Remembering Rosemary Goodacre and her new novel, Until We Can Forgive

It’s three weeks now since we were saddened to hear of the death of our friend and fellow author, Rosemary Goodacre

Rosemary had been ill but was recovering and looking forward to the release of the third novel in her Derwent Chronicles series, Until We Can Forgive. She was busy getting started on her blog tour questions, when she was sadly taken from us. Here we recall times we’ve spent with Rosemary, and take a look at her latest novel.

 

 

 

 

Francesca: I first met Rosemary in an Adult Education class for creative writing, run by Elaine Everest, back in 2006. We’d been in various classes together since that time, as well as both attending Writers’ Holiday weeks and many Romantic Novelist Association events. Often she wrote things that were a little different, like a novel she was working on several years ago that involved chemistry classes and poisonings!

She was a well informed and cultured woman, with knowledge of foreign languages, yet never blew her own trumpet. She was great fun at social events. I recall the last RNA conference we were at, one evening, sitting around our flat’s kitchen table, playing a game which involved singing various songs, and Rosemary joining in as enthusiastically as the rest of us (I dare say a little alcohol was involved!). She will be sorely missed by me, and there’ll be a Rosemary-shaped hole in our group of friends for evermore.

Elaine: I first met Rosemary at The Write Place in 2012. I will always remember Rosemary as a well read and intelligent person. Her interests were quite diverse, as indeed was her reading. I know she loved playing bridge, going to the theatre and having some more unusual holidays. However, she also had a scatty side to her unassuming nature. She was a lovely lady that would never want to offend anyone and was also someone you couldn’t get cross with.

When we were travelling to Romantic Novelist’s Association events together, like the conferences, she was often waiting for everyone in the wrong place. We all worried about losing her when we were going anywhere as a group. I remember arranging to meet her just inside the doorway of a summer party we were both attending and I waited for sometime before I was told she was already upstairs. She was very apologetic when she realised but it was just another moment where you just thought ‘that’s Rosemary’, she didn’t have a malicious bone in her whole body.

I will miss her more than words can say, as I’m sure everyone who knew her will.

Until We Can Forgive

Spring 1919: WW1 is over and a fragile peace has descended over the country. Now living in Cambridge with husband Edmond, Amy Derwent is settling into her new life as wife and mother to little Beth. But the shadow of the Great War looms large, particularly as the injuries Edmond sustained at Ypres still take their toll on him today.

Edmond’s cousin, Vicky, has now grown into a fine young woman, eager to help her
country. Throwing off her privileged background to train as a nurse, she spends her days tending to the many soldiers still suffering the after-effects of their time on the battlefield.

Meeting Maxim Duclos, a young Frenchman who has arrived in Larchbury, fills her heart with joy – but when it is discovered that Maxim may be hiding the truth about his past, Vicky is faced with an impossible choice. Follow her heart’s desire and risk her family’s disapproval or keep her family – but deny herself the chance of true love?

The war may be over, but Edmond, Amy and Vicky must all face a new battle, finding their own peace in a country wounded by loss.

Available on Kindle and paperback at:

Amazon

Kobo

The first two books of the Derwent Chronicles:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Available here:

Until We Meet Again

Until the War is Over

Follow the rest of Rosemary’s tour:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time for Tea with Elaine Everest and the Teashop Girls

Today we say hello once again to Elaine Everest, talking about the latest Teashop Girls book, World War 2 and her characters

 

Hello Elaine, and welcome back to the blog with your second ‘Teashop’ novel.

Thank you for hosting me on your blog and being part of the blog tour for Christmas with the Teashop Girls.

You often mention the lovely Forties’ clothes that your characters are wearing. Do you like Forties’ fashion, and where does your research for it come from?

I do like fashions from the forties as despite rationing women always dressed smartly and made the most of what they had. I enjoy reading about women’s clothing from that time and have quite a collection of books, magazines and newspaper cuttings that I refer to – everything from couture designs down to home dressmaking and make do and mend. I even refer to my collection of Woolworths staff magazines. The New Bond is an invaluable source for fashion ideas. I spend far too long reading these publications.

There are a lot of details about Ben’s mill business in the East End, along with the docks. It’s almost like you’ve walked around it yourself. Where did the details come from? Were there photographs of the area to study?

Being born and brought up close to the Thames in Erith I grew up watching life on the river and knowing people who worked in the docks. Dockland wasn’t just in London. When I decided that Ben’s family business required the shipping of grain from Canada, I started to research how the docks worked during the war. I was able to watch Pathe News as well as look at images of that time. I was also fortunate that some of my relatives lived close to Tower Bridge which meant that at time we’d go along the Thames and see the old warehouse that still remained after the devastation of the Blitz. Even in the sixties there was still much to see before the buildings started to be turned into expensive apartments. News reports told of ships containing grain being sunk during the relentless bombing on the first day of the Blitz. I used much of this in my story.

The air raids come thick and fast in the book, set in 1940 as it is. Was it really as bad as that?
1940 was the year the air raids started in earnest after the ‘phoney war’. I pride myself in never inventing an air raid that didn’t exist. My plots have to fit around what happened during the war, and at times I wish there had been something happening in the area where the book is set. For the people of Ramsgate, it was truly horrendous, but thankfully they had the famous Ramsgate tunnels in which to take shelter. It is said that no resident of the town was more than ten minutes from a tunnel entrance. It was the foresight of own mayor, Alderman A. B. C. Kempe, with the backing of the borough council that permission was granted and work on the tunnels began in March 1939 saving thousands of lives.

Anya is an interesting character, fleeing from Poland as she did. Where did you get the idea for her, and her husband Henio?

When Anya popped into my mind it was a gift. She appears in the opening of The Teashop Girls when Flora comes to her rescue with young boys stoning her for being a German. I wanted to show how people in WW2 reacted to anyone with a foreign accent and assume they are the enemy. The invasion of Poland started our involvement in WW2 and for me the Polish have a special place in my heart. Our current resident freeloader, Henry, is a Polish Lowland Sheepdog and through exhibiting him and belonging to breed clubs I got to know some lovely Polish people both online and in person and wanted to depict them in my stories. As for Anya’s husband, Henio – his name is Polish for Henry, so yet again I manged to feed one of my dog’s names into a book.

Some pretty nasty characters pop up in the book (we won’t give away who!). Do you prefer to write about the nice guys or the bad guys?

I love a nasty character! At times it can be quite therapeutic to write a nasty character and see how the main characters react to the person. I do like my Nippies as they are plucky women and tend to fight back when the baddies appear.

Who’s your favourite character in the book?

I do like Mildred as she is a character that calls a spade a spade, come to that so does Anya! In Christmas with the Teashop Girls I have developed Lady Diana’s story and had such fun with her I had to be careful she didn’t take over the book.

We’ve had two outings with the Teashop Girls now. Can we look forward to any more?

I hope we can return to Thanet one day to continue with stories about the Nippies. I would like to tell more of Anya’s story and follow the residents of Ramsgate through the remainder of WW2. In fact, I’ve just purchased a Polish cookery book, and that alone has given me ideas …

What can your readers look forward to next?

Both my books for 2021 are now filed with my publisher. I’m excited to be able to tell Ruby (from the Woolworths Girls series) story of her younger days in A Mother Forever which is on sale in January, for the hardback version, and March for paperback/audio/digital etc. The story starts in 1905 when Ruby moved into her new home in Alexandra Road with such hopes for the future. I hope readers enjoy finding out about Ruby’s early life.
Pre order details here 

Thank you very much for popping in, Elaine, and the best of luck with Christmas with the Teashop Girls.

Christmas with the Teashop Girls

It’s late 1940 and the war feels closer to home than ever for Rose Neville and her staff at the Lyon’s Teashop in Margate. The worry of rationing hangs overhead as the Nippies do their best to provide a happy smile and a hot cup of tea for their customers. When a bombing raid targets the Kent coastline, Lyon’s is badly hit, throwing the future of the cafe into jeopardy.

