Show notes
Hello everyone and Happy Christmas!
I’m Jenny Wheeler, the host of the Joys of Binge Reading, and this is our last episode for 2020…
As we did last year, we’re taking a break in January to refresh and renew ourselves. As many of you know, I’m in New Zealand, and as a country we pretty much shut down post Christmas and head for the beaches and forest – which we call bush….It’s like a whole nation goes on holiday together…
I’m going to be spending time relaxing in my little 1975 Sprite Major caravan – yes the ones with the cute rounded windows – in a field with fantastic views over the Coromandel coast, now and then going down the hill for swims in the gorgeous sea waters there –like swimming in champagne.
Here we are in the hills above Whitianga on a New Zealand summer holiday!!! (Family members visiting from Aussie!)
But before I pack up for the year, I wanted to round out things by first thanking you all for sticking with us this year. The Joys of Binge Reading has grown this year – it’s lovely to see it. And we’re getting lots of fantastic authors on to talk about their work, and I can promise more of those next year.
For this end of year episode I thought I’d take a look at the shows that have attracted the biggest audience – the people that for whatever reason more of you tuned into – over the last twelve months.
The difference in the numbers listening to these guests compared with many of the others – are sometimes small – and it’s true that I get a great pleasure out of every single author I talk to – but these are the ones who’d make the “Top Ten” if we were doing one…
Authors come from four corners
I was thrilled to see where the author came from seems to make no difference to popularity – the spread of author nationalities between the US, Australia, New Zealand and the UK is pretty evenly shared– so you’re a pleasingly global lot!!
So instead of having just one voice on the show, you’ll be hearing from ten or more…And as usual, if any of these snippets spark your interest and they are a show you missed out on, there will be links in the show notes to make it easy for you to find them and tune in – so there’ll be plenty of new people to keep you going over the break. The shownotes for this episode can be found on the Joys of Binge Reading .com, or you can find us on the Binge Reading Facebook page.
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I’ve taken the dates December 1, 2019 to December 1, 2020 as the period we’re looking at for obvious reasons – December 2020 isn’t over yet.
2020’s year’s most popular episode
I’m proud of the fact that we’ve now got 150 episodes on the Joys of Binge Reading, and I think every one of those authors are fantastic.
However, taking that period, there was one author who stood head and shoulders above the rest in terms of the number of people who tuned in to listen to him – and that was Martin Walker – author of the much-loved Bruno the police chief mystery series, set in Perigord, France.
Martin Walker at home in Perigord – a delicious world. Photo, courtesy NY Times.
Before he turned to writing French mysteries, Martin had a formidable career as a diplomatic correspondent on top UK newspapers.
He shared some highly entertaining stories about his days working as a correspondent in Thatcher’s England, Gorbachev’s Moscow and Clinton’s Washington, but you’ll need to head over to his episode to hear those.
The wonders of Perigord
So, what was it that made him chuck in such a fascinating glamorous career? To turn to fiction writing. Well, he explains it all here.
Martin Walker: When we were based in Brussels, my wife decided that we’d been foreign correspondents for all of our lives and our children needed a place to be rooted. She decided we should get a house in the Perigord, which we’d visited from time to time where we have some friends who were there.
And I became increasingly fascinated by the Perigord, particularly by the prehistory, the prehistoric caves, like Lascaux. I remember the shock when I first saw it and thought, my God, these people were in no sense primitive. We’ve been quite wrong about this. I mean, the artistic sensibility, it was like our own.
Martin Walker’s first novel – The Caves of Perigord
And so I began researching, interviewing the archeologists and reading books and visiting all the caves. And I wrote my novel, The Caves of Perigord, which is still in print, I’m proud to say, which is really about what kind of human society could have produced at Lascaux.
You’ll understand from that – Bruno is contemporary, but you’ll also get some fascinating history in everyone of the Bruno books – the region is steeped in it. Oh and lots of food too. But what is the secret of Bruno’s charm. He’s no James Bond “he man.” Is it because he does show his vulnerabilities?
The secret of Bruno’s appeal
Here’s Martin talking Bruno’s appeal.
