The Love Letter
Can you tell our readers about your new release The Love Letter?
The Love Letter is a big-hearted romantic comedy in which heroine Allegra returns to the North Devon coast hoping to build bridges with her ex boyfriend Francis who helps to run a big arts festival there. Instead, she finds family secrets tumbling out and temptation smouldering in her path, and she has to solve a romantic riddle to save the festival – and her love life – from disaster.
You have been described as the Jilly Cooper of the Cosmo generation, how does that make you feel as a writer?
It’s wildly flattering because I grew up adoring Jilly’s books and always credit her as a huge influence. My passion for writing big-cast, big-hearted romps with lots of comedy is always going to draw comparisons, but I also know that I have a very individual voice with my own quirks, twists and turns that I’ve had since I first started telling stories as a child.
Did you always intend to write a prequel to this?
The prequel was an idea that actually came about at least six months after the book was delivered, but it’s just up my street because I hate letting characters go and could tell their back story all day long; by the time I start writing them I know all about their childhood, adolescence, first love and most recent disaster and struggle not to include it all in Chapter One of a new book, so writing an incident from the recent past was an absolute boon. It also featured two new characters that have gone on to star in the book I am writing now, so that was a great bonus.
How does it feel to launch your first e book short story?
It’s a great process and I hope to do many more. I love ‘movie length’ shorts (as in stories that that take about the same amount of time to read as it takes to watch a feature film), but most magazines want a maximum of 1000 words these days, which is incredibly tight to develop any sort of character or a satisfying plot twist. I think the e-story has huge potential – a self-contained plot that works on its own, but also links to other books in a series.
You are trained in theare arts and advertising, how much has this helped in your career as a novelist?
I remember being asked when I interviewed for a job in advertising what skills theatre arts brought to it and I blithely said ‘well I can act like I know what I’m doing even if I don’t’ which seemed to please them greatly. Certainly being good at performing helps when doing literary events, but actually I think the ear for dialogue that I developed studying drama has been by far the most useful benefit, along with an ability to group narrative into acts. From advertising, I’d love to say I learned to write brilliant copy, but I was on the sales side and if nothing else, it made me fearless on the phone and taught me how to eat in smart restaurants without dribbling my soup.
You have written features, stories, reviews and have covered a good many subjects such as lifestyle, equestrianism and alternative therapies, do you have a preference to what you write about?
I will always love storytelling best, but writing about horses comes a close second. They’re a lifelong passion and my partner is a dressage coach with a yard here, so they are hobby, home and livelihood. I find horse-mad people endlessly entertaining and eccentric, and I wrote a monthly column for Horse magazine for two years which was huge fun, although I was supposed to be chronicling about my adventures on horseback and I seemed to spend my entire time at the computer chasing book deadlines. My pet hate is writing features about my own personal traumas – it’s a peril of being an author that to promote one’s book, one’s expected to dredge up some shameful secret from the past and bear it in newsprint complete with a contrite photograph and a line telling readers when the novel is out; we all do it, and we all dread it.
Why did you choose Devon for the setting of your book?
I have always adored Devon and lived just a couple of miles over the border in Somerset for several years (in the Blackdown Hills which also features in the book). Devon has it all – two amazing coast-lines, moors, history bursting from its seams; it’s one of those counties which you just have to say the name out loud to hear happy sighs all around you, and not just because it rhymes with Heaven. The area in which the book is set, the Hartland Peninsular, was my bolt-hole one summer when I had a deadline to meet and we were in the midst of a terribly complicated house move. Foot and Mouth had been raging so I got a remote cliff-top holiday cottage for six weeks at a vast discount and wrote through the night, slept through the mornings and then walked the dog along the coasts through the afternoons. I’d have stayed there forever if I could. It is absolutely magical.
How do you go about writing a book with large casts and still keep the reader involved?
It’s a daunting challenge at times and I think the reason that there are so few big-cast racy romps out there is because they take so much work to pull it off, but when it does come together it is tremendously rewarding. I keep lots of notes and am always re-reading and working back through the script to make sure all the plotlines flow and that the characters jump off the page as believable and likeable.
What future projects do you have lined up?
I’m working on my thirteenth book right now, which is a number I’m trying not to be superstitious about. I’ve just finished the first draft and will be editing it into the summer. It’s set between the Chilterns, Andalucia, LA and Kenya and features hot air balloons, Spanish horses and some very glamorous celebrity wives. The central story is about four college friends – two couples – who have known each other for twenty years and whose cosy lives get very complicated when one of their children announces that she’s dropping out of university to get married.
What advice could you give someone wanting to write a romantic and funny novel?
Falling in love can be a hugely silly process that makes normally sane people behave in the most irrational of ways, so it’s a glorious source of material for writers. The comedy is in the characters, so developing them is crucial and the reader has to feel that they know them. If you you can make yourself laugh as you write, then the chances are a reader will feel the same way, and laughter can give real emotional connection. If you try to force it, it’s less likely to be effective.
Interview by Lucy Walton