This
year’s shortlisted novels include space adventures, timeslip, and a ghost story,
and include two independently published novels.
The Velvet Cloak of Moonlight by
Christina Courtenay, who is also nominated in the Young Adult Category
writing as Pia Fenton, is a timeslip tale.
During a visit to Raglan Castle, an extraordinary hallucination
transports Tess to seventeenth-century Wales and a castle on the brink of a
siege. Even when she leaves Raglan, the strangeness continues as her life
becomes increasingly intertwined with her visions. But are they just
telling their own story or also giving a warning?
We asked
Christina about the inspiration behind the story:
I’d
wanted to write this story ever since the first time I set eyes on Raglan
Castle – about eight years ago when I moved to Herefordshire. It’s a wonderfully atmospheric place and even
in its present ruined state, it is beautiful.
Once I started to do the research for the book I was even more intrigued
when I found out about the final siege during the English Civil War in 1646,
and the way the inhabitants tried to defend the castle even though their cause
was, to all intents and purposes, already lost.
It was a story that just cried out to be written and I’m so pleased it’s
finally in print and that the readers liked it.
I really hope I’ve done the place justice!
Kate
Johnson’s Max Seventeen is set
in an imaginary space world where we meet the character Max. She’s on the run. From jail, from hunger, and from hard
labour. Riley is running. From shame,
dark secrets, and the Service which he’s just absconded from. The starship Eurydice could be their salvation, but
Captain Orpheus could betray them both. When a terrible plot is uncovered and
loyalties are tested, Max and Riley face losing everything.
Max is a real kick-ass character; we asked
Kate where the inspiration came from for this strong female protagonist?
A
year or two ago I bought a geek t-shirt (I have so many of these) which
featured characters like Hermione Grainger, Mulan, Supergirl & Princess
Merida, and it bore the caption: ‘She needed a hero. So that’s what she became.’
Now, I’ve been writing pretty strong female protagonists for a while but that
line stuck with me. Why write a woman who needed saving if she couldn’t damn
well save herself? Why not write a woman who rescued other people, too? Could I
write a heroine who was also a hero? That’s why the working title of Max was ‘So
That’s What She Became’ and that’s why I also coyly didn’t actually give away
the gender of either of my protagonists until they met each other. Because as
Terry Pratchett once wrote of one of my favourite characters: “She doesn’t
stand around screaming. She generally makes other people do that.”
An
Ordinary Gift by Jan
Jones is an enchanting ghost story following the story of music manuscript
specialist Clare, who determined to put an unhappy love affair behind her,
moves to Ely in the Cambridgeshire Fens to catalogue an early music library.
But why does the house she rents in this ancient city feel so familiar? Who is
singing Gregorian chants only she can hear? And then there are the pockets of
terror...
Readers found the novel’s setting very
atmospheric; we asked Jan more about the location of An Ordinary Gift and how the novel came to life:
I live
near Ely and visit the town frequently. The first time I went to the marvellous
Topping & Co bookshop there, I knew I had to use the interior in a story.
It became the early-music manuscripts library in An Ordinary Gift where my heroine works.
An Ordinary Gift started
life as a four-part Woman’s Weekly
serial. I then added more characters, another couple of plot strands and, of
course, romance to bring it up to the length of a short novel.
Beloved
Enemy by
Hywela Lyn is another space adventure which follows the story of Kerry
and Cat, who when marooned on an inhospitable planet need to work together to
stay alive, fighting not only unknown assailants, but their growing attraction.
But how can they learn to trust each other when he has vowed never to get close
to a woman again, and she’s made a solemn pledge to destroy him?
We asked Hywela to tell us a little more
about how she came to write this book:
I’ve always been fascinated by
the stars and the idea of space travel, so writing Science Fiction romance
seems very natural to me. The hero of this book, Kerry Marchant, was an important
character in the first book of the trilogy, Starquest.
I felt he’d had
something of a bad deal and so did he, for he kept nagging me for his own story
– and the result was Beloved Enemy. I
hope readers grow to like my ‘tortured hero’ as much as I did.
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