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Hannah Fielding Interview 5/25/2013 5:13:23 PM
Author Hannah Fielding discusses her debut novel 'Burning Embers' and the writing life! LTS: If you are a fan of contemporary historical romance novels, you’ll enjoy meeting today’s guest blogger! I’d like to introduce you to Hannah Fielding, author of Burning Embers, a romance set in 1970s Africa.
I’d like to begin by having you share a little information about yourself with our readers, Hannah. What do you enjoy doing when you are not writing?
HF: I read: I love reading romantic novels – the thicker the book, the better.
I walk: I am a loner to some extent, and a dreamer, so the beach calls to me. I live part of the year in the south of France, and I love taking long walks on the beach on a sunny spring day. I gaze at the sparkling Mediterranean sea, with its ever-changing shades of blue under the smiling azure sky, and conjure up romantic stories. In England I walk in the beautiful Kentish countryside, when weather permits; I’m not one for rain and blustery winds!
I cook: I love cooking, using the various produce of our vegetable garden. Jams, chutneys, stuffed vine leaves (dolmadis), stuffed savoury and sweet filo pastry cushions that I serve as nibbles when I entertain, stewed fruit for winter crumbles. The list could go on forever.
I entertain: I find nothing more satisfying that having friends over; and as I often travel, it’s great to catch up with all the news.
I travel: To research my books. I find it exciting and exhilarating. Discovering new places, new people, new traditions and new cuisines, of course.
I collect antiques: Chinese porcelain, Japanese sculptures and French and Italian glass, so you will often find me rummaging in flea markets and dark second-hand shops in the hope of discovering a treasure.
LTS: I know storytelling has always been a part of your life starting from a very young age. Is it safe to assume aspirations of becoming a published author have been around for just as long?
HF: Stories and writing have always been part of my life. My father was a great raconteur and my governess used to tell the most fabulous fairy stories – I could listen to them for hours. When I was seven she and I came to an agreement: for every story she’d tell me I would invent one in return. That is how my passion for storytelling began.
My grandmother was a published author of poetry and my father published a book about the history of our family, so I think the notion of publishing was indeed there from early on runs in my veins. I guess I always knew that one day I would follow in those footsteps and forge my own path in that field – a subconscious dream which finally came true.
LTS: Your debut novel, Burning Embers have been receiving many great reviews. What was the inspiration behind this story and can you tell us a little bit about your protagonist, Coral Sinclair?
HF: Burning Embers began not as a story, but as a vivid landscape in my mind. The seed of the idea was sown many years ago when, as a schoolgirl, I studied the works of Leconte de Lisle, a French Romantic poet of the 19th century. His poems are wonderfully descriptive and vivid – about wild animal, magnificent dawns and sunsets, exotic setting and colourful vistas. We also had a Kenyan friend, Mr Chiumbo Wangai, who often called at our home in Alexandria. He was a great raconteur and told me extensively about his beautiful country, its traditions and its customs. Then, later on, I went on holiday to Kenya with my parents and Mr Wangai took us to visit many parts of it. I was enthralled.
Burning Embers is the story of Coral’s emotional journey from being a young and inexperienced girl despite her age, to blossoming into an understanding, generous, and compassionate woman who doesn’t hesitate to run to the side of her lover when his life is in danger. Coral appears to the reader alternately as strong and vulnerable, always passionate and often naive. She could at first come across as a spoilt brat. But there is more to Coral than meets the eye. She has had a protected upbringing, but she has also had many blows. The abrupt change she had to suffer at the age of nine when she had to leave the open spaces of Africa for the confinement of boarding school in England; the divorce of her parents; the remarriage of her mother; the birth of siblings to this new marriage; and finally, her own broken engagement. All this has made her insecure, and that is why sometimes she reacts so childishly to her surroundings and to Rafe. Even though she is naive emotionally, and her fiery, passionate and rebellious nature pushes her sometimes to extreme behaviour, she is intelligent and very competent at her job as a photographer, which she takes very seriously.
What I like about Coral is that she is human. Her reactions are normal. Like all of us, and unlike chocolate-box heroines, she feels the pangs of jealousy, can be oversensitive, and at times will even lose her temper; but her heart is in the right place. Though the path of her love for Rafe is a difficult one, she travels it with courage and determination, trying to intelligently filter through all the obstacles that people and circumstances put in her way. I think that Coral will be real to readers, and I’m sure that they will be able to identify with one or many aspects of her complex character.
LTS: Without giving away too much, can you reveal what’s in store for the readers when they crack open Burning Embers?
HF: Sultry, epic romance like Hollywood used to make…
It’s 1970 and Coral Sinclair, a young and fiery English photographer, is on her way to Kenya, the land of her birth, to take ownership of Mpingo plantation, a legacy from her recently deceased father. On board the ship she meets handsome and charismatic Rafe de Monfort, a mature French widower and owner of a nightclub and the Whispering Palms plantation, who holds a dark secret deep in his heart. The two feel an immediate attraction.
Once in Kenya, Coral discovers that Rafe is her closest neighbour, but she is warned off him by her old nanny. Gossip has it that Rafe is a notorious womanizer who counts among his mistresses Morgana, the dusky night club dancer, and Cybil, Coral’s stepmother with whom it is believed he was having an affair – an affair that might have contributed to her father’s death.
Yet despite herself, Coral finds herself falling in love with this man who shows her only kindness.
What is she to think when a witch doctor tells her that Rafe killed his heiress first wife and that he is now pretending to care for her simply to get his hands on Mpingo? When beautiful Cybil says that Rafe has been her lover for over ten years and Morgana assures her that Rafe will never be hers? What is the secret in Rafe’s past that colours his every move and makes him more vulnerable than Coral could ever imagine?