The light in Rose’s life is her dashing fiancé Captain Ben Hargreaves and she’s busy planning their Christmas Eve wedding. But she must also plan to take two new stepdaughters into her life and get on the right side of her wealthy mother-in-law, Lady Diana. Is Rose ready to become a mother?

When Rose’s half-sister Eileen makes contact, it seems that Rose’s dreams of having a sibling are coming true at long last. But her friends begin to suspect that she’s hiding something… As the wedding draws near, the bombings intensify, putting everything and everyone Rose loves in danger. Only one thing is for sure: it will be a Christmas she never forgets . . .

 Available on Amazon

About Elaine Everest

Elaine Everest is from North West Kent and she grew up listening to stories of the war years in her home town of Erith, which features in her bestselling Woolworths Girls series. A former journalist, and author of nonfiction books for dog owners, Elaine has written over sixty short stories for the women’s magazine market. When she isn’t writing, Elaine runs The Write Place creative writing school in Hextable, Kent. She lives with her husband, Michael and sheepdog Henry. You can find out more about Elaine on Twitter @ElaineEverest or Facebook /elaine.everest

Read more about Elaine and Christmas with the Teashop Girls by catching up with her tour:

Welcoming Guest Author Judith Barrow

We welcome Judith Barrow today, talking about her research and settings

Hello Judith, and welcome to the blog. First of all, could we ask what kind of research you do?

Writing historical family sagas necessitates a lot of research. It’s what I enjoy. It’s fun discovering the fashions of an era, the hairstyles and cosmetics. The toys, the games that occupied the children tell a lot about the times. Mostly I research late nineteenth and early twentieth century when children had less time to play; childhood often ended before the age of twelve, with chores and work to bring in money for the family. I researched the kind of employment given to them, unbelievable in this days and age. And it has made me see how far society has changed when it comes to the houses built: from terraces to high-rise flats to housing estates. And how there are differences in the furniture, the ways people cooked, the food, the way clothes were washed. How life was lived.

The Haworth Trilogy

But of course, there is also the background to those lives, the environments: the state of the towns, the countryside, the country I’m researching. And that’s when politics play a huge part in the lives of the characters that have formed in my mind. Because I mostly write about early twentieth century, I’ve explored the time of two major world wars, of smaller but no less dangerous conflicts between maybe two or three countries, of internal strife in Britain, in Ireland. And, trying to understand the effects on populations, on ordinary people, I read as many memoirs I can find and, so often, when I read about life in the past, I realise that little has changed in the human psyche. Emotions don’t change; we react to situations, to others’ actions, in much the same way now as they did in the past, depending on our own personalities. On our own memories.

Often these memoirs are the hardest to read. It’s difficult not to feel, to empathise with the emotions of the women who fought and suffered for the right to vote, the soldiers in the trenches and battlefields, the women left behind to worry, to fill in the gaps in the workplace and to run a home, with the despair of unemployment and despair. But then there are also the success stories, of overcoming all the odds, of adventures, of peace and fulfilment to lift the spirits.

Tell us about your settings and why you chose them?

My books are mostly set between a fictional Yorkshire town and a fictional place in Wales because I feel the closest affinity to both areas. I grew up in a village on the edge of the Pennines and have lived in West Wales for the past forty years.

For me, the settings are a character in themselves.

Glen Mill

The setting which was the inspiration for my earlier work, the Haworth trilogy, was Glen Mill, one of the first POW camp to be opened in Britain. It was a disused cotton mill, built in 1903, that ceased production in 1938. At a time when all-purpose built camps were being used by the armed forces and there was no money available for POW build, Glen Mill was chosen for various reasons: it wasn’t near any military installations or seaports and it was far from the south and east of Britain, it was large and it was enclosed by a railway, a road and two mill reservoirs.

