 Updated and republished
Hooray! Summer is here; warm, lazy days, extra wine, days out with the family and friends, a holiday away. Mmm.
We have two scenarios before us:
The first:
You have a deadline looming, your fans are waiting, your muse is bashing away in your head with fantastic scenes you simply must write. And then you’re speaking or attending conferences and festivals. No time to have time off. Guilt sets in…
The second:
Mentally and emotionally, you’ve ground to a halt with your writing. Perhaps like me you had a book out in the spring (Double Stakes) and/or a short story in a collection (Fate: Tales of History, Mystery and Magic) maybe it’s your body and Stone Age brain instinctively reacting to the longer days, the warmer air, the luxurious leaves and colourful blooms in the garden. The urge to get outside is almost overwhelming. But shouldn’t you be writing? Again, guilt sets in…
But let’s introduce some balance here…
1. Nobody can work 365 days of the year. Well, they can, but what a dull person they’d be, and probably an early inhabitant of the graveyard.
2. Set realistic goals. Halve your usual target and prepare for that goal to be disrupted as friends and family visit, children return from university, or neighbours invite you to barbecues or lunchevery few days.
3. Sales dwindle in the summer, so don’t stress about the sales figures. (Actually, stressing sales figures at any time is not good for you.)
4. View your holidays as research trips if your conscience is bothering you. Not just Roman walls, medieval castles or mosaics, but an opportunity to watch people out of their normal environment or see other environments altogether. And swimming in the (hopefully) warm, salty sea gets you in touch with your tactile side.
5. Snatch time when doing other things to do small writing tasks like looking things up, sending an email to a blogger, drafting a dialogue. Amazing how you can think through a scene while mixing a salad or watering the plants!
6. Work on a little project. I’ve just put together ‘The 500 Word Writing Buddy‘. It was a compilation of articles from the past few years of my writing and publishing column in The Deux-Sèvres Monthly. I worked on it intermittently over the one summer then printed out some paper copies for selling at local fairs and fetes and sold out at a fair that Christmas. It’s now updated – another summer project a few years later – and also available widely as an ebook.
So, relax a little while the sun is shining and read a good book or two…
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P.S. If it’s really hot where you are, you may find this post helpful about keeping your house/hotel room cool.
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.
Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines and taste world the latest contemporary thriller Double Identity… Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. As a result, you’ll be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
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 Today, Annie Whitehead, a fellow contributor to ‘Fate: Tales of History, Mystery and Magic, visits my blog! She’s a prize-winning writer, historian, and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and has written four award-winning novels set in ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Mercia. Apart from contributing to fiction and nonfiction anthologies and writting for various magazines, Annie has twice been a prize winner in the Mail on Sunday Novel Writing Competition, and won First Prize in the 2012 New Writer Magazine’s Prose and Poetry Competition.
In addition, she’s been a finalist in the Tom Howard Prize for nonfiction and was shortlisted for the Exeter Story Prize and Trisha Ashley Award 2021. In 2017, she won the inaugural Historical Writers’ Association (HWA)/Dorothy Dunnett Prize and was subsequently a judge for that same competition. She has also been a judge for the HNS (Historical Novel Society) Short Story Competition, and was a 2024 judge for the HWA Crown Nonfiction Award.
Her nonfiction books are Mercia: The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom (a #1 Amazon Best-seller, published by Amberley books) and Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England (Pen & Sword Books). In 2023, she contributed to a new history of English monarchs, published by Hodder & Stoughton, and in February 2025, Murder in Anglo-Saxon England was published by Amberley Books.
Over to Annie to tell us about her story in Fate: Tales of History, Mystery and Magic.
One definition of fate is ‘the development of events outside a person’s control’. I think it’s fair to say that this applies to those who were caught up in the maelstrom that followed the battle of Hastings in 1066.
We all know who won that fight, even if there are conflicting stories about how Harold Godwineson met his death. William of Normandy was victorious and, whilst much remained the same in England – for example, certainly to start with, William retained much of the machinery of government – for the English people, life was very different.
 William the Conqueror and Harold II Godwinson History is not only written by the victors, as the classic saying goes, it is also more often than not written by men, about men in power. That is why we know so much about the battle and much less about those in the towns and villages whose lives were altered in other ways.
For my story in our new anthology, Fate: Tales of History, Mystery and Magic, I thought about the people who were affected by the outcome of the battle, and what life had been like for them, and what it would become, and there are definitely parallels to be drawn with other periods in history, even into modern times.