In this evocative and passionate story set against the vivid and colourful backdrop of rural Africa and its culture, the seemingly doomed lovers are sent down a destructive path wrought with betrayal, passion and greed. Will love overcome all obstacles and prevail at the end?
The road to publication is difficult at the best of times. Was it difficult for you to land an agent? Do you have any advice you’d like to share with the author struggling to find representation so they can be traditionally published?
I don’t have an agent, in fact. I decided from the very beginning to tackle the process myself. I wrote a few letters to publishers whose websites took my fancy. I started sending letters out in January and was lucky to receive Omnific’s offer in May. From the very beginning I loved Omnific’s slogan: ‘Romance… Without Rules’ and was delighted when they offered me a contract.
My advice to any unpublished author is simply to polish your book until it shines, and then be tenacious in your search for a publisher.
LTS: Can you share that wonderful moment when you discovered you sold your story to Omnific Publishing?
HF: It’s a hazy but wonderful memory now, to be honest! I was delighted, of course. It was a dream come true for me, and I awaited publication day most impatiently so that I could hold the book in my hands.
LTS: What is the most important lesson you’ve learned on the road to publication?
HF: Definitely determination, perseverance and patience. My father used to tell me: ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.’ I have learnt that determination and perseverance pay off most of the time, but I’m afraid I haven’t yet learned to curb my impatient nature, which causes me some heartache.
LTS: On the subject of writing styles, are you a plotter or pantser? The readers would like to know if you tend to plot out your story line in great detail or if your writing is more organic with the characters and events unfolding as you write.
HF: I am a thorough planner. Having researched my facts thoroughly, I plan my novel down to the smallest detail. A writer today has no excuse for not getting his/her facts right. Use all the tools available to you. Travel, internet, books, films, documentaries: they’re all there to enrich your experience and make your writing journey easier. Planning ahead, I have found, makes the writing so much easier and therefore so much more enjoyable.
LTS: Some authors meditate, others need to fuel up on coffee or listen to music. Do you have any rituals, ones that can be shared with the readers, that you must do before you hunker down for a writing session?
HF: There’s really only two things I need in order to write:
1. An inspiring setting. In my home in Kent I write in a wood-paneled room, surrounded by books – we call it the library. In France I write looking over the most fabulous Mediterranean view from a large picture window. I really can’t complain.
2. A thesaurus. My background in French literature has been a blessing. French is sonorous and elaborate and you can’t study the literature without developing a love of words and phrases. I used to spend hours reading a thesaurus, totally engrossed in the nuances of words. Even now, when I am looking up a word, I sometimes find myself absorbed in the subtle shadings of words – and time just flies by.
LTS: A view of the Mediterranean Sea! What can be more inspiring than that? Now, at one time or another, most writers hit the wall and their work stalls because of the dreaded writer’s block. What do you do to get around or over this mental wall to resume writing?
HF: One of my favourite quotes about writer’s block is this: “Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite: ‘Fool!’ said my muse to me, ‘look in thy heart, and write.’”
― Sir Philip Sidney
I have two ways of dealing with writer’s block.
The first one is patience. If you sit there in front of a blank page – and I’ve done that, sometimes for as much as a couple of hours – the muse eventually takes pity on you and visits.
The second one is to get into my car and drive to a place that has inspired me in the past. That also usually works. It might be a garden overlooking the sea, a meadow carpeted with wild flowers if I’m searching for a setting for a love scene, or a cafe bustling with people where I can find the description for one of my characters.
LTS: Who is your favourite author and how has he/she inspired you to write or influenced your writing style or choice of genre?
HF: Mary Margaret ‘Mollie’ Kaye (1908–2004) has been one of my favourite writers since I read her worldwide best-seller The Far Pavilions in the early 1980s. She has been an inspiration to me in my writing, because, like me, she was a traveller at heart and she wrote wonderfully descriptive stories set in exotic locations that really transport you to far-off lands.
LTS: What do you foresee in your future over the next five years and do you hope to branch out from historical romances into other genres? Can your fans expect a sequel to Burning Embers in the near future?
HF: In short, many more books - though not a sequel to Burning Embers, because I think I left that story at just the right point.
I have written a number of books over the past few years that I will be publishing, and I have been travelling extensively, searching for new pastures in which to set my future novels.
I have just finished writing a touching, deeply romantic novel that takes place in Venice and in Tuscany, Italy in 1979/1980. It opens with the Venice Carnival that has returned after a cessation of almost two centuries.
I have written a passionate, fiery trilogy set in Andalucia, Spain, spanning three generations of a Spanish/English family, from 1950 to the present day.
Greece is also on the map for a new Hannah Fielding romantic novel. I am now in the process of researching and planning a very dramatic and steamy love story that takes place on one of the many Greek Islands. I chose Greece because I know that captivating country and its people well – I have good Greek friends. I bought my wedding dress in Athens and my husband and I honeymooned on Rhodes Island. Greek mythology was part of the literature course I read at university and Greece is not far from Alexandria, where I grew up.
I still have numerous books in me and I intend to write a historical romance trilogy, which will be set in Egypt and will take my readers from the 1940s to the present day.
I so enjoy researching these books (what better excuse to visit Venice), and they are in the pipeline for publication in due course. I very much enjoy the publishing process and hearing from readers of my books. But for me, being a writer is not about publishing. It is simply about writing – writing from the heart the books that I most want to read.
LTS: Thank you so much for sharing in your novel and your writing life, Hannah! For more information about Hannah Fielding and her debut novel, check out:
