Welcoming Jean Fullerton with a Ration Book Christmas Kiss

As  the pre-Christmas activities begin, we welcome Jean Fullerton to tell us about her settings, characters and her writing day

Hello Jean, and welcome back to Write Minds. First of all, can you give us an insight into your main character in A Ration Book Christmas Kiss?

My main character is Michael Brogan who we first met in a Ration Book Childhood. He’s 12-years-old and we meet him a few weeks before Christmas at school. The local girls’ school has been bombed and they come to join Michael and his classmates for the last few weeks of term.

Do you see yourself in any of your characters?

I am the heroine in all of my books even though they are in their twenties and I’m considerably older. However, I do have to confess, although I have all my own teeth the character nearest to me in age at least if not, straight talking is the matriarch of the Brogan family, Queenie.

Tell us about your setting and why you chose it?

It’s not so much that I choose the setting for my books as the setting chooses me. I come from East London originally and all my family’s history is in those overcrowded streets of Stepney, Shadwell and Wapping so it seems natural as the area is in my blood to set all my books, be they Victorian or 20th century fiction in East London

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m working on a secret East London writing project at the moment, but I’ll be starting the last of my Ration Book Series, A Ration Book Victory in January 2021.

Your secret project sounds intriguing, Jean! Tell us about your writing day.

I’m not an early riser so after a couple of cups of tea, breakfast and a read of the paper I usually get to my desk about 9.30. Unless I’m dashing towards a deadline, I spend the first half of the morning doing admin and posting on social media. I kick off the day’s writing about 11ish for a couple of hours until lunch then I’m back at my desk again for a solid four hours in the afternoon.

I take a break to have dinner then toddle up again for an hour at about seven after which I spend the rest of the evening with my feet up in front of the TV with the Hero@Home.  I average about 1500-2000 words a day, sometimes more but I’m a steady writer rather than a fast one as I need thinking time as well.

Of course, that’s not every day as I do have days out with family and friends as well as meeting my agent and editors and writerly events. However, I always take my laptop when I’m traveling and as 120k words won’t write themselves, I often do a few hundred words on the train up and back from London.  I have to keep an eye on my diary as I do try to have at least 4 or 5 working days each week. As I say. 120k words won’t write themselves.

Do you have a favourite writing place?

My office upstairs in the Rectory as it’s my own space with all my research books at hand.

Where do your ideas come from?

Who knows? But thank goodness they do. Truthfully, it can be a picture or an image. However, as I’m writing to a contract rather than as the fancy takes me, I focus on the period or event to trigger my imagination.

What does success look like to you?

Well the money’s nice but success to me is an inbox with lots of lovely letters from readers who love my books.

Describe your perfect day.

See my writing day above

If you could tell your younger self anything what would it be?

Don’t worry about the dyslexia and get writing now!

Good advice, Jean! Other than writing what else do you love to do?

I know it’s a cliché but next to my writing I love being with my husband, three daughters and eight grandchildren.

Thanks for coming to talk to us, Jean, and the very best of luck with the book.

 

A Ration Book Christmas Kiss

When the local girls’ school gets bombed out in December of 1942, Michael Brogan and his friends are forced to share classes with the young ladies of Stepney Green. And when Michael meets Jane in one of those lessons, he knows it’s the best thing that has ever happened to him. He may only be 12, but he’ll love Jane forever.

Unsure of Jane’s feelings, Michael decides to ask her to his church Christmas dance. But Jane’s father has other ideas, and so does the Luftwaffe. As the bombs rain down on London’s East End, Michael starts to wonder if he will ever get the chance to prove his love. Will this be the year he gets a Christmas kiss?

Available on Amazon 

About Jean Fullerton

Jean Fullerton is the author of sixteen novels all set in East London where she was born. She worked as a district nurse in East London for over twenty-five years and is now a full-time author.

She is a qualified District and Queen’s nurse who has spent most of her working life in the East End of London, first as a Sister in charge of a team, and then as a District Nurse tutor.