Firstly, I imagined what it must have felt like not only to be invaded, but not to be able to understand anything your new masters said. This must have been the reality; folk working the land in England, as opposed to serving in the king’s court, would have no knowledge at all of Norman French, and I daresay the Norman soldiers had no understanding of English. This must have been the case so often in history, where vanquished nations suddenly found that their language was not understood or, in the case of Wales and Ireland, and to a lesser extent Scotland, the languages were banned or suppressed at various points in their history. How terrifying and alienating that must have been. People subject to such laws had no say in the matter. All was decided for them. It was their fate.
Soldiers die on the battlefield, but women suffer in different ways. There were many forced marriages in England after the battle, and we can only imagine how terrifying that would be for the English women to whom this happened. But something else bothered me: what these people had already lived through. Often times when we write or read about people at a particular moment in history, we perhaps don’t think about what else they witnessed or what happened to them, events not of their making, but their destiny, nevertheless.
In the story, an old grandmother in an English village (Beddingham in Sussex, which still exists) tries her best to protect her daughter from the new Norman lord. But her tale is more than this, for she is old enough to have remembered other invasions. She saw her Danish father put to death merely for being Danish. She was chased out of her home town by a new wave of Danes, this time for being too English. For her generation, the invasion and subsequent takeover of England by Cnut was an upset to the order of their lives. There were battles up and down the kingdom as Cnut fought first the forces of Æthelred the ‘Unready’ and then his son, Edmund Ironside. As she settled in her new home, she says, she thought never to see such things again in her lifetime. And yet here she is, suffering from yet another, this time Norman, invasion and conquest.
 Great-grandmother Elisabeth My own maternal granny was born in 1907, and so was a young child when World War One broke out. She, like many others of her generation never thought to see such things again in her lifetime and yet, in 1939, the world went to war again.
My paternal great-grandmother came from a small village which was technically in no-man’s land, but very close to the Belgian/German border. Her name was Elisabeth, and she sounded German. Living in England during both world wars, she was spat on in the street by those who thought she was German.
 Postcard showing Neutral Moresnet, the village Annie’s great-grandmother came from (At the southernmost part of the Neutrales Gebiet shown in white) My tale is of refugees, of conquered territories, of strangers not being accepted, of violence and prejudice, of ‘never again’ becoming ‘yes, again’. It happened nearly a thousand years ago, but it resonates today. History sadly continues to repeat itself, and so often the ‘little’ people, those who have no vote, no say in the decision-making process, are at the mercy of events.
For them, it is not their choice, it is their fate.
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Connect with Annie
Website: https://anniewhiteheadauthor.co.uk/
Blog: https://anniewhitehead2.blogspot.com/
Amazon: http://viewauthor.at/Annie-Whitehead
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnnieWHistory
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anniewhiteheadauthor/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anniewhiteheadauthor/
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/anniehistory.bsky.social
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Read To Be A Queen, the true story of Æthelflæd, the ‘Lady of the Mercians’, daughter of Alfred the Great and the only female leader of an Anglo-Saxon kingdom.
 One family, two kingdoms, one common enemy …
Born into the royal house of Wessex at the height of the Viking wars, Æthelflæd is sent to her aunt in Mercia as a foster-child, only to return home when the Vikings overrun Mercia. In Wessex, she witnesses another Viking attack and this compounds her fear of the enemy.
She falls in love with a Mercian lord but is heartbroken to be given as bride to the ruler of Mercia to seal the alliance between the two Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. She must learn to subjugate her feelings for her first love, overcome her indifference to her husband and win the hearts of the Mercians who despise her as a foreigner and twice make an attempt on her life.
When her husband falls ill and is incapacitated, she has to learn to rule and lead an army in his stead. Eventually she must fight to save her adopted Mercia from the Vikings and, ultimately, her own brother.
Buy To Be A Queen here: https://mybook.to/To-Be-A-Queen
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.
Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines and taste world the latest contemporary thriller Double Identity… Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. As a result, you’ll be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
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 I’m delighted to welcome writing friend Carol Drinkwater to the blog. She’s a multi-award winning actress and writer, possibly best known for her portrayal of Helen Herriot in the BBC’s original television series, All Creatures Great and Small.