I think that that might be part of it. I think the first thing is that we, all of us have this sense that our police ought to be our neighbors, we ought to be able to trust them to like them. And in fact increasingly these days, particularly in the US where police are armed, that’s less and less the case, given the kind of social problems that are being thrown up that the police have to handle.
But I think we, all of us have an ideal cop, someone who is honorable, decent, and brave and who realizes that in a sense, his work is as much a social worker as being any kind of agent of state repression. So I had this idealistic image , of what a policeman could be from what I’d seen of my friend in France.
He’s 40, he’s the most eligible bachelor in the village… what happens when you finally marry him off?
Martin Walker: Well my wife, whose views I always take with great seriousness, says with the moment I marry Bruno off, I lose half my readers. So we have to bear that in mind. He hasn’t found the right woman yet. I mean, he hasn’t told me yet.
Characters with a mind of their own
The thing is, Bruno has become a hugely realistic person in my head, as has the whole of St Denis, the people who live there and so on. I mean, they are as real for me as are my real neighbors.
I remember once when I was writing one of the books , called The Devil’s Cave, and in that, I had a dangerously attractive woman who was really quite a bad, quite a baddie. She was determined to seduce Bruno for her own purposes. And my plan for the book, I mean, I’d thought, well, of course.
Martin Walker – The Devil’s Cave
Bruno is just a guy. He will fall for her subtle seductive ways. But as I was trying to write this chapter, it was like a force field came out of my desk, and my gut was saying, “I am not ready to drop my trousers for this woman”. It was like he had a mind of his own, this character in my head. And so I’m waiting for him to tell me, what he is you going to do next?
If Martin was doing it all over again, what would he change?
Well I’d endeavour to meet my wife earlier and have been married to her for longer, I guess. Other than that, no, not really. I just think that like so many people of my generation who were born in World War II, we have this sort of extraordinary growth. Public free education and in Britain free. healthcare.
On his tombstone
I mean we were so lucky in all of that. And then in my career, being in Moscow for years end as the Cold War and then Washington, I am just so lucky and all the things I’ve been through. I think if I have to put anything on my gravestone, it will be, “He didn’t miss much.”
Isn’t that a wonderful tribute?
Martin Walker’s Website: http://www.brunochiefofpolice.com/
A clutch of other mystery authors are not far behind Martin in listenership, and the settings and approaches they took to their mysteries show our listeners are very happy with variety.
Popular mystery episodes included SW Hubbard’s twisty edgy mysteries set in the Adirondacks and the world of Florida estate sales, Chuck Greaves irresistible likeable rogue hero in the Jack MacTaggart series, Dwight Holing’s contemporary Westerns with the tortured ex-soldier Nick Drake, and Anne Hillerman’s Navajo mysteries, carried on from her father Tony Hillerman after his death.
A likeable rogue for a hero
Chuck Greaves is a former LA lawyer who writes literary historical fiction as well as sharp contemporary mysteries like the Jack MacTaggart series.
One reviewer described Jack this way: “Take John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee, Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware, and the best of John Grisham’s protagonists, shake and serve, and you’ll have the hero of Hush Money. ”
Hush Money – that’s Book One in the series…..
Here we are talking about Jack….
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. So Jack is a lovely character. He’s irrepressible, he’s a bit roguish and rough around the edges, he might scorn the legal formalities a bit, but he’s got a heart of gold.
I had the feeling when I was reading it that it’s almost like a wish fulfillment thing, that you wished that law would enable guys like Jack to make a living, but perhaps it doesn’t. Is there any sort of truth in that suspicion?
Smarter, funnier and better looking
Chuck Greaves – Jack MacTaggart series
Chuck Greaves: Well, you know, I think the Jack MacTaggart character is probably my fantasy self, you know, except that Jack is smarter than me, funnier than me, and better looking than me. But other than that, there’s a bit of me in there for sure.
And as he explains in this next clip, real life intrudes into his stories more often than you might think…..
Jenny Wheeler: I think I had seen reference to a particular case with the wine story, the Napa Valley wine company. You did have a case yourself that was relevant to that plot line, didn’t you?
