Blog | Alison Morton Author

Tracey Warr – Writing medieval fiction in southern France

Photo by Sara Perry

Continuing our series about English-speaking writers based in Europe and their ‘terroir’ – the place where they live. How does it affect their writing? This week, it’s Tracey Warr who lives near Albi in southern France.

She has published five novels set in early medieval Europe. Her first novel, Almodis, was shortlisted for the Impress Prize and the Rome Film Festival Book Initiative. Her second novel, The Viking Hostage, recounts the true story of a French noblewoman kidnapped by Vikings.

Tracey’s Conquest trilogy follows the tumultuous life of the medieval Welsh princess, Nest ferch Rhys in the aftermath of the Norman conquest. The trilogy was supported by a Literature Wales Writer’s Bursary.

Her next project, Three Female Lords, is a biography and has received an Author’s Foundation Award. She is Head of Research at Dartington Trust and teaches on MA Poetics of Imagination at Dartington Arts School.

Over to Tracey!

I was born in north London. Twenty years ago my only child—my daughter—grew up and left home and I resigned from my academic job. What next? A friend was in India for six months and offered me his house in the south of France, near Toulouse.

In October, the cat and I found ourselves in a tiny hamlet in the Tarn Valley. Wifi was good. Mobile coverage was poor. The only heating in the ancient, rickety house was a woodburning stove. I don’t drive and there was no public transport. The nearest shop (so small that a visiting friend thought it was a larder rather than a shop) was a 20-minute walk each way. I set up my desk, took a few last autumn swims in the river, and the cat and I hunkered down for the winter.

I expected to be in splendid isolation for months. I did a YouTube tutorial and got coaching over the phone from my Welsh friend on how to light the woodburning stove. The only local wood delivery man asked: ‘What do you think of Tony Blair?’ My answer passed the test and I woke one morning to the thuds of a few tons of logs being tipped onto the road outside. Moving them into the cave would be a mammoth task. I stepped from the front door, pulling on my gardening gloves, and was amazed to see two neighbours, who I had not said more than hello to, doing the same—automatically coming to help when they heard the sound.

Neighbours became friends, took me on trips to the supermarket, invited me over for Christmas, and my French improved. When I locked myself out one neighbour peered at the ancient lock and made a key. One morning I flung open the shutters and almost knocked another neighbour off a ladder where he was, unasked, pruning the rose and vine rambling round the house. As a city girl, this kindly camaraderie was unexpected.

Brousse-le -Château Photo by Père Igor (Creative Commons)

I went on a trip to Brousse-le-Château, an intact medieval village and, the next day, started researching and writing early medieval fiction based on the lives of real women I came across in an 11^th century chronicle.

I fell in love with the pace of village life that gave me focus to write. I delighted in the markets, river landscapes and medieval castles. Swimming in the river and strolling on the bank gongoozling (watching the life of the river go by) complemented time writing and researching.

A year later, still obsessed with the French medieval women I’d discovered, I joined an MA in Creative Writing in Wales to reinforce my new life choice to be a historical fiction writer. Ten years later, I bought a tiny, dilapidated, medieval house on a river in another village near Albi, not far from the first place I had stayed.

Being separated from my family in the UK in COVID times has been hard. Another challenge is that occasionally I must have the British Library. I can get far with online research and buying books, but more obscure sources require ‘proper’ research in a reference library. I make what I think of as a guerrilla raid on the library – a few weeks’ concentrated work that I bring back to my desk like booty.

Almodis de la Marche (left) (Public domain)

My first novel focused on Almodis de La Marche, the real 11^th century countess of Toulouse and Barcelona. The monk William of Malmesbury accused Almodis of being afflicted with a Godless female itch, which seemed to me to be a good reason to write about her. Now I am writing her biography.

My writing is inspired by material culture—objects in museums, archaeology, illustrated manuscripts—and by sensory experiences of places.

Living in France, I have easy access to site research. I visited Lusignan near Poitiers in the Aquitaine, the site of Almodis’s first marriage and the Melusine fey story, which may be associated with her. I visited the tiny chapel of Sant Pere del Burgal over the border in the Pyrenees, which has a fresco of Almodis’s sister, Lucia. I undertook writing residencies in the Pyrenees and in the splendid medieval village of Saint-Cirque-Lapopie in the Lot valley.

I belong to a writers’ group where we give each other feedback on works in progress, and cake. I run workshops for other writers’ groups and participate in bilingual literary festivals, including the marvellous Festilitt in Parisot where I met the original Poldark, Robin Ellis, and watched him giving a cookery demonstration and sporting a Sex Pistols apron. I give talks in local libraries and was honoured that my village invited me to join its annual Christmas Salon du Livre.

Writing is a respected occupation in France!

