It is always interesting to hear how
author’s come up with ideas for their books. Was it something that had simmered
for years? Perhaps a story based on an old family story? Today, author Lizzie
Lane tells us about the idea behind her latest story and shows how many people are
involved in that idea. Welcome, Jean!
We were having
lunch at a very nice little restaurant in Covent Garden, my editor, my agent
and me.
That’s when the
ideas get thrown about. ‘What do you think about writing about an orphanage?’
To which my answer was, ‘Not a lot. There’s loads out there already.’ ‘A
Munitions Factory?’ ‘Ditto.’
Actually those
were the kind of subject matter I had been expecting to hear but they didn’t
happen.
Wearing one of
her cajoling, sweet as honey smiles, she asked, ‘I think it would be quite
wonderful if you wrote about a puppy.’
I nearly choked
on my Pinot Grigio. A puppy? In a wartime saga? What brought that on?
Editors don’t
make suggestions about the content of your next book without good reason.
Before coming up with this I knew my editor had checked what was selling in
non-fiction or with competing publishers, plus, most importantly of all, she
had no doubt had a word with the Sales Department. It wouldn’t have stopped
there. She would have sounded out anyone whose opinion she respected. In my
case this might include her mother who is an avid fan of mine.
It’s all very
logical. Rivals sales, non-fiction sales, her own Sales Department, Marketing,
publicity and last, but by no means least, someone who regularly reads my
books. All are very relevant.
It turned out
that on seeing the success of non-fiction titles, i.e. War Dog, No Better
Friend, Judy: A Dog in a Million.
Besides all
that, the old adage about writing about what you know comes into play. She
hadn’t known it but she was dining with somebody who knew a great deal about
dogs.
In another life
I used to show, breed, train and judge dogs. It had never occurred to me to
write a story about dogs and certainly not during World War Two.
To say it was
something of a challenge was putting it mildly. The moment the lunch and the
travelling were behind me, I trawled the internet for wartime incidents
involving dogs. I only expected small things, dogs in military service mostly.
I had not expected to come across one of the most unknown atrocities of the
first week of the war.
A government
pamphlet advised that once the war began in earnest, food would be in short
supply and reserved for human consumption. There was also the likelihood of
mustard gas poisoning or dogs going mad when the bombing started. As a
consequence of these dire warnings, people panicked and pets were euthanized in
their thousands, a conservative estimate is 350,000 in the first week alone. By
the end of the war it was over a million.
My editor and my
agent were both impressed. Neither had heard of this shameful piece of history.
BTW the dog on the cover belongs to one of my editor’s colleagues at Ebury. His
real name’s Louie.
Everything was
agreed. Lovely! Now all I had to do was build a story around it.
WARTIME ORPHANS:
Joanna is an
orphan when she finds the puppy she names Harry. Her schoolteacher Sally Hadley
is a joy but has no life outside of school and her father still grieves over
the death of his wife. When Harry enters their lives, Joanna no longer feels
like an orphan, Sally allows herself to fall in love and her father ceases to
grieve for the loss of his wife. All down to a puppy named Harry.
No comments:
Post a Comment