Chuck Greaves: At the beginning of that book there’s a story, it’s not the main story in the book but it’s Jack’s entry into the case. It’s a case in which a wealthy person dies and leaves behind two wives.
Art imitating life
In the book the person who dies is a film executive and a media mogul and he leaves behind a wife and a mistress, both of whom claim to be the wife, and the mistress sues the wife for half of the decedent’s estate, and that’s how Jack gets into that whole Napa Valley scene. I had a case just like that.
I had a prominent citizen, a client who passed away and left behind two wives.
And that was quite an interesting case and I thought that was a fun way to kick the book off. So yes, I have used actual cases from my practice, not too often, and never as the main storyline, but I’ve used them. I had a very interesting law practice.
I represented some from interesting people, including for 10 years I represented Richard Pryor, the comedian, and we did a lot of fun stuff together. There’s a lot of grist for the mill there.
Chuck Greaves’ Books Website: https://chuckgreaves.com/
Soul-searching modern Westerns
Dwight Holing’s modern Westerns are deep, painful and soul searching, raising issues about the way our society has treated returning soldiers from modern wars.
As I commented to Dwight in the podcast chat:
Jenny: He’s escaping PSTD by being a wildlife ranger in Oregon. It’s a set up that gives you tremendous scope for both high action as well as some telling personal and social commentary. Tell us how Nick came about as a character
Dwight Holing: Well, Nick Drake is really an embodiment of people I know and love – both family, friends and people I met while traveling or writing nonfiction, both people living in dead. I grew up in the late sixties too, and we all know people like Nick, we all see parts of them and ourselves.
People who have experienced great heights and fallen into great depths. People who have loved and lost and learned to love again, people who have a moral code that helps guide them when facing good and evil.
Caught in a war with no rules
In Nick’s case, he’s a decorated soldier in a war without rules. He blames himself for the death of all the men in his squad and their deaths led him to become an addict, where he wound up being held at Walter Reed Hospital for treatment of what is now called PTSD.
It wasn’t called that back then, but someone saw the inherent good in him and threw him a lifeline and paying that forward allows him to help others and in doing so reclaim the humanity lost in a war.
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Dwight is an experienced magazine and non fiction writer, but he finds himself writing his fiction at a pace, with four books out in the Nick Drake series in a short time. As he says:
Dwight Holing: There’s a few reasons for this breakneck pace, and one is the characters themselves. They’re speaking to me really loud and clear right now.
Momentum key component
And as soon as one story’s finished, the characters are telling me about the next. The second reason are my readers. They read a lot faster than I can write, and they’re not shy about telling me that, be it on email, Facebook posts. I mean, even in reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, they’re saying, Hey, Dwight Holing, we’re ready for the next.
The third reason is., I love doing this. I love writing. I love connecting with readers and hearing what they think. I love the online community. I’m part of a big international community of other writers and bloggers like you, editors, photographers, cover designers, and of course readers.
Momentum is an important component in each of the Nick Drake novels. I’m striving to mimic that in my writing habits as well.
And Dwight tells a great childhood story about the romantic idea of writers from his grandfather.
Dwight Holing: Well, my mother’s father, my grandfather, who I’m named after – his name was Dwight Mitchell Wiley, and he was a short story writer back in the 30s and 40s. He wrote for the Saturday Evening Post and McCall’s and periodicals like that.
Grandad’s Hollywood stories
His stories his genre, was light, romantic, humorous pieces, and he was good at it. I mean, they’re just great stories for the time. One day the call from Hollywood came in and he was hired to write a screenplay and he became part of the Paramount scribes.
And among them also was Raymond Chandler, the great detective writer, Philip Marlowe’s creator, and they would hang around and together and my mother tells the story of them in their bungalow waking up in the morning, and there was Raymond Chandler asleep on the couch.
Still wearing the white gloves he liked to wear when he played poker and drank gin. It was just this fabulous story. And that always stuck with me about this romantic idea of the writers, you know, living in Hollywood and writing screenplays and writing for magazines or writing novels, no doubt had had an influence on me.
Whether I inherited the talent from my grandfather or not, I don’t know. But it makes for good memories, that’s for sure.
