take you to somewhere you never thought you'd go to, touch you emotionally or unsettle you in the delicious safety of your chair in a the sun.

 

All I can do is to give you some pointers to the background, like the picture above of the garden at the Grand Hotel du Cap Ferrat, quite rightly considered one of the most beautiful hotels in the South of France, "a tranquil retreat amid secret gardens and fragrant pines". It's the blue, blue sea beyond that gives it that edge of excitement and cachet. The fictional Domaine de Fayols on the island of Porquerolles in the first section of the novel has just that quality, though hidden under dilapidation. 

 

The light and the colour of the sea is captured in this picture. The turquoise seems unreal, but it isn't. 

 

When night begins to fall, the setting sun still casts unexpected patches of brightness, while leaving secluded corners unexpectedly dark. If you want to take that as a metaphor for the mood of the book, please do. 

 

 

Then there's the water, with its effortless evening glamour: shades of lilac and texture of chiffon. 

 

The Sea Garden is on blog tour very soon with TLC Book Tours running through into July. And it's no good any writer telling you they don't care or even look to see what readers are making of their work; I wouldn't believe them if they did, because a book without a reader's reaction hasn't fully come into existence.

Myrtle liqueur

              
‘Eau-de-vie – flavoured with myrtle,’ said the old woman. ‘Try it!’ She watched
intently as Ellie raised the glass to her lips. ‘Myrtle from the garden. I steep the
berries with honey in the local firewater, but the secret ingredient is the flower,
added for the final day. Such a pretty white flower it is, drowned in purple for
just one day.’
     The liqueur tasted of stewed plums. Not unpleasant but very strong.'
                                                                                    from The Sea Garden

Some very encouraging words from bookseller Nicola Rooney in Ann Arbor, as publication draws closer - thank you, Nicola! - inspired me to investigate more closely the possibilities of myrtle liqueur...

"I am an admirer and handseller of The Lantern and I shall be even more so of The Sea Garden. You may feel almost as though you have sipped a little too much of Madame de Fayols’ homemade myrtle infused liqueur as you read this book. A startling suicide in the opening scene presages further unexplained events to come. Curiously connected, three intriguing narratives are braided into one unforgettable story of love, betrayal, memory and murder. World War II French resistance fighters and their convoluted connections to British Intelligence leave a legacy unknown to Ellie Brooke, a young award winning garden designer. When she is awarded the contract to come and restore a memorial garden on the island of Porquerolles, she has no idea that it is not merely her growing reputation in horticultural circles that has made her the designer of choice. Her unease with the situation is mitigated in part by her connection to the enigmatic man she first saw on the ferry over to the island. A masterfully devised conclusion leaves just enough tantalizing questions to intrigue the reader without being too frustrating!” 
– Nicola Rooney, Nicola’s Books, Ann Arbor, MI

Some artistic licence went into the brewing of the myrtle liqueur in the novel, especially the "secret ingredient", but the real deal I found in a village market recently has a rather more extraordinary taste than stewed plums: it's highly floral - rather excessively so. I tried it neat but it was like sipping a medicinal perfume, so I added some sparkling wine. I would say even this myrtle kir royale was an acquired taste, with rather too much scent and eucalyptus bite. Quite fierce in alcohol content, too. Definitely better in the anticipation than the reality! Luckily, Madame de Fayols' recipe in the novel contains honey which makes it "not unpleasant" to drink.

I couldn't swear that the plant I found in the garden for these photos was myrtle, either - if anyone can tell me exactly what it is, I'd love to know. But the white flowers and blue berries make plausible stand-ins. And the purple-tinged red of the concoction in the glass has just the right hint of risk...

“Lawrenson’s settings are spellbinding and all three stories move along at a languid pace, allowing the reader to absorb the sumptuous historic detail.” Publishers Weekly

Marthe Lincel at Manosque

 

"The war had not yet begun when Marthe Lincel went to the
perfume factory for the first time. It was a visit organised by
the school for the blind in Manosque. If anyone were ever to
ask her, she would tell him without hesitation that it was the
day that changed her life.

She was eighteen years old, almost ready to leave the school,
when she took her first careful steps towards the long table
in the blending room at the Distillerie Musset, her hands in
the hands of other girls, one in front and one behind. The
girls walked in concert down from the school, through gusts
of dung from the stables, past the ramparts of the ancient
teardrop-shaped town, on past incense from the church and
into the tree-lined boulevard des Tilleuls. At the door to the
shop, a bell tinkled, and moments later they seemed to enter
the very flowering of lavender."

                                                        from The Sea Garden

 

The tree-lined boulevards of Manosque in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence still encircle the old town, linking its fortified gateways - one on the north side, one on the south - that date from the fourteenth century. The planes and limes cast welcome shade over the pavements, for even in this early in the year, the light is searing and on a cloudless day the heat can be intense. The gnarled branches and green leaves make a quintessentially French picture.

 

The fictional Distillerie Musset, in The Sea Garden, is situated on just such a street. It's not a grand shop front, but it has an enticing display of perfumes and soaps in the window and a presence on one of the main shopping boulevards. At the rear, accessed from the narrow lanes of the ancient town, is the courtyard and manufacturing shed. The entrance to this part of the business is discreet, also dappled by a venerable tree, rather like this:

 

 

                                   "In the blending room at the Distillerie Musset in town,

Marthe held a glass vial to her nose: a distillation of violet. She

breathed in slowly until it seemed for those few moments the

air was reduced to a powdery sweet- sharpness. Over the months

since then she had experimented with other ingredients to

intensify the fragrance, but now the addition of spicy acacia

wood had deepened its distinctive sweetness (the scent that

would always recall that first propitious visit to the Mussets)

to capture its shaded woodland origins and the shy purple petals

in the first shafts of spring sunshine." 

As many of you know, Marthe Lincel first appeared as a character in The Lantern, but seen only through the perspective of others. Writing about her in the third-person-intimate (in which the story unfolds only through the viewpoint of one character) was a particular challenge, because she is blind. Her story had to be told through other senses but the visual, and from her memories of sight as a child. In the event, I found it easier that I thought, given that I am normally a markedly visual writer.

Others will judge whether I have succeeded, but I found it hugely interesting and a spur to my own perception of certain circumstances. Of course, there is a certain irony in setting the scene in this way by posting these photographs, but the reading of a book has a great deal to do with the creation of pictures in the mind, and as a reader myself I always fascinated to see - and hear and smell and touch - the places that inspire books.

Shiny New Books

 

A shiny new book that opens to reveal an entrancing read...could there be a greater bibliophile treat? In this spirit, Shiny New Books has launched this week: an independent quarterly online magazine edited by some of Britain's most respected book bloggers. "At Shiny New Books, we think a bookshop isn’t necessarily the first place you want to hear about a new book, and that anticipating books, whether by new or established authors, is a particular readerly pleasure."



As well as reviews, the magazine will also feature interviews and posts by authors, explaining the background to forthcoming releases and giving a glimpse behind the scenes of the writing process. I'm delighted to say that I'm among those authors in the inaugural edition that features some prestigious names, including Sebastian Barry, Jill Dawson and Helen Oyeyemi. You can follow this link to the piece I wrote about an unexpectedly moving event during high season in Provence.

There's so much to read, with articles ranging from re-issues and a translation of the biography of Tove Janssen, to a masterly assessment of Emile Zola that I guarantee you won't be able to stop at one. The introduction to Zola - to mark Penguin's publication of a selection of his novels that have not been in translation for more than a hundred years - by Victoria Best, shows us exactly how high the standard is and why this new venture is likely to produce some of the best literary criticism you are likely to find anywhere.

The Sea Garden US early copies

 

The countdown to publication this summer has begun - June in the US and July in the UK. In America, a limited number of early reading copies are now available, in the hope that word will begin to spread and there will be some initial reactions on review sites when the book goes on sale. If you would like an early copy of The Sea Garden (and you live in the US) you can apply using this link to HarperCollins in conjunction with the Shelf Awareness website.

