Lin Treadgold: Home and Away!

Welcome to Lin Treadgold who has returned to these shores after a long spell living in Holland. Lin tells us how her world has changed since settling back in England.

After travelling around the world, several times, I can honestly say I’ve probably done it all and have the t-shirt to prove it. My life has been a wonderful journey. However, after fourteen years of living in Holland, I couldn’t get my head around not working any more. I owned a successful business, but with time it was a case of ‘have husband – will travel’ and I had to leave it all behind. 

I gave up my instructor training profession in 2001, with the news that Corus Steel was closing its doors in research and my husband had limited choice. However, there was a job waiting within the Dutch company and a higher salary. How could we refuse?

Writing stories has always been second nature. Writing a novel gave me the chance to sit at a computer and relax in my own fictional world; I found it therapeutic and relaxing. I could shut out all the ‘Dutchness’ in my life and have my characters lead the way. 

My first novel, Goodbye Henrietta Street was published in 2013. Despite problems with the publisher, I had much support with my RNA colleagues and was encouraged to write my second book. The Tanglewood Affair has had a couple of rejections but only two? I have to keep trying as I had a wonderful report from Cornerstones. My editor said the opening is vivid and engaging and I have drawn the reader into the setting and characters really well. She said I have created a subtle layer of emotional conflict and a sense of anticipation. She emphasised my ability to describe the imposing scene and loved the way the characters are drawn into the story. So I know a professional editor likes it. I realise, that based on this report, I have to keep going. This is what writing is all about. Unless you are lucky enough to be famous and talented anyway, then it’s an uphill slog and also a good excuse to get out of doing the housework because you have to get a book out on time. I actually love writing. What I like best is the ability to change things around and think about what I write. When I speak I can often say the wrong things in the wrong place, but with writing I get a chance to change all that and not offend anyone.  My third novel is a work in progress based on life in a prisoner of war camp and the girl the solder left behind in Yorkshire.        

In March this year, my first book was republished with Silverwood Books. However, I did find it hard to start promoting my novel. I had lost enthusiasm because of having to edit the book all over again for the umpteenth time, which has paid off with a new cover and helpful publishing staff. I am good at promotion, having owned by own business. The problem came when I found a house in England and we decided to buy it in preparation for my husband’s retirement. I reckon it takes a good six months to put your life back on track after moving countries; book promotion had to go on hold.

Someone asked me about life in Holland. Did I belong to a writer’s group or the library? I lived in a remote part of Holland where English was almost a third language and the second language was German. Joining in with the Dutch society was more difficult that I thought it would be. Although I speak the language now, I have found it very hard-going, as Dutch is not an easy language to the untrained ear. I think I was a very lonely writer in need of British support. If it hadn’t been for Facebook and the RNA parties, I don’t think I would have survived as well as I did. The Dutch people rarely invited me into their homes during my fourteen years of living in Holland. If you live in Amsterdam or Haarlem, it’s more of an expat society, but in the North of Holland, they are farmers and villagers and I had nothing in common and only had writing to keep me sane. I tried opening a new writers group, but we only had two people who were Dutch and lost interest.  The English Book shop is in Amsterdam and I did manage a book signing there, but it was almost a two hour journey to get to my destination and didn’t do anything for my book. Looking back, the only good thing for me was that I had time to sit and write a novel.

In January this year, we came to England in preparation for retirement. We found the most wonderful barn conversion in Devon on the bank of the river Taw. When I saw it, I realised the potential for a writing retreat. It was going to be far too early to buy it, but what if we bought it sooner rather than later? I could prepare for when my husband retires at Christmas. In May this year I moved in and by June all the furniture had arrived and it seems I have been unpacking boxes ever since. I have now had to learn how to be British again; it’s been too long. 

