Welcome to my new blog!

 

My idea of Lady Serena - The heroine of my latest novel 'Lady Serena's Secret' to be published on Amazon very soon!

Hello and welcome to the new location for my blog. This site is dedicated to my novels, how I research them, and why I am so fascinated by history. 

I grew up in a very average home in Lancashire, a three bedroomed semi-detached house with small front and rear gardens. However, only a hundred yards away or so, were some very nice middle class houses and one very 'posh' house, separated from the rest of us, by a field, a very high wall, and a long gated drive. In my mind's eye, it was a Jacobean style manor house (I'm not going back to find out if this rose-tinted image is untrue - I would be devastated!), and this fired my curiosity and interest. I never saw the occupants of the house, but had very clear ideas what these upper class people's lifestyles would be like. 

They would have horses, and dine at a very highly polished mahogany large dining table complete with silver candelabra; they would have a servant or two, and they would have a silver Rolls Royce car. They would speak with 'received pronunciation', the men would all be tall dark and handsome, and the girls would be beautiful blondes with sapphire blue eyes. The children would, of course all go to private schools, and this being Lancashire - they would all be old school Catholics. (Think Brideshead Revisited type of posh Catholics!) And of course they would be invited to exclusive Hunt Balls every Autumn!

The problem was of course that I was reading the sort of books that were populated by these types  of people. This was due to the fact that the Council had seen fit to build me (yes, I actually sort of thought that they had built it with me, personally in mind!) a brand new library just in between the nice middle class houses and the really posh house. And though, I couldn't aspire to these middle and upper class ways of life, I could acquire knowledge of them for free at this holy of holies. 

The chief librarian soon realised that the children's section was totally inadequate for my needs, and I acquired an adult's reading ticket aged ten. (I don't know how he fiddled that - I didn't ask). He was very good in directing me to read some useful non-fiction as well as the historical fiction that I devoured like a starving woman. So by the time I was twelve I had read about the life of Lenin, Das Kapital in translation, had a budding fascination with astronomy, and could bore for Britain on nuclear physics.

 

Sezincote House - inspiration from an Orient Inspired English Stately Home

 

 

It also helped, I suppose, that I was now attending a very posh Ladies Convent School, where our brains were fed by an odd mix of excellent teaching in Science, Maths, French and German (with native speakers sometimes, to make sure that our accents were correct) and lots of Catholic Propoganda. We were also taught how to be 'Ladies', had deportment lessons, dancing lessons (Ballroom and country dances), and were constantly warned on the unspecified dangers of the OPPOSITE SEX, especially those of Mediterranean Origin. I use the capitals advisedly - remember that most of these warnings came from nuns, whose personal experience was pretty limited in most cases, I suspect! 

So, I emerged from this somewhat rareified academic atmosphere to go to University armed with the classic products of a good Catholic Education: Good A levels and Guilt. I was also incredibly naive, curious and had unrealistic expectations - a very dangerous mixture! I enjoyed University very much, and London did, to some extent, continue to feed my appetite for wider learning. In particular I enjoyed the relatively cheap opportunities to attend the Opera, go to musical concerts, attend art exhibitions, museums, and rub shoulders with quite a few foreign elites via a broad range of friends within the international student body. On the whole they were, as the cliche has it, some of the best years of my life.

However, they had also been a reality check and my starry-eyed view of the world had dimmed somewhat, but had not been entirely extinguished. So, though subsequently I was much occupied by work, the lure of history never quite left me - do you ever really fundamentally change? and whenever the opportunity presented itself, I might be found noseying around a Stately home, a museum, a grand old church, or some historic romantic foreign city - Venice still remains my favourite!

Various periods and places have obsessed me over the years - medieval Central Europe, Scotland in the Late Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Century, the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, especially in relationship to embroidery and textiles - I could go on - but you get the idea! Of course now it is the late Georgian and Early Victorian period that interests me. In some ways it's quite a dark period, in that the Industrial Revoltion was just beginning to affect the lives of the masses in significant numbers - not always for the best. However, it is also the period where the franchise (the right to vote) was expanded significantly, and the issue of corrupt political practices started to be addressed. 

Lord Nathaniel's Nemesis book cover

I'm grappling with the politics of the 1820's at the moment, as it forms the backdrop to my next book 'Lord Nathaniel's Nemesis' which I will be getting down to properly around Easter time. 'Lady Serena's Secret', is now on its last edit (I hope) and should be published in the next week or two, fingers crossed. I let you know here when that happens.

Book cover for 'Lady Serena's Secret'

 

So now I have the time to indulge my interests, and to write! I am off to Northumberland soon and hope to find some interesting and inspiring things there, to report here. I hope you enjoy my little rambles around Britain and sometimes beyond.

Regards D.