Dwight Holing’s Books Website: http://dwightholing.com/
Anne Hillerman’s Navajo mysteries
Anne Hillerman has done something extraordinary in taking over the hugely popular Navajo mystery series from her father. Tony Hillerman after his death. Her dad was – as the New York Times noted in his obituary “a rare figure, a best selling author who was adored by his fans, admired by fellow authors, and respected by critics.”
She’s now five books into her part of the work, all of them New York Time bestsellers.
Anne explains where it all started:
My father started the mystery series that people have loved for a long time 50 years ago. He came up with the character of Joe Leaphorn, Navajo detective. In that first book he hadn’t really intended to write a series about the Navajo Indians.
Following father’s footsteps
He had always loved mysteries and his idea was that he would bring in this interesting character and do a setting that people weren’t familiar with and that that would give his books a little something different. The Blessing Way came out on March 11, 1970, 50 years ago. It’s amazing.
And how did Anne get the idea to continue her father’s legacy
Anne Hillerman: My background was nonfiction, and I had been working on a nonfiction book about the places in the Navajo world that my father wrote about – places that he visited and loved.
My husband and I, my husband’s a professional photographer, had spent I guess about two years traveling all through Navajo land, talking to people, taking photos.
I was almost done with the book when my dad died so my husband and I finished the book and a year after my father’s death, the book was published and my husband and I did a little book tour to libraries and bookstores and we’re talking about the book.
His readers wouldn’t give up
Every time I would do the talk, the first or second or maybe third question would be, are there any more books in the series? Was there something that your father was working on that was at the publisher, something another editor could finish, you know, a collection of short stories?
And I would say no, sorry, my dad really took care of business before he died. Then the person asking the question would say oh, I love those characters.
I love those stories, oh no, this is the worst news I’ve ever heard. I heard that longing for those stories so many times, and at the same time of course, I was dealing with my own grief at my father’s death, and after a while it dawned on me that just like those fans, besides missing my father, I was thinking how can it be that there will be no more Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn stories?
The drive to continue a legacy
This just isn’t right. I had never written a novel, but I thought I could give it a try and the worst thing that happens is that I use up a few years of my life and then I get it out of my system.
Those things were the combination that led me to think maybe I could continue the series.
Anne Hillerman Website: https://annehillerman.com/
Others in the mystery/thriller genre who proved highly popular were thriller authors Michael Robotham and Ian Austin.
Michael’s heart stoppers include The Secret She Keeps, a stolen baby thriller made into a six part TV series and the Cyrus Haven series with Evie, the girl who has an unusual ability to tell when people are lying. And before you say that sounds far-fetched, Michael explained that it is a real thing.
Michael Robotham – Crime master
Here’s Michael Robotham: Yes. There are about 1 in 500 people have an 80% ability to tell when someone is lying. Invariably, they are people that have spent decades working in the prison service or the police or child services or even schoolteachers.
If you are lied to every day, you get a pretty good antenna about when you are being lied to. They have about an 80% ability. Normally of course we have a 50/50 shot as the average whether someone is lying.
Evie Cormac is very young to have this sort of skill. It’s not proven, but there is a growing body of, I say evidence, but people have begun to speculate that when a young person has this ability, it is sometimes because they have suffered such an abusive childhood that they have learned to pick up on the very fleeting micro expressions to keep safe.
They don’t know from one split second if someone is going to hug them or hit them, and it becomes a means of survival to pick up on these sorts of tiny expressions to stay safe.
Writing excites author too
And you might find it hard to believe that Michael’s intricately plotted, edge of your seat stories surprise him as much as they do the reader. He comes up with the seed of an idea and lets the story unfold.
Michael Robotham: Absolutely. When we reach a point in the story where people are in great danger, then I’m not sleeping. I’m sitting there thinking, how on earth am I going to save them?
How are they going to get out of this? It’s a very organic way of writing. It’s a very exciting way of writing.
When I come in from my writing room, the office here, I say to my wife, you would not believe what just happened. I’m genuinely excited. I know there are a lot of writers who plot the whole thing in advance, and they know what’s going to happen, they know what’s coming.
