Thank you for the invitation to join you for tea. I love your
teacups, and those scones with jam and cream are to die for. I think I might just have room for a piece of
chocolate cake too, though.
It's a delight to have you.
Where do you live? Tell us
a little bit about yourself.
I live in a cottage halfway up a mountain in Snowdonia, in Wales
in the UK. I look out over the island of Anglesey, where Prince William and
Kate live. I can’t quite see their house, but we do shop in the same
supermarket. Sadly, we haven’t met across the cheese aisle yet – but a writer friend
did serve Princess Catherine once when she was shopping for William’s tea. We
were all very envious!
I lived and worked in London for years, and I still enjoy going
back and visiting, but I love the peace and quiet and the beautiful countryside
- and it’s the best place in the world to write.
Are you a traditionally
published or Indie author?
I’m traditionally published by Honno Press. Eden’s Garden is coming
out as a paperback and also as an Ebook on March 15th. Honno are small, but have a really good reputation,
and they support women writers living in Wales. I count myself incredibly lucky
to be published by them. I had the privilege of working with one of their editors
before my book Eden’s Garden was
accepted for publication. It was a year of intense hard work, and the steepest
learning curve I’ve ever been on. And it changed my writing, and my life,
forever. I think I can truly say this is the moment I feel I really became a
writer!
What are your hobbies?
I am a passionate gardener. My cottage is two cottages knocked
into one, so I also have two gardens. Because the cottages were built in the
1840s for slate miners, who were paid very little, the gardens are quite large
as the workers used them to supplement their wages by growing food. I don’t
quite go that far! I have part of the garden for flowers and for sitting in and
the most amazing summer parties where all my friends come round to sit in the
late evening sun and relax. I have built two wildlife ponds, which are full of
tadpoles and newts in the spring. The February day each year when I hear the
croak of frogs gathering, I know the time for gardening has arrived!
The rest of the garden is taken up by herbs, a few veg, and my
lovely polytunnel, in which I grow tomatoes and salads, and I even have a vine,
which is a cutting from the Great Vine from Hampton Court Palace in London.
Although I’m up a mountain, the garden is surrounded by stone walls of the
sheep fields, so is quite sheltered and has the sun all day. I’ve even managed
to grow an Australian bottle-bush, which seems to thrive even after the deepest
frost and snow.
I also love family history. My mother’s family were nail makers
in the industrial ‘Black Country’, near Birmingham, where the Industrial
Revolution began. I became fascinated after my aunt used to tell me how her
grandmother – my great-grandmother- used to be bashing out nails over a hot
anvil, while rocking the baby’s cradle with her foot. That was such an amazing
picture of a woman’s life!
For my ‘day’ job, still use my hobby by working on oral history
projects, helping older people write down their stories. I’m about to start
working in the medieval walled town and castle of Conw learning about the
mussel and pearl fishermen. They’ve been finding pearls in Conwy since Roman
times, so it should be fascinating. http://www.castlewales.com/conwy.html
Tell us about your current
book. What was your inspiration?
Eden’s Garden
is a time-slip, with the contemporary story intertwined with one from Victorian
times.
It’s
the story of Plas Eden, a large, crumbling mansion with a collection of
mysterious statues in its overgrown gardens, and the family and servants who
once lived there.
When Carys, who is in
her thirties, returns to her home village to nurse her mother after a fall, she
finds herself drawn back to Plas Eden, home of her lost love, David Meredith. A
chance discovery then leads Carys and David on a journey through London and
Cornwall, following the trail of a mysterious woman from the past.
In
Victorian London, Ann, once a rich, spoilt beauty with the world at her feet,
stands destitute on Westminster Bridge, the near-by Meredith Charity Hospital her
only hope…
There
are many twists and turns as Carys and David begin to uncover Ann’s story – and
plenty of shocks along the way, before the surprising truth is revealed, and
changes everything. If you love ‘Downton Abbey’ and the novels of Kate Morton,
this is the book for you!
How did you become a
writer? When did you start?
I began writing seriously about ten years ago, after a
severe viral illness in my mid-thirties had left me with debilitating
ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for years.
M.E was the worst, and the best thing that ever
happened to me -although I could see nothing of the positive at the time. One
the one hand, it sent me from being able to walk up mountains with ease to
struggling to do the simplest of everyday tasks for more than a few minutes at
a time. At my worst I could barely walk and my brain was a foggy haze. But on
the other hand, this forced me to re-evaluate my life and my priorities. When
you are only able to think clearly and do any physical activity for a couple of
hours a day, it doesn’t half concentrate the mind!
