Past and present collide in Kathleen McGurl’s dual timeline stories, where family secrets and past mysteries are unlocked in the present day. Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Kathleen talks about the stories her readers love, interwoven tales of social upheaval, emotional drama, and lost love spanning centuries. And we’ve got three e-Books of Kathleen’s new book, The Secret of the Chateau, an absorbing timeslip saga which stretches from the Paris of the guillotine to the South of France today. Enter the draw and you could be one of three lucky readers to win a copy. Draw closes June 20. Kathleen McGurl author Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: Why writing on the move appeals Her passion for Irish stories The magic of past and present colliding A family mystery that haunted her The writers she admires most What’s coming up next Where to find Kathleen McGurl: Website: http://kathleenmcgurl.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/KathleenMcGurlTwitter: @KathMcGurl What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Jenny Wheeler: But now here’s Kathleen. Hello there Kathleen, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us. Kathleen McGurl: It’s lovely to be here. Jenny Wheeler: Just as an introduction, you are in the UK, in Bournemouth, and I am in New Zealand, in Auckland, both in various stages of a global pandemic. Tell us – what’s happening in your part of the world and how is social distancing affecting you? Managing in the pandemic Kathleen McGurl: Here in the UK we haven’t had a full lockdown. We’ve been allowed out for exercise every day and actually, as we’re speaking, today is the first day of a slight further relaxation. We’re allowed to go out as much as we can for exercise and if you can’t work from home, you’re encouraged to go back to work. So things are easing off a bit and whether it’s the right time to do that or not, there’s a lot of discussion. But yes, I’m in Bournemouth, which is on the south coast of England. We are five minutes’ walk away from the beach and the clifftop and so because we’ve been allowed out for exercise, we have been out most days walking along there and it’s just lovely. We’ve been out for bike rides as well. Family re-united I’ve got both of my sons living at home. They’re grown up. They’re 22 and 25 but they’ve both been here for the duration of this. My youngest son thought he was coming for a fortnight stay and then the lockdown started so he’s been there ever since, with his stuff in a room in London. My oldest son, the minute the locked down was announced, he just piled everything into the car, drove down here and he’s been working from home here ever since. So there are some good sides to it and I’ve had my family around me, which is lovely. How Kathleen got started Jenny Wheeler: Was there a Once Upon A Time moment when you dercided to write fiction, and if so what was the catalyst? Kathleen McGurl: It’s a kind of yes and no answer to that. Not a sudden epiphany that I wanted to write, because I always wanted to write. As a child at school, if we were told to write a story, I was like, yay, I can write a story. And I absolutely loved writing them. However, I went down the science route at senior school and then I ended up in a job in IT. I always thought one day I’ll write a novel, I know that I will write a novel one day, and I was waiting until I had the time to write. I think I thought that sooner or later someone would say, hey, take a year off work and write a novel. Of course, that was never going to happen. So I suppose there was an epiphany moment in that I suddenly realized that if I want to write, I have to actually sit down and write. There is no other way of doing it and I have to find the time and make the time and squeeze out minutes from the day, whatever, just get on and do it. That happened maybe 15 years ago, I guess, I realized that, and I started making time in my day to write and once I started, that was it. I never stopped. I just kept writing. Writing her way in by short stories Jenny Wheeler: What did you start with right then? Kathleen McGurl: I tried a bit of everything back then. I started trying a couple of novels – there are two half-written ones – and I tried literary short stories for competitions, got nowhere with those, and then I started short stories for the women’s magazine market. That’s where I found my first niche, if you like. I thought, oh, I can do these. They started to sell and at that time I had young children and a full-time job. The great thing about short stories is although they’re not easy to write, they’re quick to write. You only need a few hours per story, so you can realistically do one every two weeks or something and try and sell them. The buzz from getting first acceptances was fantastic. Where past and present meet Jenny Wheeler: Yes, I can imagine. But now at this stage of your career, you’ve made these