The earliest occupants were German merchant seamen caught in Allied ports at the outbreak of war. Within months Russian volunteers who had been captured fighting for the Germans in France were brought there as well. According to records they were badly behaved and ill-disciplined. So there were lots of fights. But, when German paratroopers (a branch of the Luftwaffe) arrived they imposed a Nazi-type regime within the camp and controlled the Russians. Later in the war the prisoners elected a Lagerführer; a camp leader who ruled the inner workings of the camp and the camp commanders had to deal with them.

Prequel to the Howarth series

The more I read about Glen Mill the more I thought about the total bleakness of it and the lives of the men there.  And I knew I wanted to write about that. But I also wanted there to be hope, to imagine that something good could have come out of their situation.

Which is why I introduced Mary Haworth, the protagonist of the trilogy. All POW camps had to house a hospital to care for the prisoners. Mary is a civilian nurse. I was originally informed that only Alexandra nurses could work in the hospitals but, through research, I discovered that there was one civilian nurse, so I decided there could be another: Mary. Haworth.

Thank you for dropping by, Judith, and the best of luck with all your books

Judith’s latest book is The Memory

Mother and daughter tied together by shame and secrecy, love and hate.

I wait by the bed. I move into her line of vision and it’s as though we’re watching one another, my mother and me; two women – trapped.

Today has been a long time coming. Irene sits at her mother’s side waiting for the right moment, for the point at which she will know she is doing the right thing by Rose.

Rose was Irene’s little sister, an unwanted embarrassment to their mother Lilian but a treasure to Irene. Rose died thirty years ago, when she was eight, and nobody has talked about the circumstances of her death since. But Irene knows what she saw. Over the course of 24 hours their moving and tragic story is revealed – a story of love and duty, betrayal and loss – as Irene rediscovers the past and finds hope for the future.

Buying links etc:

Amazon.co.uk  

Amazon.com 

Honno  

Goodreads 

BookBub  

NetGalley 

About Judith Barrow

Although I was born and brought up in a small village on the edge of the Pennine moors in Yorkshire, England. for the last forty years I’ve lived with my husband and family near the coast in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, UK, a gloriously beautiful place. I’ve written all my life and have had short stories, poems, plays, reviews and articles published throughout the British Isles. I had the first of my trilogy, Pattern of Shadows, published in 2010, the sequel, Changing Patterns, in 2013 and the last, Living in the Shadows in 2015. The prequel, A Hundred Tiny Threads was published in  2017. The Memory was published in March 2020. My next book, The Heart Stone is due to be published in February 2021.  I have an MA in Creative Writing, B.A. (Hons.) in Literature, and a Diploma in Drama and Script Writing. I work as an interviewer of authors for an online TV company; Showboat tv. I am also a Creative Writing tutor for Pembrokeshire County Council’s Lifelong Learning Programme and give talks and run private workshops on all genres.

Social Media Links:

Website

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From The Home Front To The Far East…

Francesca and Elaine are pleased to welcome Jean Moran to the blog to talk about her novel Summer of the Three Pagodas

Hello Jean, and welcome to Write Minds. Normally you write sagas set in the UK. What made you decide on a change of setting? 

I wrote this in a bid to have a change from Home Front sagas and set the story of both the first book, Tears of the Dragon, and this one, Summer of the Three Pagodas, in the Far East, a less used theatre of war. They’re both far grittier and violent than my books written as Lizzie Lane and so in a bid not to confuse readers, I became Jean Moran.

The main character in both books is Doctor Rowena Rossiter. In the first book she has the ill luck to be in Hong Kong when the Japanese invade and to have an opium baron obsessed with controlling her life. Luckily she’d also met the love of her life, Connor O’Connor, owner of a bar in Kowloon.

In this second book, fearing that Kim, the opium lord, has found her and is threatening to harm her daughter, Dawn, she takes the offer of a job in an hospital run by nuns in Korea. The offer is made to her by an American officer who, she gradually finds out, has his own reasons for sending her there.