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Connect with Tracey
Website: https://traceywarrwriting.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/traceywarrhistoricalwriting
Twitter: https://twitter.com/traceywarr1 @traceywarr1
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16786.Tracey_Warr

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In 1121 the Welsh princess, Nest, is unhappily married to the Norman constable of Cardigan Castle. She becomes increasingly embroiled in the Welsh resistance against the Norman occupation of her family lands.

She visits her former lover King Henry in England hoping to secure a life away from her unwanted husband. Grieved and stressed at the death of his son, the King is obsessed with relics and prophecies and under increasing pressure to name his successor.

In Normandy, Sheriff Haith distracts himself from the fact that Nest is married to another man by following clues surrounding the mystery of the drowning of the King’s heir in the wreck of The White Ship.

As Haith tries to piece together fragments of the tragic shipwreck in which three hundred young Norman nobles died in the English Channel, he discovers a chest full of secrets, but will the revelations bring a culprit to light and aid the King? Will the two lovers be united as Nest fights for independence and Haith struggles to protect King Henry?

Buy the paperback Kindle ebook on Amazon UK

Merci bien, Tracey!

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.

Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines and taste the latest contemporary thriller… 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 newsletter. You’ll also be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.

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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 newsletter. You’ll also be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.

Jill Marsh: Swiss inspiration, but not as you know it...

This week, I’m starting a series of English-speaking writers based in Europe and their ‘terroir’ – the place they live in. I’m delighted to welcome back JJ Marsh who shows us how Switzerland runs through her creative mind.

In her own words: As a journalist, teacher, actor, director and cultural trainer, Jill has lived and worked all over Europe. Author of the Beatrice Stubbs Series and two psychological thrillers, she’s now a writer and that is all.

Over to Jill!

“I get all my ideas in Switzerland near the Furka Pass. There is a little town called Gletsch, and two thousand feet up above Gletsch there is a smaller hamlet called Über Gletsch.

I go there on the fourth of August every summer to get my cuckoo clock fixed. While the cuckoo is in the hospital, I wander around and talk to the people in the streets. They are very strange people, and I get my ideas from them.” – Dr Seuss

I’ve never been to Über Gletsch. Nor do I have a cuckoo clock. So how do I find inspiration in Switzerland?

Neil Gaiman talks about the compost of imagination. Writers throw in thoughts, half-baked concepts or raw lines into the fermenting pile. Sometimes, a seed sprouts. That approach appeals to me. It’s more relaxing and organic than my own: a voracious magpie stealing everything sparkly that catches my eye.

Whether in fiction or memoir, I envy writers living in France or Italy. In the reader’s mind, the settings are established, the skyline/food/accent is familiar and the landscape recognisable from a thousand books or films. A cultural shorthand means foreign but not. Ask someone from the US or Australia for some French/Italian references and they’ll gush about locations.

Not so with Switzerland. It’s usually the four Cs: clean, cuckoo clocks, chocolate and cheese. Occasionally they mention The Sound of Music (set in Austria). In a country of contradictions, it’s not surprising people struggle to summon up a typical image. That’s exactly why I wanted set my first book on home turf and chose it as my strapline: More than chocolate and charm.

Take Zürich. Walk from the banking district towards the lake and through the park. Insurance executives sit on the grass, chatting in various languages, while dog-walkers stroll past the nudist island. Kids splash in and out of the water, observed by their parents at the Badi.

Right opposite La Petite Fleur, the legal brothel, is the Rote Fabrik arts centre. Dope-smokers soak up the sunshine on wooden benches and a drum solo drifts from an upstairs window. Across the water is the Opera House, imperious and dazzling as a wedding cake.

It’s all compost, fertilising the ground where I planted my first idea – a serial killer preying on Fat Cats. My aim was to focus on the small stuff, the quirky details that add up to a big picture. And for a cultural magpie like me, shiny little things are everywhere: James Bond, horsemeat, anarchists, Vaduz and kisses.

Valle Verzasca Dam

One murder victim is thrown from the bungee-jump platform at Valle Verzasca, the same dam Pierce Brosnan descends in Goldeneye.

Except this man’s rope was around his neck.

Balance the dramatic versus the mundane …

A British detective is not only up against a serial killer, but battling her opposite number. He orders lunch and after she has finished, reveals she has eaten horse-steak.

The banking centre versus the subculture encompasses dialectical perspectives …

Even an anarchist needs a day job. Our Interpol sleuth has an assignation in a sex bar, but he’s only paying for information. A left-wing rebel surprises him with a lot more than slogans.

A Liechtenstein bank

In his office in the tiny principality of Liechtenstein, an American banker declines an interview with a journalist, concerned she will stitch him up.

As he leaves for a polo match, they come face to face. Surely a pretty young blonde poses no threat?