dual timeline novels your thing. It’s a situation where there’s a mystery from the past that’s been discovered and then explained by the contemporary characters. That’s your specialty now, isn’t it, and you’ve done about nine of these now, is that right? Kathleen McGurl: Yes, eight and there are two in the pipeline and there’s another novel that is purely historical. First novel from Kathleen McGurl Jenny Wheeler: How did you develop or evolve into that particular niche? Kathleen McGurl: I found they were the novels that I most like to read. You weren’t always sure without reading a blurb whether or not it would be dual timeline or what. But I came across authors like Kate Morton and Katherine Webb and I found that I absolutely loved their novels so much. I’d also started doing some genealogy research of my own and my first novel, which is purely historical, is based on some characters from my family tree. A jigsaw puzzle of a book I felt constrained writing that story in that I was trying to stick to the facts as I knew them, and I thought it’d be much more exciting if I didn’t have to stick to facts. I could make stuff up. In my first novel, The Emerald Comb, the main contemporary character to an extent is based on me. She’s researching her own family tree. My tagline was, what if you came across not just a skeleton in the closet as it were, but an actual skeleton somewhere that’s related to where you know your ancestors lived. I had such fun writing that and as soon as I’d written that I thought right that’s it, I’m going to try for more and more of this kind of novel. I’ve developed a bit of a pattern. I alternate chapters, start with contemporary and end with contemporary and weave it altogether. You have to come up with two stories for every novel because you’ve got to have the historical and the contemporary and weave it all together, so it is quite a jigsaw puzzle to write them. Tales of the French Revolution Jenny Wheeler: Yes. The most recent one is The Secret of the Chateau and I think that was released fairly recently, wasn’t it? Kathleen McGurl: It’s released on the 15th of May. At the time we’re talking it’s not yet out. Jenny Wheeler: That’s right, I got an advance copy from you. The Secret of the Chateau goes back to the French Revolution and the overthrow of the French monarchy and I think it’s probably the first of your French books set in this period, isn’t it? Alpes Maritimes – a favorite place and the setting for the latest book – Kathleen McGurl Kathleen McGurl: It’s interesting that you say first because I’m not sure whether I’m going to do another one set in France yet. I might do. When there isn’t the pandemic going on, we normally spend quite a lot of time each year in France because we both absolutely love it. That’s one reason that I decided I wanted to set one in France. Beautiful Alpes Maritime I picked the Alpes Maritime area because that’s where I wanted to spend some time and travel. And why not? I haven’t ruled out writing another one set in France but I’m not as well up on French history. I knew about the French Revolution. We studied that in school. Author Kathleen McGurl at work and her Gertie Camper Van office It’s one of those events that have knock on effects throughout the entire world. Even so, when I started it I was thinking I know what happened in the French Revolution and then I thought I’d better check up on the detail and I realized how little I actually knew. So there was an awful lot of research had to go on for that one, which was quite difficult. Would I do another French one? I probably would at some stage. I don’t know. I haven’t got one planned at the moment. Camper van research Jenny Wheeler: I saw a reference on your website that you took your camper van called Gertie down there when you were researching that book and that sounded like great fun. Tell us a little bit about that trip. Kathleen McGurl: We own a small motor home, small in terms of motor homes. They can be huge, our one is six meters long. Yes, she is called Gertie. We bought her a few years ago. Since I gave up my day job, we like to spend up to half of every year traveling in Gertie and usually France and Spain. We spent last winter in Spain. It was lovely. About this time last year we were in the Alpes Maritime area. I was getting going with writing The Secret of the Chateau. We were travelling round. I was looking out for buildings and saying, oh, that’s my chateau up there, it’s about like that, and soaking in the atmosphere and the mountains there and the villages and the way of life. I do absolutely adore that area and in fact if there hadn’t been the pandemic going on, we would have been there right now. We had planned to go and stay in that area again. The hint of a ghost Jenny Wheeler: That’s a shame but hopefully things will come back in the not too distant future. In The Secret of the Chateau you’ve got a group of friends who buy a small