Carol is the author of twenty-four books, both fiction and non-fiction. She has achieved bestselling status – over a million copies sold worldwide – with her much-loved quartet of memoirs set on her olive farm in the south of France, The Olive Farm series.
Carol’s fascination with the olive tree extended to a seventeen-month solo Mediterranean journey in search of the tree’s mythical secrets. The resulting, bestselling travel books, The Olive Route and The Olive Tree, were adapted into a five-part documentary film series, which has been screened all over the world.
Carol’s novels include The Forgotten Summer, The Lost Girl which was one of LoveReading’s Books of the Year 2017, The House on the Edge of the Cliff published in May 2019 and An Act of Love published early 2021.
In 2022/23, Channel 5 in the UK screened a six-part series titled Carol Drinkwater’s Secret Provence. It is still being screened worldwide, garnering millions of viewers internationally.
Carol’s latest novel, One Summer in Provence, published by Corvus Atlantic is out today.
I was introduced to Carol by another Carole, (with an ‘e’), the late Carole Blake, the agent’s agent, and one of the most significant figures in to publishing world until she very sadly left us in 2016. We also drank a few drams together back in the day. Anyway, I needed some advice about my olive tree and how to harvest and process the fruit. Carole put me in touch with fellow French resident Carol and we’ve remained in contact ever since.
I asked Carol D what her secret was to her long and successful writing career. Here, she generously let us into her secret…
When I take creative writing courses, I usually begin by saying that I have no secrets, no magic formulae to share. There is no magic wand, no key that will unlock that wretchedly stubborn door that leads beyond to the glorious and endless plains of ‘forever-renewable creativity’. How I wish!
The late W. Somerset Maugham, novelist, playwright and author of brilliant short stories is famously quoted as saying: “There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
Although I think this comment is as true as anything else that has been said about the craft of writing, I do believe that each of us can find and define our own personal set of pointers – pointers not rules; rules are there to be broken.
No writer will argue with the advice that to be a good writer one must read, read, read. Read anything you like, whatever you enjoy. No snobbism here. Each writer will build from the bricks of their experiences, their years of reading, their life adventures. When I was at drama school, one of our directors used to drum into us the importance of visiting museums, reading a daily newspaper, frequenting the cinema, and devouring all the books, plays, we could lay our hands on. I have tried all my life to follow this wise advice. Broaden your mind, see all points of view.
Reading allows us to see how wide – how parameterless – are the parameters.
Sit at your desk; be present. If you don’t turn up for the job you are not a writer. No one else is going to write that book. YOUR book. You cannot wait for the Muse to strike. She is far too fickle and will almost always find an excuse as to why today is not the day to begin. TODAY IS THE DAY. Sit down, open that blank page …
Now I am at my desk in front of that terrifying page. After weeks or even months of deliberation. What comes next? Personally, I begin with two important images. A character and a location. Geographical locations are very important to me. I need to SEE the places my characters inhabit. I am a woman who relates to nature, the earth, the sea, so these will regularly appear in my scene-setting.
Usually, during my period of preparation, I will have asked myself: What is exciting me right now, making me angry, elated, passionate? My principal characters are usually women. I am a woman and I’m fascinated by the emotions, the inner journeys of women: their pain, challenges, triumphs. I began my professional life as an actress; I studied at a drama school in London where we spent much of our time learning to trace the inner maps of our characters, to really KNOW the people we were attempting to portray. I have carried this advice, this method of work, forward into my writing world.
Many novelists plot their books; their narrative is built in predetermined stages; stages that are, to one degree or another, decided in advance of the writing process.
I WISH I could do that but, alas, I don’t seem able to work that way. I go into my story more or less from a place of darkness and I travel in this twilight zone for much of the journey with light flashes along the way. There are times when I have no idea where I am or where I am going. Scary! I have to trust that the characters will talk to me, to one another, to interact and lead me forward. TRUST is an imperative when writing, no matter which method you use to weave your story. There will be times of doubt and those are the times when you most need that trust.
Believe in yourself, in your characters and your unformed story.
My latest novel, One Summer in Provence (published today, 3rd July) began with the idea of visitors. One family member arrives with a companion: an unknown who doesn’t give a fig for the rules of the house, has no respect for the hosts. A stranger striding confidently into another’s life, riding roughshod. It was mid-summer when I started this novel. I live in the south of France so summer means heat, blinding light and a never-ending stream of guests to stay. Long, lazy meals al fresco.