Within months she finds herself caught up in the Korean War. This time the invaders are soldiers of the DPRK, Democratic Republic of Korea, Chinese communists.

Rowena is a woman of principle and strong character – I suppose a bit of me is in her. I’m told I’m strong and tend to hit the ground running. Rowena is like that too. She is also selfless in helping others and even though her daughter is with her, she refuses to leave her patients when Connor comes to her rescue. Her responsibilities take priority. 

Like many others trapped in Korea she endures a death march that meanders through the interior through tree covered mountains where the air is crisp and snow still clusters in deep ravines. There’s little to eat and people die of hunger and exhaustion. Others are killed by their captors, including one of the nuns.

The title Summer of the Three Pagodas reflects something that happened back in WW2. Three Pagodas Pass was where the slave labour on the Burma ‘Death’ Railway were finally freed following the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

Summer is the name of a victim of this war, given by her dying mother.

Research for stories set in WW2 are comparatively easy compared to the Korean War, especially when it came to the plight of civilians. To this end a record I found written by the Carmelite nuns was invaluable.

I dithered about sending it off to the publisher, asking myself the same questions I always do: is it flawed? Have I dropped a huge faux pas that both the commissioning editor and copy editor will see and I haven’t? The doubt is always there; does it read as well as you think it does? Being close to a project can fool you into thinking it could be better. All would be writers should bear this in mind.

Luckily I received nothing but praise.

Where to next?

I would have liked to write another book in the series making it a trilogy, perhaps even a quartet. I’d already chosen the titles; Night Train to Bangkok, (a prelude to the Vietnam War and set in Thailand), and Sayonara Saigon – set in the Vietnam War.

Covid19 threw in a curved ball so I had to rethink. My thoughts turned to an idea that had been brewing for some time – a series set around the Bristol tobacco factories. This would be real home front stuff and therefore it suited for me to return to the pseudonym Lizzie Lane – so that’s what I did. The Tobacco Girls by Lizzie Lane comes out in January.

I’m a waste not, want not person, so perhaps I would have been quite at home in WW2 – making coats from blankets, knitting hats and handbags and cutting up old tyres to glue to the bottom of my worn out shoes. I would have survived, and that’s what the women that feature in my books are doing be it home front or abroad in more violent scenarios – they’re surviving.

Thank you for taking the time out to tell us about your writing, Jean.

 

Summer of the Three Pagodas

HONG KONG, 1950.

Now the war is over, Dr Rowena Rossiter is ready to plan a new life with her great love, Connor O’Connor. But before they can, bad news arrives.

A female doctor is urgently needed in Seoul and the powers that be want Rowena to go. She refuses – until rumours begin to swirl about the sinister, beautiful man who held her captive during the war.

They say he may still be alive and looking for her. By comparison, Korea on the brink of war seems safer, but will Rowena ever truly be able to escape the shadows of her violent past?

A brilliantly exotic saga set in post-war Hong Kong and Korea, where Dr Rowena Rossiter longs to follow her heart, and her love, but the shadows of a violent past threaten to engulf her.

Summer of the Three Pagodas is published by Head of Zeus and available on Amazon

JEAN MORAN

Jean Moran was born and raised in Bristol where she took many office jobs, none of which excited her. She was, she decided, always a square peg in a round hole.

After having over fifty books published, she thinks she may at last have come to where she should be. All she worries about now is that somebody might find out that she doesn’t really consider writing ‘real’ work. She loves what she does.

Of those fifty books, a number written as Lizzie Lane have entered the top thirty bestselling paperbacks and the Heatseekers Chart. She’s been translated into a number of languages and hopes to write in a few other genres before finally shutting the lid of her laptop.

Besides writing, she’s also lived on a sailing yacht in the Med for four years, bred and showed Irish Red Setters and developed many properties moving every four years – the boat seemed a sensible option. It moved by itself without all the hassle of removal vans.