Whereas I like not knowing. I think it’s incredible, but it’s also like writing without a net. You fall and crash and burn and you throw out a lot of material, but it’s a fun ride.
Michael Robotham Website: https://www.michaelrobotham.com/
Ian Austin’s under-cover cop Dan Calder is a man with a tendency for trouble – either creating it or falling into it… and he’s the protagonist in a crime series that’s been favorably compared to international names like John Grisham and Ian Rankin. The fact that Ian Austin had a long career in the police force before he turned to writing guarantees he knows his subject.
Ian Austin Website: https://www.ianaustin.org/
Not all of our top episodes were mysteries however.
Historical fiction popular category
Historical fiction, uplifting and emotional family stories and romantic comedy all found a place in the top line up.
World War II stories dominated, from Stephanie Barron’s fictionalized study of Winston Churchill’s mother, That Churchill Woman, to female spy stories from Christine Wells The Traitor’s Girl and The Juliet Code, Natasha Lester’s The Paris Secret, and Fiona Valpy’s French novels The Beekeeper’s Promise and The Dressmaker’s Gift all drawing on true wartime experiences for their stories.
Here’s Stephanie Barron talking about the attraction of World War II and Jenny Randolph Churchill.
Stephanie Barron: I just found it fascinating when I was researching Churchill for other books I’ve written, which are World War II espionage novels, that he revered his mother and credited her with so much influence in his upbringing, character, and destiny.
An American in London
And yet most biographers of Churchill dismiss her in ways that range from disparaging to truly contemptible. I think in the language they use to dismiss Jennie Jerome Churchill, has at its root in several things.
Namely, a lot of Churchill’s biographers are both male and British and they really hate the fact that the cherished son of British destiny, Winston Churchill, the man who saved not only England, but arguably Europe from the Nazis, was in fact only half British.
It’s really hard for them to accept that that Churchill was half American, and being male, they tended to dismiss Jenny as an influence on Churchill, because she is someone that they regarded as frivolous, and selfish and as a bad mother.
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As a profligate financially and ultimately as sexually licentious. She was someone who lived very much by her own rules. She was married to a man who may have been homosexual and certainly I think had syphilis.
A complex, provocative woman
So her marriage was unhappy and she refused to stop living because of it. So she’s an interesting, complex and provocative figure that history has not necessarily agreed upon, but that I found to be a fascinating subject for exploration in a novel.
Stephanie Barron Website: https://francinemathews.com/
In the Paris Secret Natasha Lester touches on the true story of Catherine Dior, sister of the famous fashion designer Christian, tangled up in her spy ring story.
Here’s Natasha:
Natasha Lester: I read about Catherine Dior in a book called Les Parisiennes by an historian called Anne Sebba. It’s a wonderful book about the role of French women during the Second World War, both those who worked with the Resistance and those who collaborated with the Germans.
Anne Sebba mentions Catherine Dior in that book two or three times, just in passing, but there was enough in there for me to glean that Catherine did work for the French Resistance and that she was captured by the Nazis and deported to Ravensbruck and that she’s one of the very lucky few who survived that dreadful experience at that concentration camp.
Catherine Dior war work honored
Her work for the Resistance had been so important that she was awarded a Legion d’Honneur by the French and Croix de Guerre and the British awarded her as well because of her work with the Resistance. I just couldn’t believe that she was so heroic, she risked her life quite literally for freedom and nobody has ever heard of her.
But we all know about Christian, her brother who made beautiful dresses, whereas arguably Catherine is probably the more heroic of two Dior siblings.
The moment I read about her in that book, I knew that I wanted to include her in a story some way down the track. It was probably in about early 2017 that I read that and I always like an idea to kind of fester in my mind for about six months before I begin seriously researching and writing. So the germ of The Paris Secret was born from that.
Natasha Lester Website: https://www.natashalester.com.au/
Melanie Benjamin Hollywood stories
Melanie Benjamin too, covered World War II in her The Mistress of the Ritz – an startling tale of goings on in the famous Paris hotel during Nazi occupation in the 1940s.
But like several of our other high raters, Melanie also turned to movie history for another of her works, The Girl In the Picture, which examines the remarkable collaboration between Hollywood star Mary Pickford and screen writer Frances Marion.