It was post-Covid when I began One Summer in Provence. Like everyone else, my husband and I had been deprived of visitors, of travel. We’d been here for months alone on our small farm. Then, suddenly, a burst of faces, new energies. Some we knew, some we didn’t. I took all these elements into my writing room and began from there. As I said, I had no idea where I was going but I tried to allow Celia – my principal character, the novel’s protagonist – to lead me forward. I had a springboard for my departure. Sometimes a story arc begins to appear within days, with a vague conclusion at tunnel’s end.
This novel really surprised me. I had no idea that the final scenes would play out as they have. And that is part of the JOY of writing, the surprise elements. When the trust pays off.
So, here, briefly, are one or two Carol D pointers. Not rules. They are mine; you will build your own. The more you write the more the process takes form.
Keep it SIMPLE. The text doesn’t need to be ‘more intellectual’, ‘cleverer’, a display of ‘big words’. Truth and simplicity are your allies. Picasso said that it took him till the age of 90 to learn to paint like a child.
Your reader is your companion. You are on this journey together. Be kind and generous. Treat your readers as your treasured travelling companions. Laugh, cry with them, share moments together. Open your heart to them. Never try to pretend you know better.
Relish the business of writing, even when it’s tough. It will be tough more times than it’s not, and you are going to be at your desk sweating it out for the best part of every day, so be kind to yourself and cheer the goals. The pleasure you create for yourself, those moments of victory, will be embedded in the text and they will equally delight your readers.
This job is a huge privilege. If you are also earning a living at it you are blessed beyond measure. When you hold that finished manuscript, even rough draft, there’s the magic.
Bonne chance!
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Connect with Carol
Website: www.caroldrinkwater.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/olive.farm/
Bluesky: @carol4olivefarm.bsky.social
Instagram: carol4olivefarm
Mastodon: @Olivefarmbooks Mastodon.ie
Twitter/X: Carol4OliveFarm
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Carol’s new book – One Summer in Provence
 Celia Grey appears to have the perfect life: married to Dominic, the man of her dreams, and living on a glorious, thriving vineyard in the south of France. To celebrate their good fortune, she decides to throw a huge party.
When she is contacted by a stranger who claims to be her long-lost son, David, the newborn she gave up at twenty and has never spoken of since, Celia impulsively invites him for the weekend of celebrations – without mentioning it to her husband.
Despite his surprise, Dominic graciously welcomes David and his unexpected companion – but secretly he harbours doubts. Is David really Celia’s son? And who is the mysterious young woman travelling with him?
Only Celia can decide how far she will go to hold everything together, to keep her perfect life from unravelling…
One Summer in Provence is a story of betrayal and belonging, and of discovering love in unexpected places. …
Buy One Summer in Provence here: https://atlantic-books.co.uk/book/one-summer-in-provence/
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.
Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines and taste world the latest contemporary thriller Double Identity… Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. As a result, you’ll be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
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Summer is here – warm, lazy days, extra wine, days out with the family and friends, a holiday away. But when the temperature is persistently over 30C, I tend to wilt. Yesterday reached 39C in the shade. My Muse has gone for a protracted lie down somewhere in a cool cave several metres underground.
Enter guilt – my new story is proceeding at ‘walking through tar speed’ as my brain has melted. But I am doing catch-up admin tasks and currently hosting some fabulous fellow writers on this blog, so not totally unproductive!
How to keep cool while trying to be creative?
I really don’t like air-conditioning – on principle on environmental grounds. Although comforting for us as individuals, we are collectively shoving hot air into the atmosphere at a rapid rate and contributing directly to climate change. It should be an absolute last resort and whether public or private, it should not be set at a silly level where you need to wear a cardigan or jacket indoors in a heatwave. Around 22-23C is perfectly fine. Even 24C is bearable to work in.
So what do I do here in southwest France in a heatwave? Fans, and coolers with a water/icepack tank, in every room powered by our solar panel system, ice, free and not drawing electricity from the grid.
But the true secret is one that has been practised for centuries in mainland Europe.
6 am – Indoor temperature overnight has been about 27C, even with the fans on sleep mode as the previous evening was 31C at 11pm. Open shutters and windows and breathe the morning air – a blissful 21C! Open one window wide and draw net across to stop flying insects entering. Our windows open inwards which makes this easy. Rinse and repeat around the whole house and treasure the cooler air flowing in.