 

I'm also thrilled that one of my favourite US authors, Sarah Jio has generously given us the following blurb:

 

"Deborah Lawrenson's writing is delicious. Her stories are atmospheric, intoxicating and impossible not to get lost in." --Sarah Jio, New York Times bestselling author of GOODNIGHT JUNE and BLACKBERRY WINTER

 

So please do get yourself a copy if you can - I'd love to know what you think! The only word of caution (which might interest those of you who like to follow the writing process) is that these early copies are printed from the uncorrected proofs that I was working on back in November and as such there are some mistakes and repetitions that have been excised from the finished book.

Stormy weather

 

More ferocious storms here at the end of last week, and this was the scene when the rain finally stopped. But the flood water over the fields pointed up something I had never noticed before in this location...the wartime pillbox in front of the line of trees.

 

During the Second World War these squat, thick-walled structures were insinuated into the landscape as a last-ditch defence against an invasion from the Channel. They would have been manned by snipers and machine gun operators shooting out of slit-like openings. Built of brick and concrete by soldiers and local labour, they remain, hunkered down by streams and hidden in clumps of trees, damp and dark inside but too strong to be ruined.

 

This part of Kent was known as Hellfire Corner. Not only was the Battle of Britain fought in the skies above, but it was notorious for being on the receiving end of any spare bombs from Luftwaffe planes hastily fleeing south from London after a raid. There used to be a map in the village pub showing the local sites where these bombs had fallen, as well as crashed planes, and the black spots were surprisingly dense. If anyone had assumed that the countryside was safer than the cities, they shouldn't have ventured here.

 

I've sometimes wondered why I should be so interested in writing about the war - as indeed I have in The Sea Garden. Perhaps the sight of so many of these pillboxes half-hidden in the countryside, glimpsed from the paths I walk almost daily, has worked its magic on the subconscious and the imagination.

Opening scene

On the southern coast of mainland France, the Presqu’île de Giens is a ribbon of land dangling into the Mediterranean. At the end of the single road that reaches the sea is a beach and a simple café, a small ferry terminal and places where cars must be parked; they do not cross.

White sails dance across a blue infinity. A line of parked Vespa motor scooters stand by the picture windows of the café and, below, children play on a strip of stony beach. On a low rocky promontory over the water, La Tour Fondue sits squat and defensive: The Melted Tower. It slumps on its half-hearted crag, trailing rock roots through the shallow sea.

When a ferry arrives from one of The Golden Islands, the empty expanse between the café and the harbour buildings fills with movement and colour. Late in the afternoon, the crowds surge from the boat, bags bumping. Day-trippers. There are surprisingly few other travellers for the five o’clock return. Without a hotel booking for the night, no-one could can stay on the islands.

A simple ticket office and a stroll up the gangway on to the ferry. The sun is still fierce on bare arms and heads. Three miles across the water is a small paradise of pine trees, sandy paths and the clear peacock blue of the sea: Porquerolles.

  The island lay in wait, a smudge of land across the water.

                                                                                        

The Sea Garden: early copy giveaway

 

A very exciting parcel from New York this week...some early copies of The Sea Garden. Known as "bound galleys", these are uncorrected proofs, the same text I worked on a few weeks back, bound into paperback form. There are a few mistakes, which have now been set right. These versions are intended for book markets and early reviewers, so I was wondering if any of you here would like a chance to read it now?

 

I only have a few copies, so this will have to be a lucky dip. Please put a comment on this post and I will draw a name out of a hat in a week's time. Don't forget to leave a blog link or another way for me to contact you. Or, if you prefer, go over to my official facebook page, "like" it and leave a comment on the giveaway post there. Good luck!

 

The Sea Garden: blurb

Thank you all so much for your fantastic reactions to the US cover! There are more over on the facebook page, and your thoughts really mean a lot. So what's inside the cover? This is the HarperCollins blurb, the long version for the catalog - note spelling! - and pre-publication sites. No doubt some of it will appear on the back cover, too.

 

I've made a couple of photo montages to help set the scenes. Let me know what you think...