Says Melanie:
Melanie Benjamin: That was to me was the shame of this, that this whole history about women in Hollywood had these women who had almost been forgotten. I mean, Frances Marion was the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Screenplay and the first person ever to win two of them, and she was the highest paid screenwriter of her time, one of the most influential screenwriters in Hollywood history, and no one’s heard of her. There are no awards named after her.
High achievers waiting recognition
I find it so frustrating that women were just as responsible as the men were in inventing Hollywood and inventing the art of film making and yet it’s the men we remember, like Cecil B de Mille and Louie B Mayer, and we don’t remember Frances.
We don’t remember Dorothy Arzner, and we don’t remember Alice Guy-Blaché and all these incredibly pioneering women. And I thought that’s was one major reason why I wanted to write this book, because I really felt it’s time we remember these women.
And Mary Pickford we may know about, certainly, you know a name, maybe a face, but we probably don’t remember that she was the first female head of a motion picture studio and that these two women together had not just an amazing, what I think is a truly empowering female friendship, but it also a collaboration that resulted in the most popular movies of their time.
A hundred years ago. Two women were making the most popular movies in Hollywood and that just doesn’t happen anymore. And you know I just thought this story needs to be told as well.
Melanie Benjamin Books Website: https://melaniebenjamin.com/
Kate Alcott’s Touch of Stardust
Kate Alcott too, took us inside the sparkle of the star system in Hollywood’s golden days, In her book A Touch of Stardust.. to reveal people like Clarke Gable and Carole Lombard on the set of Gone With The Wind, – the only Hollywood star the Kate says she ‘truly fell in love with.”
Kate says of the bombshell actress:
I think I discovered her as I went along, but you know what I try to do, with Carole Lombard, or Ingrid Bergman or any of the major true life characters. I do as much research to give me a really strong sense of connection of what they actually truly said. So I use some of the things that they said in their words and weave it into the story so that’s been a part of building the story.
Carole Lombard kooky favorite
And when I saw some of the things Carole Lombard did, she was a real kook. I would have loved to put my feet up and have a talk with her. She was exuberant about her love for Clark Gable. They were obviously such turbulent times. I think the marriages in Hollywood are under such intense scrutiny all the time.
They deserve some sensitivity. She was just so alive. She became one of my favorite characters of any of my books.
Kate Alcott Website: http://www.katealcott.com/
And popular Kiwi author Deborah Challinor was a bit of an outlier here – in the top ranking group with the episode talking about her latest book, The Jacaranda Tree, the story of an exotic dancer in the 1960s Sydney nightclub scene different from everything else on the list…
Deborah Challinor Website: http://www.deborahchallinor.com/
Emotional women’s fiction
It couldn’t be a year of pandemic without some heart-wrenching emotional women’s fiction – and Barbara Hannay and Nicky Pellegrino both made the top group with stories that make you want to laugh and cry.
Here I am asking Barbara Hannay about writing uplifting stories:
Jenny Wheeler: You say on your website, in your mission statement, that as a romance writer you want to give readers an “uplifting heart-wrenching fantasy while keeping it believable.” And I wondered if you could explain to us a little bit how you manage to do that, keeping the fantasy element, but also making it believable.
Barbara Hannay: Well, first of all, I’ll work on the emotional element first because I do think readers like to have their emotions engaged, so I always try to make sure there is a situation that I know will be an emotional one. Often it involves some kind of loss for one of the characters. They’ve lost their job, or they suffer a broken relationship, or they’ve lost a loved one, or there’s been a serious mistake they’ve made in the past.
Something like that, which will be very involving on an emotional level. I try to make it believable by making sure my characters are well motivated so that whatever they do, you understand why they’re doing it. But I think for me, the fantasy level probably comes from the feeling of being swept away.
Probably the whole romance of falling in love, but also the setting. I don’t go in for wealth and billionaires and all that sort of thing so much. The fantasies that I create are more about going to a different place, a place that might be different for the reader who might be busy in the city, hard at work, dealing with traffic and all the rest of it. I try to make my settings a bit like a far-away dream.