chateau together and then they start to discover something about the history of the house. There are lots of secrets and emotional twists and even the hint of a ghost. Interesting that you mentioned that you did do a lot of ghost stories because there’s a hint of a ghost and it’s a tremendous lot of fun and both lines of the story, the contemporary one and the one of the aristocrats escaping from the French court, are very touching and real, so it blends together very well, doesn’t it? Re-telling Irish history Kathleen McGurl: Thank you. I try to use similar themes for the historical story and the contemporary story, so that helps to draw them together. In that one, they’re both trying to make a new life for themselves, successfully in one case, and less so in the other. But it is all about change. During the French revolution, that’s what it was all about. Off with the old order. Start again. Jenny Wheeler: The Forgotten Secret, which is one of the other ones that I greatly enjoyed, links two women who are facing big challenges and once again there’s a very common theme. They are both living in very difficult circumstances. The Forgotten Secret – Kathleen McGurl Ellie is caught up in the Irish rebellion of 1919 and is in love with a young man who’s determined to make his name in Ireland, and Claire is escaping from a very unsatisfactory marriage. It’s the second book that you’ve set in Ireland. The other one was The Girl from Ballymor and I wondered if there was something about Ireland that really attracted you. Irish tales Kathleen McGurl: My husband’s Irish. We can start with him, I suppose. We’ve been married 27 years, we’ve been together for 31 years, I think. In that time I’ve been back and forth to Ireland countless times, I don’t know how many times. We’ve traveled all around Ireland, we have taken Gertie over there and I absolutely adore the Southwest of Ireland – Cork, which is where The Girl from Ballymor is set and The Forgotten Secret I set in County Meath which is where my in-laws lived. It’s an area I knew very well. My in-laws are quite staunch Republicans shall we say, so I wanted to write a novel. Maybe I’m trying to prove myself with them, I’m still the English relative. I needed to prove myself to them and say, look, I do understand what happened. I know about Ireland’s history. I have to say I didn’t before because it isn’t taught in schools in England, we just ignore Ireland completely. Re-educating her British mind I grew up while the troubles were still going on but I didn’t understand the background to that at all at the time. It wasn’t until I started going to Ireland and seeing the other side of it and seeing the same events reported by the Irish that I’d seen on British TV and seeing the difference and the difference in the language that was used. Was the soldier shot dead or was he murdered? The Girl From Ballymor It’s subtle. Then realizing that there are always two sides to every story. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. That’s why we wanted to pull together in writing that novel. It wasn’t an easy one to write. Again, it’s the history and the amount of reading and research and it’s a very fine line to tread on that one. A Cork story But I was pleased with the resulting novel. There was a point in writing that when I nearly threw it away and said, I can’t do this. But I pushed on and finished it. My husband was the first reader and he said, this is the best one you’ve written. He doesn’t praise for the sake of it so I thought maybe there is something in this. And it has done well, and it’s done well in America as well. There’s a lot of Irish descent there. Jenny Wheeler: Just a little aside, how did you meet your husband? Kathleen McGurl: He was living in England at the time. I was a student in Brighton and he was living there. He’d come over from Ireland with a previous girlfriend and they’d settled in Brighton and then they split up. I met him there. He was part of a group of friends really. We paired off. Magadalene Homes re-visited Jenny Wheeler: In that book you also get into the Magdalene homes which have become notorious in more recent years, where the nuns started out probably with very good intentions, but ended up being rather horrible places where young women who were pregnant or really any sort of unprotected young woman could be put into one of these homes and become almost a domestic slave. One of your characters has a child in one of those homes and I must say I was really barracking for her as a character because she was such a lovely, strong, well-intentioned young woman, and I was hoping all the way through that she was going to discover what had really happened to her son. The balance between happy and real It was a little thing that was left open, a little sadness right at the end. You realize she isn’t going to get that satisfaction, she’s not going to be the one to discover what really happens. The next generation is going to. Were you tempted to try and find a way to let her find out? Kathleen McGurl: Yes, sometimes because I’m well aware that if the reader is identifying really strongly with one of the characters, you want them to prevail. But it’s real life. I’m trying to make it realistic and so there is that sadness but I do think that Ellen does get a happy ending. She does find love and has a good long life in the end. It’s difficult to get it right, but there’s a danger I think if you try and tie it up to all too neatly. Jenny Wheeler: I agree with you. I was thinking about how you could do it and I thought it would just be a little bit too pat and neat if you had. It might have been a temptation but it probably would have taken away from the story a little because that poignant tone was very much part of the whole story. A family history story – Family history reveal Your books do follow these involved family secrets and you’ve mentioned that with your first one you were interested in genealogy. Tell us a little bit about how that genealogical interest came about. What was it on your own family that sparked it off? Kathleen McGurl: Back in 2010 a friend of mine said, did you know the 1911 census is now available online? One evening I thought, my grandparents had quite an unusual surname, I wonder if I can find them on that census. I knew they’d been born in the very early years of the 20th century, 1903 I think, something like that. 13 children with the housekeeper I immediately found them because I knew where they lived as well. The unusual surname helped. I immediately found them and then one evening I started going back through the censuses that were every 10 years and I got back to the 1841 census which was the first one across England. In doing that, I’d already discovered my great, great, great grandparents, again, just following that one surname. I found that there was the father and a lot of children and no sign of a mother on several of the censuses. I was wondering, what’s going on here, and eventually discovered that all of the children were the children of his housekeeper. Well, she’s written down on the census as his housekeeper and I believe she did start off as a servant. He was quite well off, she was a servant. He’d married and then separated but you couldn’t get divorced in those days, not easily. Then he had 13 children with his housekeeper. Victorian euphemisms That’s what drew me in, that story, their story. My first novel that I self-published is called Mr Cavell’s Diamond and the names are changed but it’s based on my great, great, great grandfather, his wife, and then his housekeeper, to use the Victorian euphemism. Jenny Wheeler: In their own real lives, did they present themselves as husband and wife, do you think? The Pearl Locket Kathleen McGurl: Yes, I think they did. I’ve seen, certainly after his death and living in that house and she was calling herself on the censuses, Mrs Methold. So she certainly did. The children were all baptized under her name, or sorry their births were registered under her surname but then later in their lives they all used his surname. That’s the name I’ve been investigating. Jenny Wheeler: I gather that there was a little bit of an aspect that he was regarded by his own family as a little bit of a black sheep. A black sheep career Kathleen McGurl: Oh, he was indeed. Because he’d been born into the aristocracy and the house where he was born in Durham, or outside Durham, is now one of those huge, country house hotels that are run as wedding venues. It is incredibly grand. I’ve been up and had a look around it and thought, wow, they were born there! He was the eldest surviving son of that family so he should have inherited but he didn’t, it got passed to his next brother down. There was another little mystery. Why did he get passed over? In digging around, I can see that his father had died quite young. His wealth had been held in trust by his uncle and he had a few run ins with his uncle, trying to say that his uncle had mismanaged the money and was trying to extort more money out of him. Then he married and then separated and then shacked up with his servant girl. I think all of these things probably worked against him. He lived his life very firmly in the middle classes in Worthing on the south coast near Brighton. His children all ended up working in trades, so there was a very definite slide down the social scale in that family. Jenny Wheeler: Turning to your wider career, tell us something about your life before you became a full-time writer and have those experiences helped to contribute in any way to your writing? Before the writing began Kathleen McGurl: Before I became a full-time writer, for about 30 years I worked in the IT industry. It’s a bit boring really. I sort of fell into that job, and I loved it. I liked the logic and I liked the problem solving and I enjoy designing systems, but