Position the fan so it draws in the cooler air from the window. The temperature in the house drops by a few degrees.
Keep an eye on the outside temperature. By around 10 am, it’s risen to the same level the house interior has dropped to – 25 C. Time to close the (now double-glazed) windows.
Depending on where the sun is, then shutters should be closed on the latch. If shutters are completely closed tight, the heat of the sun on the shutters has nowhere to escape.
Then cower in darkened rooms until the daytime exterior temperature outside drops to below the interior temperature. If it does, then re-open the windows and let the fresher air in.
Above all, do not be tempted to open the windows during the heat of the day. All you will do is let the hot air in.
This system of using shutters and fans keeps the interior temperature to a reasonable level with little environment impact. If you don’t have shutters, then close your curtains instead.
Hopefully, this current heatwave will ease later this week. Until then, think of me at 6am, slightly bleary-eyed, starting the window and shutters process!
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.
Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines and taste world the latest contemporary thriller Double Identity… Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. As a result, you’ll be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
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I’m delighted to welcome Clare Flynn back to the blog. She’s the author of eighteen historical novels and is about halfway through her nineteenth. published by Storm, Canelo and herself, her books have now been translated into three languages.
She lives on the south coast of England, in Sussex, where she can watch the sea from her windows. An avid traveller, her books are often set in exotic locations.
Clare is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a member of the Society of Authors, the Historical Writers Association, the Alliance of Independent Authors, the Romantic Novelists Association and the Arts Society. She was the Romantic Novelists Association Indie Champion of the Year in 2022 and the 2020 winner of the Book Brunch Selfies for The Pearl of Penang.
An opening caveat
First of all – I don’t write what are classified as romances. There are very strict rules and tropes that define romance and failure to abide by them can create disappointment and even anger among dedicated afficionados of the genre. Instead, I’d describe my books as historical fiction with a strong romantic element – if not always with a Happy Ever After (the sine qua non in romances!)
 Indian Ocean by night Having got that caveat out of the way, it is still an interesting challenge to entwine a love story within a novel that may be dealing with what can often be challenging or disturbing historical events such as war.
My latest novel, The Star of Ceylon, set in 1906, offers an example of this balancing act. There’s no war, but the book focuses on some weighty social issues such as colonialism, misogyny and sexism, sexual violence, and the treatment of natives by the colonial powers. Yet at the core of the book is a love story. There is a risk with marrying the tenderness of a love story with meaty social commentary: too much politics and you risk the reader feeling they’ve been bashed over the head with a manifesto, too much romance and you risk trivialising and glossing over the harsh realities of the times.
So, how to strike the balance?
The key is to make the big political background personal. The stories of the protagonists must be fundamentally woven from the cloth of the social injustices being portrayed. In the case of my main female character, her entire life is centred on one core social issue – the way the doors to education are being opened wider than ever – but as women try to pass them through them, they are slammed shut. This is all part of a larger picture that characterised the turn of the last century – a wave of feminism that led to women wanting the same rights as men – in voting, in working, in pay, in marriage and in education.
Stella and the Hunger for Academia
 Temple statue It is a passion for anthropology that is the driving force of Stella Polegate’s existence. She has had privileged access as her father is an eminent Oxford scholar and she acts as his research assistant, accompanies him on his expedition to study the Tamil peoples – yet is denied the chance to study for a degree herself. This injustice is articulated not by my voice as the author, but passionately by Stella herself. It colours almost every interaction she has – with her father, her brother, her father’s PhD student, with Norton Baxter (the other protagonist) and with Mrs Moreland, the wife of a senior civil servant she meets early in the book. It is also dramatized by the contrast with other female characters within the book – particularly Cynthia Metcalfe, who would run a mile from the merest whiff of anything academic.
Everything that Stella does – from the books she reads, the beliefs she holds, her attitudes to other people – stems from her thirst for knowledge. The events that befall her (no spoilers here!) all derive directly from this existential motivation.
Norton and the Injustices of Colonialism
 A colonial relic in Sri Lanka The same is true of Norton Baxter. It would have been possible to give Norton another reason to be in Ceylon (I originally planned for him to be a tea planter) but making him a civil servant placed him right at the beating heart of empire.