 

Romance, suspense, and World War II mystery are woven together in three artfully linked novellas-rich in drama and steeped in atmosphere-from the critically acclaimed author of The Lantern

 

THE SEA GARDEN
On the lush Mediterranean island of Porquerolles off the French coast, Ellie Brooke, an award-winning British landscape designer, has been hired to restore a memorial garden. Unsettled by its haunted air and the bitterness of the garden's owner, an elderly woman who seems intent on undermining her, Ellie finds that her only ally on the island is an elusive war historian …

THE LAVENDER FIELD
Near the end of World War II, Marthe Lincel, a young blind woman newly apprenticed at a perfume factory in Nazi-occupied Provence, finds herself at the center of a Resistance cell. When tragedy strikes, she faces the most difficult choice of her life . . . and discovers a breathtaking courage she never expected.

A SHADOW LIFE
Iris Nightingale, a junior British intelligence officer in wartime London, falls for a French agent. But after a secret landing in Provence results in terrible Nazi reprisals, he vanishes. When France is liberated, Iris is determined to uncover the truth. Was he the man he claimed to be?

Ingeniously interconnected, this spellbinding triptych weaves three parallel narratives into one unique tale of love, mystery, and murder. The Sea Garden is a vivid and absorbing chronicle of love and loss in the fog of war-and a penetrating and perceptive examination of the impulses and circumstances that shape our lives.

The Sea Garden: US cover reveal

I think it's safe to show you this now...in the past week several pre-publication sites have uploaded the US cover of The Sea Garden that I wrote about a while back. Here it is, the wisteria tunnel in all its mysterious splendour - and most of you will be happy to know that the proofs I've just sent back to the publishers in New York contain references to it in the text.

So what do you think? Will you be enticed to pick up the book, and will it draw the eye in a bookstore next June when it's published stateside by HarperCollins?

The Sea Garden: proofs

 

A quiet week, once again immersed in The Sea Garden. The US proofs arrived, the final stage before the manuscript becomes a bound book to be published next year. The copy edited version is now laid out as the pages will appear for the reader. This is the last chance to spot mistakes - of plot inconsistencies, fact, spelling and punctuation - and rectify any infelicities.

 

Only the small things, mind. We've gone far beyond the stage of wholesale re-writes. Any great new ideas will have to remain missed opportunities. I find proofreading quite nervewracking precisely because of these constraints: this is more-or-less it, and the fear is that you will sit down in front of these pages with your red pen and cup of tea, and despair at what you read. The words aren't perfect, and it never will be as perfect as they were in your head. 

 

The danger is also a terrible kind of word-blindness. As a writer, you've gone over the same words so many times that the story can seem dull. Obviously there are no surprises, but even the phrases that seemed good enough to survive this far seem lacklustre through familiarity. A few can be struck out, but you don't want to be completely ruthless or there'd be nothing left.

 

 

I find it most relaxing to sit on the floor, leaning back against a sofa, with the pages in piles on the carpet around me, anywhere but at my desk where I feel too much like the person who wrote them. As much as possible, I want to feel like a reader of the book. A very critical reader. Those pages where I mark some alteration are put in one pile, to be sent back to the publishers. The clean pages go in another.

 

Sometimes I realise that I ought just to run upstairs and check a fact, either in my research books or on the internet, and return relieved that I'm in time to change something. Just as well I had mental alarm bells when I came to the part set in wartime London and saw I had my characters walking past the statue of Eros in Piccadilly; it took five minutes to ascertain that Eros was packed away in storage during the course of both world wars. Pity, that was one of the better descriptions that had to be red-penned! 

 

But obviously, there's excitement and a certain pride in reaching this stage. The steps in the process by which writing turns from a private endeavour to a public one are gathering speed. I never forget to feel hugely grateful that anyone wants to publish me at all, and that top-notch editors and agents in New York and London have devoted their time and expertise to my efforts.

I wrote here a while back about the section of the book that is set in Provence (you have to scroll to the end of the post - note the change of the overall title, though not of this part). Well, here it is, and if I say so myself, I think it looks great on the page:

The Sea Garden will be published in summer 2014 by HarperCollins in the US and by Orion in the UK.