all the time I always felt that I was only using half of my brain. I thought I was using the logical part and I wasn’t using the creative part, until I started writing. The two careers overlapped for a number of years, but that was hard work so just over a year ago now, I took the plunge and said, right I’m earning enough from writing and I’m getting close enough to pension age anyway, and decided to drop the day job. The novel I’m writing at the moment, the main character, had a very similar job to my IT job, but it was not a very exciting job to write about. I haven’t really used the detail all that much. It’s more wider experiences of travel and the more general experiences. I lost my mum five years ago and that does mean that I can write about being with someone as they die, which is terribly sad, but there’s that sliver of ice in an author’s heart. You use these experiences that you have, to make it feel real on the page and to add more into that. No faffing about Jenny Wheeler: How many years were you working full-time and writing on the side? That’s a tremendous amount of dedication to keep those two things going parallel. How long did you sustain that for? Kathleen McGurl: There were a number of years when I was just writing short stories, which was easy enough to do in the evenings. I got my first a book contract in 2014 and I gave up work in 2019, so it was five years in which I had book deadlines and the day job to try and juggle. The Cuckoo’s Calling – a favorite I’d log off my work computer, have an hour sort of faffing around and having dinner and whatever and trying to get out of one mode and into the other. Then I’d go and sit and try and write 500 words every evening and 3000 at the weekends to keep the novels ticking over. Kathleen as reader Jenny Wheeler: Turning to Kathleen as a reader because this is The Joys of Binge Reading, and it’s predicated a little bit on people liking to either follow through a series or, like you, a writer who produces a string of books that have got a similar relevance, even if they’re not actually a series. Are you a binge reader and if so, what would you like to recommend to our listeners? Kathleen McGurl: I read a lot. I’m always reading. I’ve always got generally two books on the go. I have what I call an upstairs book and a downstairs book so that I don’t have to suffer the stairs with my bad knees too often during the day. However, I tend not to read a series start to finish. I jump around a lot. I like to read different genres and I read some nonfiction and different authors and I’m always changing. In that respect, I’m not a binge reader, although I am an avid reader, and I’m always reading. Iona Grey a favorite Having said that, there are certain authors that as soon as their next book comes out, I’ve ordered it. I might not get to it straight away, but I will definitely read it. Some favorite books Those are the ones that I would recommend, the names I said, Kate Morton, Katherine Webb and Iona Grey – she’s only written two so far, but they are probably two of the best books I’ve ever read, Letters to the Lost and The Glittering Hour. They are just so beautiful. Then I must admit, I do love J K Rowling’s books, both the Harry Potter and the Cormoran Strike books (written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.) I’ve really enjoyed those. That’s one of the big name authors that I always read. I know a lot of authors and I like to support them. I do find myself reading a lot of my friend’s books as well. There are always way too many books to read. Regrets – not really . . Jenny Wheeler: Iona Grey’s books. What genre are they? Kathleen McGurl: Dual timeline. Letters to the Lost is a World War II one. It’s just beautiful. The Glittering Hour is set in the 1920’s, so bright, young things. It’s a lovely insight into the society of that time, post First World War. The rich. Having fun and not caring about the consequences of their actions. It’s a fantastic book. Jenny Wheeler: Sounds good. We’re coming to the end of our time together, so just circling around, pausing here and looking back over where you’ve come from, is there anything you’d change about how it’s all unfolded, or would you do it pretty much the same all over again? Kathleen McGurl: That’s a tricky one because there’s a bit of me that wants to say I wish I’d started writing seriously earlier, because as I said at the beginning of this interview, I always knew that I would write eventually, and I was waiting to have the time. On the other hand I think, the older you get, the more experiences you’ve had, the more you can put into your writing. Taking to the road – soon I do suspect that if I had tried to write a novel aged 21, it wouldn’t have been very good. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to get across the emotion and I wouldn’t have had the right life experiences. So no, I’m not sure I would change anything. I’m kind of glad I’ve done things the way I have. It was a difficult decision to give up the day job because I was earning quite a lot from it and to give that up for a very uncertain income. But I’m very glad I did. It’s worked out. The great thing is being a writer, you can do that anywhere so we’ve been able to go away in Gertie for months at a time and I can write while we’re traveling. I just need a couple of hours every day to say, okay, leave me alone now, I’m going to get on and do some writing. I’m looking forward to being able to get back to that lifestyle when the pandemic’s over. Looking ahead – what’s coming up Jenny Wheeler: Looking ahead into the rest of this year and into early next year, what is next for Kathleen the writer? What are your plans over the next 12 months or so? Kathleen McGurl: I’ve got the book coming out on 15th May, The Secret of the Chateau. I’ve got two more books in the pipeline, in the same contract, one of which is getting towards the final stages of editing and the other one is about half written. One of those will come out in about November. The next one is next year sometime. I’m pushing on with those. I’ve got ideas for several more so once I’ve written those, I need to start pitching for another contract. The other thing I’m doing, we talked about the genealogy, for my brother and my cousins and my children and my cousin’s children, I’m trying to write that up at the moment and produce a little book that tells the story of that family. That’s a little private project but it’ll keep me busy. Jenny Wheeler: Do you enjoy interacting with your readers and where can they find you online? Kathleen McGurl: I absolutely love it. There is no better feeling than when you get an email or a Facebook message or whatever saying, I’ve just finished reading such and such a book, I really loved it, thank you, or whatever. I had a message the other day saying that my books are helping somebody through the pandemic. They’re sitting at home and they discovered my books and have been reading them all. I think if I’ve helped somebody, that’s great. Where to find Kathleen online You can get in touch with me various ways. I have a website, kathleenmcgurl.com and there’s a contact form on there if you want to send it email. I have an author page on Facebook, KathleenMcGurl and I’m very happy to answer messages on there. I’m on Twitter as @KathMcGurl and again, anybody that sends me any message, I will always try to answer as soon as I can. Jenny Wheeler: When we aren’t in pandemic, do you also do book tours and that kind of thing? Kathleen McGurl: I’ve never done a physical book tour. The vast majority of my sales are eBook. But I’m glad you mentioned that because I should have said there is a blog tour starting up on Thursday for The Secret of the Chateau. There should be reviews on about 30 blogs I think over the next couple of weeks that should be featuring my book. I’ll be tweeting about them and putting the links onto my author’s page on Facebook as well. I always do a virtual blog tour through each book. They’re great publicity and the bloggers out there are amazing, the amount of work they put into it. Jenny Wheeler: That’s great. Tell people how that works. The latest blog tour Kathleen McGurl: I have this woman called Rachel who organizes the blog tours for me. She is in touch with an awful lot of book bloggers and tells them there’s a new Kathleen McGurl book out coming out, who would like to review it, and they all put their hands up. Hopefully they do, and say that they like it. They get advance copies and they read it and they post a review on the designated date onto their blogs – Rachel will tell them what date. Then a bit of tweeting about it a bit of Facebook about it, and it helps raise the profile of the book. So it is a virtual tour really, it’s like the book is going round. Jenny Wheeler: But you don’t actually have to write blogs about it. Kathleen McGurl: No. You can do but obviously that’s quite a lot more work for me. I prefer the reviews. The great thing about the reviews is they can be copied onto Amazon as well and it kick starts the book and the reviews all help the future sales. Jenny Wheeler: That’s starting in a couple of days. Thanks for being here Kathleen McGurl: Yes. It starts on Thursday and then the book is released on Friday. Jenny Wheeler: Kathleen, it’s been wonderful talking, thank you so much for being on the show today and I can certainly endorse the book. I’m sure you are going to get some good feedback on it. Kathleen McGurl: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a real pleasure. If you enjoyed Kathleen McGurl’s Family Secrets stories you might also enjoy Lily Graham’s Dual Timeline Dramas and Kirsten McKenzie’s Time Travel Mysteries Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with. Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]

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