To purchase my books visit my BWL author page:
https://bookswelove.net/grieve-roberta/
Locations
– Real or imaginary?
I am a BWL Publishing Inc author and since
joining BWL Publishing Inc. I have had a new book published every year.
You can find my books on my BWL author page https://bwl.net/grieve-roberta ,
Smashwords. https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=roberta+grieve
Amazon https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Roberta+Grieve&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
I have always loved telling stories and my
earlier books were set in Sussex where I have lived for about 50 years.
I used fictional Sussex towns but with a
little bit of reality thrown in. I often have people ask me where the real
place is so parts are obviously recognisable but when I first started writing I
was hesitant to use real settings in case I made mistakes.
More recently I have turned nostalgically
to the place where I grew up – the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. - and I wanted to
write a story set there.
And here it was that I ran into a problem.
Could I rely on my memories of the place to get it right? As my stories are set
in the past I could probably get away with the odd mistake. But i wanted my
stories to sound authentic. Should I fictionalise the location or stick to the
facts – real street names, areas?
Best selling author Kate Mosse says ‘every
novel starts with a place. I create an imaginary character and put them in a
real place.’ Her books are set in the south of France where she lives part time
and in Sussex, her home county.
Crime writer Peter Lovesey’s detective
novels are set in Bath and every location he uses is authentic. He even runs
guided walks in the footsteps of his detective Peter Diamond.
For me, too, location is an important part
of the story. I need a setting which I can see in my imagination and then I can
people the landscape with my characters.
So when I embarked on ‘Madeleine’s
Enterprise’ which is set at the turn of the 19th century, I pictured
the long winding High Street of Queenborough on the Isle of Sheppey.
Madeleine’s house near the church is a product of my imagination but the street
leading down to the estuary is real.
How would it have changed in the hundred
years since Madeleine lived there? Apart from the parked cars, it hasn’t
changed much. The Guildhall with its clock and the old houses, many of them
former public houses, are still there.
Here is a snippet from ‘Madeleine’s
Enterprise’. She has just decided to pawn her grandmother’s locket to pay off
some of her late father’s debts .- a difficult decision.
‘Madeleine
dressed soberly and covered her gown with a shawl. Opening the heavy front
door, she glanced cautiously up and down the road before venturing outside. At
the front gate she looked back at the house. Creek View was a fine red brick
mansion with white painted sash windows arranged either side of the oak front
door.
The stables, barn and other outbuildings showed signs of neglect and,
with a sigh, she turned away and started down the long High Street towards the
waterfront. Passing the ancient Guildhall and the church, she reached the hard
where barges and schooners moored to load and unload their cargoes. Clustered
around the hard, where the creek met the sea, were a couple of public houses, a
few shops and the pawnbrokers. She had seldom ventured down here in recent
years. When she was a child her maid, Tilly, had often taken her to see the
ships come in and watch her father’s goods being unloaded.’
The scene
is little changed today, except that the boats are more likely to be pleasure
craft plying the estuary.
Knowing the island so well I told myself I wouldn’t need
to do much research. How wrong can you be? I soon discovered how memory can
play you false. However, it was a labour of love. I found out so much about the
history of my home town, filled notebooks with facts about the island’s naval
history, the new light railway which ran across the marshes to the eastern end
of the island and which only lasted for a few years. I discovered things I
hadn’t known when I lived there.
When I finished ‘Madeleine’s Enterprise’ I
had so much information about the island’s history that I just had to write another book set in
that location. Sheerness, with its naval dockyard town and army garrison was
the perfect setting for a wartime story and so ‘Daisy’s War’, the first in the
‘Family at War’ series, was born.
Although I did not live on Sheppey during
the war, telling Daisy’s story was like walking in my childhood footsteps. Her
home is a mirror image of the one I lived in before I got married and her
friend Lily’s house is a cottage in a warren of back streets where we lived when
we first came to the island. The cottages are long gone, replaced by blocks of
flats and a new road.
Although my story is set in wartime,
here is a scene familiar to me from my
own childhood in the 1950s. Daisy is walking back to her work in the Garrison
NAAFI accompanied by her father.
‘When they
reached the high Street, they joined the human tide of Dockyard workers going
back for the afternoon shift. Many were on bicycles, others walking, a sight
familiar to Daisy from her childhood.
When her father had worked in the
Dockyard, Daisy and her brother Jimmy had often taken him a packet of
sandwiches for his dinner. She had always enjoyed seeing the huge ships in the
dry dock, hearing the clanging of hammers and inhaling the smell of paint as
the men swarmed over the hulls repairing and painting.’
I worried constantly that I had gotten it
wrong. I wanted to paint a picture of a close community where most men worked
in the dockyard or went to sea. I could see the little streets, a pub on every
corner, and the long seafront with its views over to Southend. I could see it all in my mind’s eye and hoped
my readers could too, especially those friends and family who still live there
and who I hoped would read my books.
When it came to writing ’Sylvia’s Secret’,
the sequel to ‘Daisy’s War’, I had to do much more research as well as use my
imagination. Daisy’s sister Sylvia is in the WAAFs, doing secret work at a
large country house in Buckinghamshire, somewhere I’ve never visited. I hoped
to visit Medmenham House, now a hotel, to do on the spot research but it was
impossible during the Covid lockdown. Reading and online research had to
suffice with a little bit of imagination thrown in. I hope it rings true for my
readers.
Here is Sylvia arriving at her new posting
with her friends –
‘The house
was set back some distance from the road and they walked up a long drive which
curved between immaculate lawns, dotted with sculpted yews. As they reached
their destination, Sylvia gazed around in awe at the mansion, gleaming white in
the sunshine, with its two towers, bay windows, and the ornate chimneys. It was
completely outside her experience and she could hardly believe she would be
living in such a posh place.
A guard at
the front door inspected their papers and directed them to a side door.
Apparently only senior officers and Ministry personnel used the main entrance.
Inside, they were greeted by a WAAF officer who introduced herself as SO
Forsyth. She led them outside again. ‘Your quarters are in the huts,’ she said,
pointing across the grounds. ‘I’ll take you.’
Sylvia was a
little disappointed that they would not be sleeping in the main house, but she
followed the others along a path to the rear of the building.
‘Just like
home,’ Julia joked as they came in sight of a row of Nissen huts like the ones
where they’d been billeted in Norfolk.’
Now it’s back to the Isle of Sheppey for
the third book in the series which I have just started. ‘Out of the Shadows’
continues the story of the Bishop sisters. The war is nearing its end and a new
way of life beckons. I’ll be walking in my childhood footsteps for this one but
I mustn’t let my memories take over. Memories can lay you false so there will
be a lot of fact checking ahead.
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