Barbara Hannay Website: http://www.barbarahannay.com/
Lessons learned – Nicky Pellegrino
And Nicky Pellegrino – a top seller in New Zealand, and known for her food, fun and romance in Italy formula, was on talking about Tiny Pieces of Us, a story with a darker side than many of her other works – appropriate – maybe – as we recorded it just as the pandemic was hitting. Nicky get’s philosophical about what writing that book – and what was going on around her – was teaching her about life.
Nicky Pellegrino: In a weird sort of way, I think I’ve learned the lesson that my character in Tiny Pieces of Us learns, that you can’t live a safe, small life without any risks because the outside world is going to come in and change things for you.
You might as well take those risks that you really want to take. I’m risking failure, which you never want to do. No one likes the idea of not being good at something, but you’ve might as well do that because life is going to come along and change stuff for you anyway.
I never, ever in my life expected something like the COVID lockdown to happen. I thought there might be wars, I thought there might be disasters, but this was something I never considered. Now I feel anything could happen.
The challenges of pandemic
I found level four very difficult, partly because of the broken leg and having elderly, frail parents in the UK. I don’t know when I’ll be able to see them again or that they’re going to be okay because things in England are still very seriously wrong.
To try and create some positives and take charge of my life and make some changes became important to me, because I feel like we’re being buffeted by things we can’t control and we all need a little bit of control in our lives.
Nicky Pellegrino Website: https://www.nickypellegrino.com/books/tiny-pieces-of-us/
We’ve got two romances to round off this year’s list – Lucinda Brant’s Georgian historicals and Bronwyn Sell’s contemporary romcom Lovestruck set in a tourist resort in the Whitsundays…
Romance rounds out the year
Lucinda Brant’s been described as “Giving the Golden Age of romance a modern voice.” Her Roxton series is up to eight books and she says there’s still more to come.
Here I ask her about the genesis for the series:
Jenny: The book on your website that’s free for download, Midnight Marriage, is based on real events, a secret midnight marriage establishes a dynasty. I was fascinated by that. What were those real events that are at the back of that whole story?
Lucinda Brant: I read Stella Tillyard’s book, Aristocrats, which was based on the Lennox family. The first Duke of Richmond was an illegitimate son of Charles II and his son was married off to settle a gambling debt.
He was brought into a room to this girl who I think was 12, because it was the age of consent that girls could marry, and they were married off there and then. The gambling debt was settled, and she was sent back to the nursery and the boy was sent off on the grand tour. I thought, this is a fantastic story.
Truth stranger than fiction
Then what happened? He returned from the grand tour, was at the theater, saw a girl across the theater in a box and thought, she looks very nice, I want to be introduced to her. Can someone tell me her name? And someone said, well actually, that’s your wife.
Jenny Wheeler: Amazing story.
Lucinda Brant: Truth is stranger than fiction.
Lucinda Brant Website: https://www.lucindabrant.com/
And to round it all out, Bronwyn Sell reminds us of the challenges writers face in a year of pandemic that you mightn’t have thought of…We recorded this in April, 2020, when New Zealand was in its first lockdown and Covid 19 was still a strange new thing.
Bronwyn Sell: So my next novel is due out in February but I don’t know what the world’s going to look like in February.
And of course this is a tourist company. The island is a resort island. So what’s that going to look like for them? I’ve written the book already. It’s with my editor at the moment, although it’s got a few layers of editing to go through, but I have people flying in from America to go to this island and I have people flitting over the world.
Interestingly, the book does open with the characters facing a bit of a dilemma because the tourism industry is down, or their own numbers are down and they’re wondering how they can get more people to come. From that point of view it’s probably quite brilliant, but then what do I do with it? Do I get people pouring into the island again? It’s impossible to know that.
We’ve only got a couple more months to wait to find out what she decided.
Bronwyn Sell Website: https://www.bronwynsell.com/
That’s it from us for 2020. I do hope everyone listening has a wonderful Christmas and a healthy New Year… We’ll be back on February 1, 2021. In the meantime, explore some of the fabulous authors we’ve talked about here today – and more than 100 others who are just as good who couldn’t get a mention here… And See You Next Year!
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