Inspiration and Research

When reading ‘Writing Coach Books’, I am surprised how much time they spend on the subject of ‘Writer's Block’. Maybe it’s because I have been around quite a bit (no, I’m not telling you my age!) that I seem to have an endless resource in my head, so if one plot line seems to be coming to a dead end, it doesn’t take long for the brain cells to come up with a new scenario to pursue. 

Inside the Orangery at Sezincote - the Inspiration for Colonel Fawcett's Orchid House in Lady Serena's Secret (currently being written - hopefully to be published in the New Year).

Having worked with the Great British Public as an Optometrist, it is surprising the amount of drama that even ordinary folk encounter (don’t worry, all your stories are safe with me - I would never use them directly). And the drama increases in variety and shock-value the higher the social status or wealth of the people involved! So, the fact that during the Regency/ late Georgian period, the Upper Classes were always getting up to a myriad of scrapes and downright wickedness, is not quite as surprising as one might suppose. The fact that there wasn’t any social media beyond the newspapers and scandal sheets, or an organised police force for much of the period, may have had something to do with it!

However, despite having quite a mine of tales of human frailty to pick and work, I do find it both interesting and fruitful to feed that memory bank on a regular basis. That is my excuse, anyway, for noseying around as many interesting historical places as I can, when I am taking a few days away from home.

Kelmscott Manor. Country home of William Morris. Though it has not been a direct inspiration for a scene in my books yet, it is an archetypel Cotswold Manor House, and probably has the most romantic feel of any I have visited.

So Bath is next on my list. I’ve been there before, of course, but as we are in the area in the lead up to Christmas (visiting daughter and family with Christmas presents), it seems too good an opportunity to miss, to renew my acquaintance and get the feel of the place once again. The downside of visiting at this time of year is that a few places are closed, notably, the Assembly Rooms.

Bath will probably feature to some extent in Book 4 of the Brockworth Chronicles, “Lady Rosamund’s Recluse.’ As we already know from Book 1 ‘Lady Isabel’s Inheritance’, Lady Rosamund is currently attending a rather progressive school near Bath, and so it is a good spot for her to have already established connections in the area. It also gives me an opportunity to use a new plot setting to explore, and as this is to be in the nature of a Gothic Romance, the craggy coastline of Devon, not too far away, should prove to be a suitable backdrop. The Castle involved will be suitably gloomy and forbidding, of course. I have already modelled part of it on Berkeley Castle, which we visited quite recently.

Berkely Castle - a suitably rambling and ancient castle for setting a Gothic Romance. My inspiration for the castle to feature in Book Four of the Brockworth Chronicles. Actually, it's rather a beautiful place in an austere kind of way. Well worth a visit!

Though many of my trips are planned as semi-research trips, I’m afraid I’m a bit of magpie, so if something shiny catches my eye (i.e. it looks interesting), then I shall go there, take as many photos and notes as I can, and salt the memories away for possible future mining forays.

Then there is what I like to call serious research, which usually involves reading rather dry tomes, to get my facts straight. Why do I bother, you may ask? Not many people would be bothered to look up facts, but then I have an inkling that there are quite a few pedantic readers like me, out there, who are incandescent when they read something totally wrong that an author has failed to fact-check. (That also applies to modern or foreign, mainly American, phraseology creeping into the mouths of Georgian English Aristocrats. Gotten is my number one pet hate!)

 

William Dalrymple's excellent book about the East India Company.

So, I spend a good deal of my time reading up on subjects such as the East India Company. Reading ‘The Black Sheep’ by Georgette Heyer many years ago, inspired me to wonder how many men of middling background, went out to India and made eye-watering fortunes which, if they survived, they brought back to England to set up as Landed Gentry, and frequently entered politics. So, currently, I’m reading The Anarchy, by William Dalrymple (one of the most forefront experts on the subject, and thankfully, very easy to read), to provide background for the book I’m currently writing, ‘Lady Serena’s Secret’. Though none of the characters or plot lines are taken from such sources, they provide, hopefully, a realistic and historically accurate backdrop to the events happening to the lead characters. It makes them more believable, I hope, and more rounded sympathetic characters.

So, what am I saying, really? Well, I suppose it’s that writing for me, isn’t simply just dreaming up a racy storyline and committing it to electronic pen and paper. It's more about really getting into the characters' heads and situations, and the things they have experienced and hopefully relating how those influence the how, who, why, where and when they fall in love.

And though I appreciate that most Aristocratic marriages of the Regency Period were probably decided on purely mercenary lines, nobody really wants to hear about those. (Except, maybe, if against the odds, it does turn out to be a love story. Maybe, a story line for later?) So, in the pursuit of entrancing (I hope), true love stories, I will continue to seek out the unusual, and quirky, and sometimes downright bizarre - hopefully to entertain my readers!

Detta.