Kate Lord Brown Talks about Romance and Research

It goes without saying that most writers are readers first. Who were the authors that inspired you to write romantic fiction? It’s interesting that many of the top 1000 romance books of all time (link: http://www.romancenovels.me/top-1000-romance-novels-of-all-time/ ) are historical. My reading matured in the 80s, and it’s lovely to see the classics in the top 100, (Jane Austen, Daphne du Maurier), alongside the sweeping sagas of Barbara Taylor Bradford that defined the books of that decade for me.

I love historical research – in fact it’s hard to stop sometimes, and actually get down to writing the story. Each book takes years of work, and I try hard to get the details perfect. There are always files and files of notes – I only end up using a small amount of the research, but think (as Hemingway said), the reader can almost see between the lines, and get a feel for the depth of the work that supports the story. ‘The Perfume Garden’ weaves a contemporary and historical storyline, and I loved learning about the modern perfume industry just as much as researching the Spanish Civil War. I’ve put heart and soul into this book, and it’s my most personal yet – it draws as much on the years we lived in the orange groves near Valencia as it does on historical research.

The books are – I hope – unapologetically romantic as well as historically accurate. (My favourite bad review on Amazon for ‘The Beauty Chorus’ was titled: ‘Whoops, it’s a romance’!) I’m sorry the reader was obviously hoping for a dry book about aviation, but the true stories of the brave young women who flew Spitfires are peppered with romance. I loved reading their wartime diaries, and learning about their social lives as much as their daring day jobs. They were my kind of women – brave, rebellious, proving themselves more than equal to the male pilots, and then they would change into gorgeous evening frocks and dance all night at the Riviera. The wartime women of ‘The Perfume Garden’ – a soldier, a war photographer, and a nurse are all based on factual accounts, but each has their own, sweeping love story too. For me, research and romance go hand in hand – no ‘whoops’ about it.

 ‘The Perfume Garden’ by Kate Lord Brown is published by Atlantic on June 1^st 2012

http://perfumegarden.blogspot.com/

www.katelordbrown.com

Book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qViezOftdpM

Available at Amazon, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Perfume-Garden-Kate-Lord-Brown/dp/1848879334

Sarah Duncan on Research

Author of one of this year's longlisted books for the Romantic Novel of the Year, Sarah Duncan, tells us about what inspired to A Single To Rome...

I must confess right from the start that I’m a lazy sort of writer. When I’m looking for a background for a book I think through things I already know a bit about. For Nice Girls Do it was C18th symbolic landscape gardens, which I’d done as part of my History of Art degree, for Another Woman’s Husband is was Shakespearean cue scripts, which I’d learnt about at drama school. (I must quickly add here that Adultery for Beginners was ENTIRELY a work of fiction.)



But I thought I’d run out of specialist knowledge for my new book until my partner suggested Rome. I’d been a student there during my degree, so knew the city quite well – and the research trips would be fun. So that was settled – the book was going to be set in Rome.




Having decided that, I had to work out how I was going to get my heroine there. Originally I was going to have her working in Italy as an art historian, but it became clear that wasn’t right so going Rome became escaping from a broken heart. But what was she going to do when she got there?

At the back of my mind I thought I might do something with the Romantic Poets so I visited the Protestant Cemetery on the outskirts of Rome to see the graves of Shelley and Keats. Reading the guidebook I discovered that Shelley’s little boy, who was charmingly nicknamed Willmouse, had died before his father, and was also buried in the cemetery. When Shelley was buried, they arranged for Willmouse to be interred with his father – but when his grave was dug up Willmouse wasn’t there…

As I wandered around the daisy strewn lawns of the cemetery the ghost of an idea for a plot came to me, and I knew what Natalie was going to do. I visited the Shelleys’ house in Rome, which is used for offices in real life, but in the book it’s the Tea Museum. And I did a lot of food research, as one of the characters is a food writer. It’s a hard life being a novelist.

Fenella Miller Talks About the Pleasure of Research

Researching is part of the pleasure of writing historical fiction. I am much more familiar with the Regency era than I am of the Second World War. My current work in progress is a romantic suspense set in 1941 near Debden, which was an RAF base at the time. a female protagonists is a land girl, the hero an RAF pilot and the other male protagonist a German fighter pilot shot down over Debden.

Saffron Walden, so called because it was the focus of the saffron trade in mediaeval times, is the nearest town, about 3 miles away. It's a pretty, unspoilt town, with most of the buildings listed. The photo is of the Victorian building that was the hospital during the war, it is now the council offices.You can see from the aerial view taken 10 years ago that the airfield is exactly as it was, apart from the fact that hangars have been demolished, the air traffic control tower gone and an army barracks now with the main buildings used to be. The buildings on either side of the main gate were built in 1934, originally they had flat roofs but they are pitched.

I was privileged to be taken on a conducted tour by a very friendly local farmer. He had arranged to drive me around the airfield. It was awesome to look down the 1 mile long runway and think that the bombers ( Blenheims and Beaufighters) had trundled down this very concrete.

I was astonished to discover that Debden Village had no electricity until 1954, and my guide pointed out the place where one of the standpipes was positioned. They must have lived like Victorians even though 3 miles down the road they had everything in the way plumbing and so on. I've yet to discover where the nearest telephone was, the farmer told me his family had had one but he didn't know if anyone else had.

Debden airfield is over 400 acres, until I drove around the perimeter where the fighters and bombers used a taxi to get in position to take off, I had no idea it was so big.

The best story I discovered was that a German fighter landed on Debden airfield in error, he even got out of his plane and went to speak to someone in the control tower. He managed to taxi round and take off before he could be shot down or captured. Further investigation has led to the discovery that this pilot had also landed in two other places - he was either a shockingly bad navigator or the very brazen spy.

I'm going back to spend the day at Saffron Walden next week, I didn't have time to do more than go to the library to collect some books I'd ordered. I must visit the art gallery and museum and go on the historic walk before the weather becomes too unpleasant.

Fenella Miller

Two Gentlemen From London

Robert Hale

http://www.fenellajanemiller.co.uk/