Sometimes the obvious plays right into your hands …

The Swiss greeting for friends and family is three kisses. Right, left, right. In Germany, it is two.

This difference provided me with the last three lines of Behind Closed Doors.

Switzerland is a patchwork quilt of cultures, languages, scenery and peculiar places. How they fit together still puzzles me. I’ll never stop exploring those seams.

Oh, I bet that’s upset some people’s stereotyped opinions of Switzerland! Brava, Jill!

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Connect with Jill
Website: www.beatrice-stubbs.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JJMarsh1 @jjmarsh1
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jjmarshauthor

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Set in Switzerland – the first Beatrice Stubbs novel

Did their conscience get to them? Or did someone else?
An unethical banker suffocates. A diamond dealer slits his wrists. A media magnate freezes in the snow. A disgraced CEO inhales exhaust fumes.

Four unpopular businessmen, four apparent suicides. Until Interpol find the same DNA at each death.

Beatrice Stubbs, on her first case since a personal tragedy, arrives in Switzerland to lead the investigation. But there’s more to Zurich than chocolate and charm.

Potential suspects are everywhere, her Swiss counterpart is hostile and the secretive world of international finance seems beyond the law. Battling impossible odds by day and her own demons at night, Beatrice has never felt so alone.

She isn’t. Someone’s watching.
Someone else who believes in justice.
The poetic kind.

Find out more: https://geni.us/BehindClosdDoors

Chris Longmuir on research for historical fiction - A Dangerous Destiny?

I’m delighted to welcome crime writer to the blog. I was entranced by Chris’s ‘The Death Game’ where I first met Kirsty Campbell so I had to know more. Chris won the Scottish Association of Writers’ Pitlochry Award for two of her contemporary thrillers in the Dundee Crime Series. One of these books, ‘Dead Wood’, also won the Dundee International Book Prize. Her historical fiction includes a Scottish saga as well as two mystery crime series. The Kirsty Campbell Mysteries, set during and just after the Great War, and the first book of a suffragettes series, ‘Dangerous Destiny’.

Her books are set in Scotland, and have been described as atmospheric page turners. Chris also writes short stories, and historical articles which have been published in the US and the UK. “Writing is like an addiction to me,” Chris says. “I go into withdrawal without it.”

Over to Chris!

Historical fiction. When you say it fast, it sounds simple – a story set in an earlier time. You write your story combining a good plot with fascinating characters and then set it in the past after doing the research. Then you fall down the rabbit hole. You spend days, weeks, months, even years researching and making copious notes. Pages and pages of them. How do you decide what you will use?

Decisions, decisions

The first decision to be made when tackling a historical novel is whether the history is the story, or the background to a story you wish to write. The research required depends on that choice.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel is an example of a historical novel where everything hinges on the history of the times. And if a similar style of fiction is your choice, then you will need to have a firm grasp of the historical characters, politics and events. That research rabbit hole is extremely deep, and mistakes are never forgiven by history buffs.

If you decide the story is the most important thing and the history is the backdrop to the action, you still need to research, although this can have a different focus.

My historical mysteries use the latter method. I want to offer my readers an intriguing story full of suspense set against a historical background covering before, during, and after the First World War. I will therefore focus on research with a small r, as opposed to Research with a big R, using this period as my reference point.

The little things matter

Of course, you can’t ignore the big picture. You need to know what was happening in the country and the world, even though you may not use the information. My method is to formulate a timeline composed of significant events. In Dangerous Destiny, my suffragette characters attend and are thrown out of Winston Churchill’s meeting in Dundee. I know the exact date of his visit because it is in my timeline.

In order to avoid turning your story into a history lesson, it is better to concentrate on adding historical atmosphere using your research into more common things. For example, consider:

Transport! How did people move around? How long would it take to travel to a specific destination? What was their understanding of the world outside their own area? Many working-class people never left the town or village where they were born.
The price of various items: a newspaper; a tram, bus or train ticket; the typical rent of a house; a pint of beer in a pub; a flagon of soup from the corner shop. You get the drift.
Fashion! What did people wear? How did they get their clothes? Would it be handmade garments for the better off and cast offs for the poorer members of society? Did they wear hats and gloves? Or shawls and clogs?
Length of the working day and working conditions, which tended to be much longer and more extreme than that of today.
Smoking was more common than it is now. What did they smoke, cigarettes or tobacco? What brand, Kenilworth or Black Cat? Did they smoke pipes or chew tobacco? The fisherwomen in A Salt Splashed Cradle smoked clay pipes!
Leisure activities. What were they and what was the cost? In my book Death of a Doxy, the children paid for their cinema seats with jam jars and the film being shown was The Knickerbocker Buckaroo featuring Douglas Fairbanks.