Since my return, life has changed beyond all expectation. I have joined the local community and become an amateur actress with the local drama group, playing the part of Edna in Slim Chance, a comedy by Peter Gordon. I have received far more phone calls inviting me to events and everyone is so friendly and helpful. I have two venues for book signings. 24 October at Okehampton Library 10-12.30 and on 5 November I am at Bow Garden Centre during the early afternoon.

Devon is a wonderful place and I feel my life has changed. I can’t wait to begin promoting my second novel when I find a publisher and my third book is presently with an agent awaiting perusal. This is all thanks to the RNA and their wonderful networking parties. If I was asked for my advice I would say, if life isn’t working for you – change it!

LINKS:

Amazon

Blog

Thank you, Lin. We hope you enjoy your new life in Devon.

The RNA blog is brought to you by,

Elaine Everest & Natalie Kleinman

If you wish to write for the blog please contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com

History and Love with Jenny Barden

History and Love – how can we ever unravel the truth?

Today we welcome Jenny Barden who has written about love in historical fiction.

The historical records provide evidence of events about which we are certain, but what of the feelings of those who lived long ago – how can we know how they experienced love? Consider attitudes in the Elizabethen era, when women were typically under the complete control of men, could not own property or trade (except in widowhood), and could not even protest if their husbands beat them because that was legal and expected in cases of disobedience. Women were inferior to men so how could they be loved as equals?

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Shakespeare wrote of his lover, Thou art more lovely and more temperate. In language that has resonated through time with the power of his feeling we all know how the sonnet ends:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The words are beautiful, but it is Shakespeare’s mastery with his pen that gives his lover immortality. In this, he possesses her absolutely.

For historical novelists the recreation of emotion poses a dilemma. We want to accurately reflect the attitudes and mind-sets of the past, to make our characters convincing in terms of being true to their age, but we also want to show them experiencing emotion in a way that we can identify with in the here and now. They have to be empathetic to modern readers. How accurately can we conjure up the passion in relationships that flowered long ago? Is it possible to do this simply by transposing how we might feel now in similar circumstances within the framework of what actually happened according to historical sources?The difficulty is that while there are many accounts that deal with incident in time and place, there are few that document emotion, particularly genuine expressions of love. There is a wealth of Elizabethan love poetry, not least because declarations of love in rhyming couplets were expected of every gentleman of the time, but relatively little was written by women, and the stylised poetry that formed a conventional facet of courtship may well have had more to do with the idea of love than the reality.

 

Did Elizabeth I really love François, Duc de Anjou, when she wrote: 

 

 

                                                     …I am, and not; I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun --
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands, and lies by me, doth what I have done;
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be suppressed...

The lyricism is captivating, and there will be a part of any sensitive modern reader wanting to believe that Elizabeth was heartbroken when the young Frenchman, who had steadfastly courted her for three years, left England for the last time. But Elizabeth was playing a clever game of political expediency by encouraging the courtship of her ‘frog’ as she affectionately called him. For as long as the heir to the French throne was courting her, France would not ally with Spain to England’s disadvantage.

 

As Elizabeth approached her fifties she may well have dallied with the idea of sharing a bed with a man, then in his mid-twenties, who had declared her to be the object of his infatuation. But it was more fantasy than substance. Most historians consider the poem to be a sophisticated conceit, on a par with the £30,000 paid to the departing duke to sweeten his leave-taking along with bills for £20,000 more. Pricking the fiction of her love came at a price.

Yet within the measured lines of Elizabeth’s poem is there real feeling showing through; a deep sadness for the loss of a kind admirer; a recognition that she would never find fulfilment as a mother; a cry from a soul unable ever to commit to passion? ‘I freeze, and yet I burn.’

Perhaps the Elizabethans experienced love far more intensely than most of us do now, in the way that love is often heightened in wartime by stark confrontation with the fragility of life. For the Elizabethans, life was often harsh, cut short by unexplained illness, afflicted by conflict and vagaries of fortune. Perhaps they became inured to tragedy, or perhaps they loved with a depth of feeling we can only guess at in looking back.

