RNA Blog Team member, Ellie Holmes invites you to read her interview with author, Clare Flynn.
Welcome to the RNA blog, Clare. Please tell us
about your latest release The Green Ribbons.
The book is about good intentions and bad
decisions. The heroine, Hephzibah Wildman, is young – orphaned at eighteen and
left with no one to offer help and guidance as she makes her way into the
world
after a sheltered life. Catapulted into Ingleton Hall to work as a governess to
the young daughter of the lecherous Sir Richard Egdon, nothing in her past life
as the daughter of an Oxford academic has prepared her for what lies ahead.
You use
modern themes in a historical context in your novels. What are the particular
challenges in doing that?
Most of the issues we face today in personal
relationships are perennial. It's the way we respond to them that's different.
One of the challenges is to allow the characters to act in a way appropriate to
the times they lived in, yet relevant to the concerns of readers today. Problems
don't change but the ways in which they present themselves and the social and
cultural context in which people respond to them do.
I try to avoid inappropriate heroine feistiness. Readers love strong independent
heroines (who doesn't?) but the pitfall to avoid is having them behave like
women today. At the time of The Green Ribbons women couldn't petition for
divorce, all rights were vested in men. Only in 1923 were they able to petition
on grounds of adultery and only in 1937 was this extended to other grounds such
as cruelty. Husbands, regardless of their own culpability in the failure of a
marriage, were automatically granted custody of children. All this caused women
to be disadvantaged compared with today and conditioned how they behaved.
At the time of The Green Ribbons, pre-nuptial
pregnancy among the working poor was a common custom. Men earned more when they
were married and wages increased with children, so there was an economic
pressure to breed and a tendency among men to check out their future wife's
fertility in advance!
If you
could go back in time, which period of history would you choose to visit and
why?
A Medieval village so I could witness how ordinary
people lived. I'd like to get a vivid impression of the smells, movements,
sounds, colours – everything. One caveat! I only want to spend a day there,
just enough to take it all in, but no risk that I could get burned as a witch
or stuck in the stocks!
The
first draft of your novel A Greater World was lost when thieves burgled your
home and stole your computer and the laptop which held the back-up copy. You
must have been heartbroken. How did you go about recreating the manuscript?
Yes I was heartbroken. I was
numb for months and more or less decided to give up writing. Then I read that
TE Lawrence left the manuscript of Seven Pillars of Wisdom on a train and wrote
it all again from scratch. It only took him three months to produce 400,000
words from memory – so how could I not rise to the challenge! I sat down right
away and started writing and I'm convinced it came out much better second time
around.
You
have travelled extensively and have used your travels as a source of
inspiration for your work. Where are you off to next?
France in September, for a week, to paint. I
hope it will be less eventful than my last painting trip - in May to Montenegro
when I tripped on the way to breakfast on the first day and broke my wrist. As
you may have gathered by now I am not one to take setbacks lying down, so I
painted very shakily with my left hand.
My inspiration for the next novel is here at
home though – Eastbourne in WW2. Also Ontario, Canada so maybe a trip there
will be in order! Eastbourne was the most heavily bombed in SE England and was
home to three regiments of the 5th Canadian Infantry Brigade for
three years of the war. Around 150 women went to Canada as war brides from the
town.
Facebook
or Twitter? Which is your preferred promotion tool?
I use both. But I prefer Twitter for promotional
purposes as there's less risk of boring the pants off my friends and family.
How do you
relax when not writing?
I quilt and paint when I have time. Right now,
having recently moved house, I'm busy overseeing home improvements. And of
course I read voraciously - for pleasure but also as background research for my
books. I also shout at politicians on the telly a lot these days.
What’s
next for author, Clare Flynn?
The next book. I'm only two chapters in and am mostly
reading around the subject. I'm also looking forward to the Historical Novel
Society Conference in Oxford in September, where I'll be catching up with a lot
of RNA author friends since I couldn't make the RNA conference.
Links
to:
About
Clare:
Clare Flynn writes historical fiction with a
strong sense of time and place and compelling characters. She is a graduate of
Manchester University where she read English Language and Literature.
After a career in international marketing and
consulting , working on nappies to tinned tuna and living in Paris, Milan,
Brussels and Sydney, she now lives in Eastbourne where she writes full-time –
and can look out of her window and see the sea.
Book
Blurb:
"Two
men will love you. Both will pay the price for it."
In 1900 Hephzibah Wildman loses both parents in
a tragic accident and is forced to build a new life for herself. Penniless and
only eighteen, she must leave the security of the Oxford college where her
stepfather was Dean and earn her living as a governess.
Marriage to Thomas Egdon is not the dream
Hephzibah had envisaged. More interested in training his racehorses and losing
money at gambling, Thomas has little time for her and she begins to suspect he
is having an affair. When Sir Richard threatens to disinherit Thomas unless the
couple produce the requisite heir, Hephzibah makes a desperate decision that
will put the lives of both Thomas and her friend Merritt Nightingale on the
line.
Thank you Clare and Ellie. Good luck with the
book, Clare. We look forward to reading it.
If you have a book due to be published and would like to be featured on the RNA blog please get in touch with the Blog Team on elaineeverest@aol.com
4 comments:
Thank you Ellie for interviewing me and Elaine for hosting me on the RNA blog
A great interview Clare. I didn't know that 150 women went from Eastbourne to Canada to be war brides which is fascinating. Am looking forward to reading another of your novels very soon, as I loved A Greater World and have recommended it to several friends.
How lovely to read this interview, Clare, especially as we met for the first time in 'real life' this week.
What an interesting interview, Clare and Ellie, and a highly informative one. Many thanks for it. I loved 'Kurinji Flowers' and look forward to reading 'The Green Ribbons'.
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