Last, you should give consideration to living conditions and attitudes which were different in times past.

Specialist research

Sometimes you need knowledge of a more specialist nature, although it is not wise to include all of that research in your book. Research on the birth of the first women’s police service in 1914 was the impetus for my Kirsty Campbell Mysteries.

Dangerous Destiny required a knowledge of suffragettes. And when I wrote Devil’s Porridge I had to research First World War munitions, and the process used to make cordite.

However, less is more. One paragraph in Devil’s Porridge was the outcome of three days of research into the mechanics of a vintage car.

I could go on, but I am sure you are grasping how research can colour your story and provide the background without being overwhelming.

Final Words

The golden rule with research is to know what you’re writing about. Check, check and check again. Keep most of the research in your head and only use a light touch when applying it to your book. No reader wants a lecture. Remember what I said above, three days of research led to one paragraph in the book.

Have fun with your research and don’t fall down the rabbit hole.

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Connect with Chris
Website Amazon Author Page Twitter: @chrislongmuir
Facebook Facebook Author page: Chris Longmuir, Crime Writer

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Discover Dangerous Destiny, the first book in Chris’s new suffragette mystery series.

Dundee, Scotland, in 1908. Suffragettes are dying. The police aren’t interested, taking the attitude ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’.

Three suffragettes band together to find the truth.

Kirsty – a naïve young girl escaping her controlling family and the secret of her past.
Ethel – a mill girl fleeing from her abusive and vicious father
Martha – a seasoned suffragette seeking justice for her friends.

Will Kirsty and Ethel forge a new destiny for themselves?

Will Martha unmask the killer? And will she survive?

A coming-of-age story with murder and mystery at its heart.

Buy Dangerous Destiny on Amazon UK Amazon US

Book reading in Lockdown 2021 – Jan/Feb

Writing is going along steadily, but slowly. I’ve written a 5,000 word short story as a prequel to Double Identity which will become exclusive to newsletter subscribers. The draft of my next full-length thriller stands at just over 40,000 words, so about halfway. But in the lockdown I’ve been reading like a demon. That’s a plus as writers need to read a lot – it’s their equivalent of CPD (Continuous Professional Development). It’s also a great way of running away into other worlds…

I really can’t categorise my reading – I’m a complete floozie when it comes to reading in genre. Here are the books I’ve read in January and February this year:

To the Lions by Holly Watt – Contemporary, ballsy investigative journalist and colleagues uncover nasty goings on in London and Africa. Pacy, but implausible in places and trying to be a bit too clever

The Irish Princess by Elizabeth Chadwick – Historical, 12th century, a quality read, vivid and acurate as you would expect from this author

Twilight Empress by Faith L Justice – Late Roman Empire, a skilful job of bringing 5th century Roman empress /political mover to life

Berlin 2 Further Adventures of Bernie Gunther by Philip Kerr – pre and post Second World war, Germany and South America with a German policeman determined to finish his enquiry, with a terrible attitude to authority, but a realist and survivor. Smokes and drinks too much 😉

EO-N by Dave Mason – Dual timeline, Second World War and present, Norway, Canada and UK. Lyrical story of discovery, love, Nazi horror and a mystery wartime mission buried under the ice

The Wall at the Edge of the World by Damion Hunter – Roman, 120s CE, Postumus, a Roman army surgeon with a British mother from the tribes, posted to Hadrian’s Wall; vivid, interwoven and great characterisation.

Westwind by Ian Rankin – A cold war thriller where the US is withdrawing from Europe. Written 20 years ago and re-issued. A bit simplistic and not up to Rebus standard. Okay as an undemanding read.

No Stone Unturned by Pam Lecky – 1880s, London and countryside. A young woman is widowed and becomes enmeshed in conspiracy and deceit at the heart of her family. Well written, good badinage between the characters.

A Mirror Murder by Helen Hollick – Disclaimer: I know the author well. 1970s cozy mystery, sympathetic characters and bags of period detail

Discovery by Barbara Greig – A real find. A 16/17th century, dual time line absorbing historical, France, Canada, England. Fascinating insight into a three-way culture clash with deep family secrets.

The Defector by Daniel Silva – Contemporary spy story. I love stories of Gabriel Allon, Israeli spy, and his determined team, his alliances and his pursuit of enemies. A child of Holocaust survivors, he’s not always a ‘nice’ person, but his motives are clear. Full of interesting detail and pacey.

Stasi Child by David Young – East Germany (DDR), 1970s, featuring Oberleutnant Karin Müller of the People’s Police as she follows a string of ‘convenient’ clues while investigating child murder, all the time supervised by Stasi officer Jäger. Great insight into the complexities of the state machine, and a very sympathetic protagonist.