She has won multiple awards and all her books are set in her native East London.  Her latest novella, A RATION BOOK CHRISTMAS KISS, is the fifth in her East London WW2 Ration Book series featuring the lively Brogan family.

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Don’t We All Love A Wedding?

Francesca and Elaine are chatting to the lovely Jean Fullerton about her new novel A Ration Book Wedding.

Hello Jean, thank you for joining us today. Can you give us an insight into your main character?

My main character at the moment is Cathy Brogan who is the middle sister of the three Brogan girls. Like the rest of her family she lives in Wapping East London, a few streets back from the London Docks. Like a great many in the area they are a second-generation Irish family. We first met her in A Ration Book Dream, which started the morning of her wedding on Saturday 2^nd  September the day before Great Britain declared war on German. She married Stanley Wheeler. He had his own van and worked at Spitalfields fruit market as a delivery driver. He also rented a more spacious semi-detached house with a garden, a step up from her parent’s three-up three-down tenement house with just a backyard.

When war started her father, Jeremiah, was the local rag and bone man but because the price of scrap metal  was being strictly controlled by the Government, he has now built a successful delivery and removal business. Her mother, Ida, who used to scrub other people’s floors, now looks after the office side of the business. Unperturbed by the turmoil of war, Cathy’s feisty gran Queenie Brogan, tealeaf reader and one-time bookies runner, keeps a close and affectionate eye on the family.

However, since then life hasn’t been easy for Cathy as her husband has turned out to be a brute with dangerous friends.  Mercifully, now he, like most men of fighting age, is in the army, leaving Cathy at the mercy of his equally vicious mother. She is now reconciled to her sister Mattie after a rift caused by her husband Stanley’s actions. She’s also seen her two sisters, Mattie and Jo, marry the love of their lives, but for Cathy after three years of marriage, love and happiness are just a crushed dream.

Her only joy is her two-and-half-year-old son Peter. That is until a chance meeting with Sergeant Archie McIntosh, a member of East London’s Bomb disposal team, while the bells are ringing after the victory at El Alemain, is set to change all that.

Do you see yourself in any of your characters?

I am all my heroines and fall in love with all of my heroes.

If you could tell your younger self anything what would it be?

To start writing sooner. I only began writing twenty years ago and I really wish I’d started a decade earlier.

Where do your ideas come from?

That’s an easy one to answer. I have absolutely no idea. I write to contract so I can’t just write the first thing that pops into my head so I start by thinking of a period or scenario that might suit the story then mull it over both consciously and subconsciously for about a week, making notes and sketching out possible scenes, after which I put a very loose plan together. I then start and as I get further into my characters and story the initial ideas just seem to build and develop.

What does success look like to you?

Although the money’s nice, success for me is having a reader contact me and tell me how much they enjoy my books. That is how I measure my success.

A Ration Book Wedding.

In the darkest days of the Blitz, love is more important than ever.

It’s February 1942, and as the Americans finally join Britain and her allies, twenty-three-year-old Francesca Fabrino is doing her bit for the war effort in a factory in East London. But her thoughts are constantly occupied by recently married Charlie Brogan, who is fighting in North Africa with the Eighth Army.

When Francesca starts a new job for the BBC Overseas department, she meets handsome Count Leo D’Angelo and begins to put her hopeless love for Charlie aside. But then Charlie returns from the front, his marriage in ruins and his heart burning for Francesca at last. Could she, a good Catholic girl, countenance an affair with the man she has always longed for? Or should she choose Leo and a different, less dangerous path?

Amazon:  A Ration Book Wedding

Bio

Jean Fullerton is the author of twelve novels all set in East London where she was born. She worked as a district nurse in East London for over twenty-five years and is now a full-time author.

She is a qualified District and Queen’s nurse who has spent most of her working life in the East End of London, first as a Sister in charge of a team, and then as a District Nurse tutor.

She has won multiple awards and all her books are set in her native East London. Her latest book, A RATION BOOK WEDDING, is the fourth in her East London WW2 Ration Book series featuring sisters Mattie, Jo and Cathy Brogan and their family.

Website

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Thank you for talking to us today and we look forward to catching up again in the near future.