If I’d followed the first tack, he would have been an observer of empire from a more dispassionate distance. I’ve had characters in other books (The Pearl of Penang and Kurinji Flowers) who are living in the British colonies and experiencing the privileged expatriate life. But this is part of the backdrop. In the case of The Star of Ceylon I wanted it to drive Norton. He’s a young man with ideals and ambition – determined to prove himself to a judgmental father and with no particular axe to grind about the British Empire – it was a fact of life to most Edwardians living before the trauma of the Great War.
But – like Stella’s feminism – Norton’s awakening to the evils of colonialism is entirely personal. His opinions evolve as the book progresses based on what he witnesses first hand – the cruelty and entitlement of his boss – who sees himself as innately superior to the native Sinhalese; the teachings of his language tutor – a Buddhist monk; and what he witnesses on two visits to the jail. He sees it too on a hunting trip, where he can compare the quiet competence of a native guide to the overbearing behaviour of the other British men in the party, and he sees it every day in the professionalism and intelligence of the native clerks in the office, denied promotion because they’re not British.
In other words, I hope the reader will understand the social commentary of the book entirely by experiencing it through the eyes of Norton and Stella.
The Romantic Story
I won’t give away any spoilers here, but the love story is between Stella and Norton – a seemingly hopeless and completely impractical attraction. Their different lives, aspirations and ambitions make a future as a couple unthinkable. He is in no position to take a wife. She wants to return to England to fight for that career in academia.
A love story could never happen without the momentum given to it by the social factors discussed above and the events that derive from them.
In conclusion
The craft of creating believable characters and integrating them within the framework of larger societal changes relies entirely on seeing the two sides holistically. The socio-political aspects are not a backdrop, there to provide colour and background to a romantic story. The two are seamlessly interwoven, each driving the other.
Writing this post makes it seem as though I sat down and thought all this through before I started to write the book. But it wasn’t like that at all. The act of writing for me is less conscious and more instinctive, and the story evolves as I go (I am definitely not a planner!). Often readers are better at describing why and how a book works than the author is!
I hope I’ve succeeded in doing what I’ve described here, in The Star of Ceylon. I certainly enjoyed the process. Read the book and let me know!
My thanks to Alison for inviting me onto her blog and for making me think about this.
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Connect with Clare on her website: https://clareflynn.co.uk
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So what’s The Star of Ceylon about?
Ceylon, 1906: Stella Polegate steps off the ship in Colombo harbour, her heart beating with contradictory emotions. As her father’s unofficial research assistant, she’s thrilled to explore this island of ancient temples and verdant tea plantations—yet painfully aware that her brilliant mind will remain uncredited, her academic ambitions dismissed simply because she is a woman.
When her father’s doctoral student makes unwelcome advances that escalate to violence, Stella’s carefully ordered world shatters.
With her reputation and future hanging in the balance, she finds an unexpected ally in Norton Baxter, a principled young civil servant whose growing disillusionment with colonial rule mirrors her own questioning of societal constraints.
As Stella navigates the suffocating expectations of colonial society, she must make an impossible choice. Should she accept the limitations imposed upon her gender or fight for the academic future she deserves? And can she trust Norton with her damaged heart when every man in her life has sought to control her destiny?
From the misty highlands of Kandy to the bustling port of Colombo, Stella’s journey becomes a defiant quest not only for love but for something far more elusive—the freedom to become the author of her own story.
Buy the book here: geni.us/1087-cr-two-am
My thoughts
You can always rely on Clare Flynn to evoke a strong atmosphere in her novels – she writes so visually, but also has the knack of exploring the inner workings of her characters’ minds.
A glimmer of change in colonial attitudes in the early part of the 20th century was stuttering into life; Stella and Norton represent this. However, the indolent lifestyle, spoiled children and entitlement were dominant. Even the more kindly supporting characters are shown with a patronising attitude to the local population.
Women were still trapped in 1906 in a way that reminded me of Jane Austen’s women characters: the assumption that to be a valid member of society women had to be married, run a household and bear children. Academic study, let alone gaining a degree was out of the question. The only way to gain intellectual recognition was publishing work via the husband or father’s name.
The book does not fight shy of controversial issues nor does the author let up on tension. As I was reading, I truly hoped the heroine would prevail, but so many obstacles were stopping her. Flynn doesn’t let up but makes us think about her characters’ tough choices in the context of their time. and they are tough choices!
The ending was satisfying but felt a little unresolved. I sincerely hope Clare Flynn is writing the sequel!
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.
Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines and taste world the latest contemporary thriller Double Identity… Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. As a result, you’ll be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
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