Beyond the Sunset

My husband and I were born in the UK, emigrated to Australia thirty years ago but love to return to the UK regularly. We still love both countries, just can’t cope with the UK winters.
The first time my husband suggested us buying a summer home in the UK and spending more time here, I shuddered and said no way, too much extra work. After all, I’ve got writing to do.
But I caved in, and I’m really glad I did. It’s been hard work setting up a two-country lifestyle, but the stimulation of our new life has made story ideas well up in greater numbers than ever before.
It’s no problem setting up the office equipment, but I worried about my huge collection of research books. How was I going to manage without those for my historical novels? The answer is, I plan ahead very carefully and do all my main and preliminary research in Australia. Then I use the living research in both countries – buildings, museums, people, the beautiful countryside, research books that don’t make it overseas.
Another thing has happened: with more exposure to people unfamiliar with Australia, I think I understand more about ‘showing’ them Australian history in my stories and I think that’s improved my stories. I hope so, anyway!
I’ve just had a series published set in Western Australia in the 1860s. (Farewell to Lancashire, Beyond the Sunset, Destiny’s Path) England was a busy industrial country in that decade, with railways connecting not only main cities, but small towns and villages too. Western Australia, physically as big as Europe, had a population of only 30,000 and no railways at all.I’ve also written a series of Wiltshire sagas, beginning with Cherry Tree Lane and Elm Tree Road

WHERE ON EARTH . . . ?

I've been looking through my previous novels while converting books to ebooks, and it’s brought home to me how very strongly place has influenced my writing. Born in the UK, I’m a ‘Lancashire lass’, but I’m also Australian now, so both places figure prominently in my books.

When I started writing, where did I set my first big novel? Lancashire, of course. I didn’t know then that I was writing a saga. I was just writing the sort of story I enjoyed reading. I’ve been writing sagas ever since.

At first all my stories were set in Lancashire, but after I emigrated to Australia I just had to write a story set there. I’m particularly interested in Western Australian history, because Sydney and especially the convict era in the Eastern States of Australia have been used rather often.

I began collecting historical ‘titbits’ years ago and am gradually working through them. One incident happened when the American Civil War stopped cotton supplies to Lancashire. This closed most of the mills, so a group of 60 unemployed cotton lasses was sent out to Western Australia as maids. That story seemed meant to be told, uniting both sides of my own and my writing background.

‘Farewell to Lancashire’ was born when I found a published diary which described the voyage which brought the cotton lasses to Western Australia. I added four more lasses to the group, but it’s the same ship, with the same events during the voyage.

Book 2 of the series is ‘Beyond the Sunset’ (my 50th novel published) which came out in July 2010 in hardback. In this, one sister is so homesick she has to return to England. That journey takes readers by a route of the 1860s that has been less used in fiction, via Galle, in what is now Sri Lanka, Suez (before the canal was built), rail to Alexandria and then sailing on to Gibraltar and Southampton.

Book 3 is ‘Destiny’s Path’ and tells the story of the remaining pair of sisters. It’s not published yet but is due out in March 2011.

But that story led me to a new place, because a minor character was so vivid, I’ve given him his own series – and that starts in a new place, Singapore in the 1860s. It was fascinating to research.

OTHER PLACES
I started writing modern novels at the same time as we began house swapping holidays from Australia to England. Naturally, this led to several different backgrounds for my modern stories, starting with Dorset, our first house swap. For a while we went all over the place, Cheshire, modern Lancashire, Ireland, Derbyshire, Wiltshire – and so did my stories. In fact, I’ve had a ball.

Using places you visit as settings for novels makes you learn far more about them than you would if you were just playing tourist. I hope this has given my readers a taste of a few new places, too.

My latest modern novel (Licence to Dream) is set in a small town in the state of Western Australia, which readers would probably never ‘visit’ otherwise. It was one of the earliest places settled in that state, but it is still a very small and charming country town.

I’ve even been around the universe when I was writing SF/F as Shannah Jay – those stories are now out as ebooks if you want to join me on a much longer trip to distant planets.

Do come and travel to my special places sometime.

Getting Ideas for Books

I’m often asked how I get my ideas. Basically, I don’t know. I just – get them.

However, there is one thing that regularly helps me get ideas for my historical novels – the books I read for research. I’m always looking for aspects of history that haven’t been exploited by other authors, so I read all sorts of books.

Some story ideas have been done to death and I avoid them like the plague eg woman unjustly accused is transported to early Australia on a convict ship, and makes good in spite of the difficulties. I heard one Australian editor say she feels sick every time she sees yet another story with that background.

I love to read about social history, especially ordinary people’s autobiographies, and I note down ‘titbits’ ie pieces of information which may come in useful. Not big information like wars and epidemics, but small details about everyday life in the past.

I’ll illustrate this by telling you how I got the idea for FAREWELL TO LANCASHIRE, which came out last month (July 2009) in hardback, will probably be out in Australia only in a special trade paperback edition around January, but won’t be out until the middle of next year in mass market paperback everywhere.

I was reading a book called ‘The Bride Ships’ about women’s migration to Western Australia in the 19th century. A very small entry (one paragraph only) mentioned that 60 cotton lasses had been sent to Western Australia to work as maids. The cotton lasses were desperate because the American Civil War of the early 1860s cut off supplies of cotton. They were not only out of work, but starving as there was no social security in those days, only charity, which might or might not be enough.

On the employers’ side, there were about ten men to every woman in Western Australia in those days, and marriageable women got snapped up quickly, so ladies regularly lost their maidservants. And who wouldn’t want to get married and have a house of one’s own, instead of working long hours keeping another woman’s house clean for a pittance?

I duly noted this titbit of information down, but it was about 10 years before I used it. What nudged me into writing a story based on it was reading the autobiography of a clergyman’s wife, who’d travelled to Western Australia with her husband in the early 1860s. That book was a brilliant find, because she travelled out on the same ship as the cotton lasses, so I had a lot of eye-witness information about that particular voyage.

Once I’d started writing ‘Farewell to Lancashire’, I also had to revise my knowledge of the American Civil War, read up on measures taken in Lancashire for relief of those starving because of the Cotton Famine, find out more about sailing ships going to Australia in that period – it was before the Suez Canal and also before steamships became common. Oh, and I also needed to know which parts of Western Australia were settled (with only 30,000 population, not many!), how people lived and made a living, how they travelled around in a huge country without any railways – just a few tiny details like that!

Another time I’ll tell you about the research I did for the sequel ‘Beyond the Sunset’. That led me down a few interesting paths.

NB This is the cover of the hardback. The cover for the trade paperback and paperback will be different. I'll add them to this blog next year.

Happy reading!

Anna