I’d always been lost in a book, and the only thing I’d
ever really wanted to do was write, but although I’d tried in my twenties –
when I was far too young and foolish and self-absorbed to have anything to say
– I’d allowed following a sensible career to take over.
So with nothing to lose anymore, as soon as I began to
recover I found a part-time job I could cope with, and slowly began to work on
my writing. As I worked, I found my brain starting to clear, so learning my
craft also became part of the healing process. I started with competitions, and
a few of my short stories were short-listed, which was a huge boost and I then
began to sell stories to magazines here in the UK. But my real breakthrough
came when a friend told me about the Romantic Novelists’ Association and their
brilliant New Writers’ Scheme. I only had the chance to have one novel go
through the scheme, as my first ‘pocket novel’ was accepted that same year, but
I learnt an incredible amount from my reader.
I’ve been on a huge learning curve ever since. When I
first started, I thought that you did was write a book and that was it. Now I
know that to become a published writer is an evolving process, with – for me at
least - plenty of false starts and books that shall never see the light of day
along the way. I feel I’m only now at the beginning of being a writer and I’ve
still so much to learn. And I’m loving every minute of it!
How long did it take you to
finish your first book?
Eden’s Garden is my first full-length book. I first had
the idea about six years ago, after visiting Plas Brondanw Gardens, which was
the home of Clough Williams-Ellis, who created Portmeirion where the original
BBC series of ‘The Prisoner’ was filmed.
http://www.brondanw.org/
I was trying to find my feet as a writer at the time. Over the
next few years, I wrote several books, none of which really worked, but I kept
on coming back to the idea of a crumbling old house with a collection of
mysterious statues hidden in its overgrown garden.
It was when Honno, the
Welsh Women’s Press, said they were interested in the book, but it needed quite
a bit of work, that my breakthrough came. I was given the amazing opportunity
of working with an editor to develop my story before it was considered for
publication again.
We worked for about a
year, and I learnt and incredible amount from the process. I’d
always been worried that an editor would be a restriction on my work. How wrong
I was! Working with an editor – a good editor – is more like having a personal
trainer, one who pushes you to dig deeper inside yourself and to achieve far
more than you could ever have believed possible. Under my editor’s guidance, my
time-slip story of two women, living a hundred years apart, but each struggling
to find love and their own creative fulfilment, became the novel I had always
wanted to write. My life and my writing will never be the same again.
Where do you like to write?
Because I live in a traditional Welsh cottage, the
only upstairs room is a tiny ‘crog loft’, under the eaves, which would once
have been the children’s bedroom and reached by a ladder. So this is my writing
room. It means I can return to my work exactly as I left it, which is great for
getting yourself back into the scene. And I can shut the door and leave it
behind at the end of the day.
From my desk I have views over the garden and some
spectacular sunsets over Anglesey in the distance. I work on a Mac, which I
love, and I mostly write straight onto the computer. When I’m working on a
first draft I try not to look back or to edit, but concentrate on getting the
bare bones of the book down. I prefer to edit when I can stand back a bit and
see the story a bit more objectively. And see where it’s taking me.
Favorite author(s)?
My favourite novelist is Charlotte Bronte. She writes
so vividly about being a passionate, intelligent and independent woman trying
to find her way in the world, especially in a society that denies women can be
any of these and values only the pretty and the docile.
I have loved Dickens ever since I first lived in London.
I adore his intricate storytelling and his rage against greed and injustice.
His child-bride heroines drive me to distraction, but his minor characters - even the female ones - are wonderfully
human in their foibles, and the way they jostle together amongst the city
streets is exhilarating.
I have loved the novels of Kate Morton ever since I
picked up The House at
Riverton. I instantly fell in love with
the fact that they are time-slips- although I didn’t quite realise at the time
that Eden’s Garden was just crying
out to be a time-slip, and that was what I, too, would end up writing.
How many books have you
written, so far? Do you plan to write more?
‘Eden’s Garden’ is my first full-length novel. I’ve written six
‘Pocket Books’, published under my pen name ‘Heather Pardoe’, and I had a short
novel published several years ago.
Eden’s Garden is definitely the kind of book I want to
write, and I’m now working on my next. Watch this space!
Would you like to share a
link where we can purchase your books?
What about a link to your
website?
My website:
My website is being updated at the moment but should be up and running
by March. This is the link to my Blog, where you can find out more about me and
my work.
Thank you so much for
the afternoon tea. Great company – and great cake. What could be better?
I agree, and thank you for stopping by for the interview, it was lovely! I wish you every success with your new book.