 

Towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign, John Donne wrote The Good-Morrow in which his love transcends reality and makes the world seem like a dream.

 

 

…And now good-morrow to our waking souls,

Which watch not one another out of fear;

For love all love of other sights controls,

And makes one little room an everywhere.

Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone;

Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown;

Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.

 

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;

Where can we find two better hemispheres

Without sharp north, without declining west?...

 

The subject may well be Anne More who John Donne married in secret, leading to his ruin, imprisonment and penury at an early age, before he began a new career in the church. Anne died in childbirth with their twelfth or thirteenth child leaving Donne ‘by grief made wordless’. In The Good-Morrow he wishes only to be close to his love and the room around them becomes a universe beyond which all the drama of intrepid voyages to far-flung lands is insignificant. There’s little evidence here of the commonly held view at the time that men were the God-placed superiors of women who were born weak, unstable, incapable of higher levels of thought, and were typically: ‘lascivious, crafty, whoorish, theevish and knavish.’

 

 

When men and women travelled together to the

New World intent on founding the first English

colony in America could they have loved as deeply

 as Donne’s poetry suggests? We cannot know for

certain; the records deal only with their names and

the events of the voyage. But perhaps they did.

When Elizabeth locked herself in her room for days

 following the death of Robert Dudley, Earl of

Leicester, was she distraught at the loss of the only

 man she had ever truly loved or merely seeking

some privacy? Perhaps the words on the letter she

kept in her bedside treasure box for the rest of her life tells us all we need to know: ‘His last letter’.  

Quotes are from: Shakespeare’s Sonnet XVIII; On Monsieur’s Departure (1581), reputed to be by Elizabeth I; The Good-Morrow by John Donne (c1592-5); and from Joseph Swetman in The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward and Unconstant Women (1617)

 

Jenny Barden’s latest book The Lost Duchess has just been released in paperback by Ebury Press. It features a love story at the heart of the mystery surrounding the Lost Colony of Roanoke and the first attempt to found an English settlement in America.

More about Jenny can be found on her website: http://www.jennybarden.com/ on facebook at jennybardenauthor or on twitter @jennywilldoit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you, Jenny for this most informative article.

 

The RNA blog is bought to you by Elaine Everest and Natalie Kleinman.

 

If you would like to write a craft article or cover a writing event for our members please contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com

FOCUS ON: Carmarthenshire Chapter

Today we welcome Sandra Mackness to tell us the latest news from the Carmarthenshire Chapter.

Welcome, Sandra.

 



 

The Carmarthenshire chapter was first founded by Liz Fielding but over the years, most of the original members, including Liz, have moved away or no longer belong to the RNA. That left Christine Stovell, Rachael Thomas and me.

 

In December 2012 we got together with members living in the Vale of Glamorgan and that meeting was attended by Jean Fullerton. 

We have decided to meet again in Cardiff on Tuesday 29th April. This will be an opportunity to look back at how we’ve all progressed since our last Cardiff meeting and I know from experience how generous and supportive the published members are towards those still working towards publication. Liz Fielding is hoping to cross the border from England to Wales and there should be around six to eight of us.

I’d like to take this opportunity and say, if you live within easy distance of Cardiff, we’d love it if you came along too. We will confirm venue and time at a later date but I think a 12.00 to 3.00 pm session is best, as three of us are bound by train connection times.

 

Cardiff has an awesome castle and museum plus a great shopping centre, all within walking distance of the bus and train stations so you could combine research with lunch and writerly discussion. 

My email address is sandramackness@btconnect.com if you’d like to join us on this occasion or be kept informed of further meetings.

Thank you, Sandra, we hope you have a lovely time at your get together. 

Brought to you by the blogging team of Elaine Everest and Natalie Kleinman. If you wish your Chapter of the RNA to be featured or you have a book due for release please contact us on: elaineeverest@aol.com