The world is changing and you’re only just becoming accustomed to it. You’re changing, I suppose. You’ve changed since I’ve known you.’‘How?’‘You’ve come more alive.
There is something particularly fascinating about seeing places you know in a piece of art – be that in a film, or a photograph, or a painting.
I’m accustomed to reading Georgian and Victorian letters and sometimes you simply know in your gut that a blithe sentence is covering up a deeper emotion.
Maria didn’t fear the sea but, as taught by her father, she respected its power. In her experience the ocean had no intent to drown travellers.
A flock of small birds took off from the wall of the fort. They moved like a length of dark silk caught by the breeze as they headed out to sea. Behind them, the sky was the colour of forget-me-nots. The sun blazed.
In a heartbeat, he understands why religions are born on the sands – there is nothing here for a man but his own mind.
When you fake emotion for a living, when you make your money providing fantasies for other people, tuning into their worlds and indulging them, you don’t invite someone into your world very easily.
I am more one for the story, I think, than the action.
It was clearly a lot more difficult in the field than in the office, where you could keep your distance and maintain a calculated composure. Being faced with real people was a far tougher call on one’s judgement.
Writers of novels live in a strange world where what’s made up is as important as what’s real.
I’m a novelist by trade and my job is to write a story rather than reconstruct actual events.
While what I write is always largely consistent with the records that remain I freely admit that where historical fact proves a barrier to invention, I simply move a detail a little one way or another.
I am a storyteller, not a historian, and it’s my ambition to create something compelling – something unputdownable and riveting – that chimes with the real history but is, in fact, fiction.
He tasted of whisky and his skin was rough where he hadn’t shaved, but Mirabelle kissed him back.
Kissing her is like drinking salted water, he thinks. His thirst only increases.
Such a night cannot be shaken from a woman’s memory. Such a night changes your life forever.
All those kisses. There must have been a thousand. They engulfed me like some kind of all consuming dream where I became very alive and very relaxed at the same time.
Sometimes you don’t even have to have sex at all, and for that kind of sicko, you charge double.
It occurred to me that as a man I could do anything, everything I wanted.
What was it that marked me as a woman and was I prepared to let it go?
His heart is pounding and when he kisses her it is as if the whole of Riyadh disappears – the wide sky, the hard surface of the roof, the date palms and the water wells.
When the first book out my sister-in-law read it and we were chatting at 5 o’clock in the afternoon and she said, “Oh my God, chapter six, sex and a murder,” and her five year old wandered into the kitchen and said, “Sixty hamburgers?
Historical fiction of course is particularly research-heavy. The details of everyday life are there to trip you up. Things that we take for granted, indeed, hardly think about, can lead to tremendous mistakes.
Writing historical fiction has many common traits with writing sci-fi or fantasy books. The past is another country – a very different world – and historical readers want to see, smell and touch what it was like living there.
I’ve always felt that good writing does not have to be literary.
I know a lot of writers, and everyone works differently, but this is something that we truly have in common across all genres – the fiction has to be real inside your head.
I have no problem in moving a date one way or another or coming up with a subplot that gets my characters in (or out) of a fix more rambunctiously than the extant records show.
People make interesting assumptions about the profession. The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two.
Books have a vital place in our culture. They are the source of ideas, of stories that engage and stretch the imagination and most importantly, inspire.
When you think about the period in which Agatha Christie’s crime novels were written, they are actually quite edgy for the time.
I decided to coin the term ‘cosy crime noir’ for Brighton Belle. That is ‘cosy crime’ for today’s sensibilities because there is that slightly edgy element to it.
Archive material is vital to the writer of historical fiction.
The best historical stories capture the modern imagination because they are, in many senses, still current – part of a continuum.
While I’m frustrated at the amount I’m expected to take on in the present, the 1950s woman was frustrated by being excluded – not being allowed to take things on at all.
Today women have the rights and equality our Victorian sisters could only dream of, and with those privileges comes the responsibility of standing up and being counted.
I’m not sure how much easier it is for a mother to balance her life now – have we simply swapped one set of restrictions for another?
I was asked the other day in which era I would choose to live. As a historical novelist, it comes up sometimes. As a woman I’d have to say I’d like to live in the future – I want to see where these centuries of change are leading us.
In the 1950s at least less was expected of women. Now we’re supposed to build a career, build a home, be the supermum that every child deserves, the perfect wife, meet the demands of elderly parents, and still stay sane.
Looking at my life through the lens of history has made me increasingly grateful to standout women who pushed those boundaries to make the changes from which I have benefited.
Often we don’t notice the stringent rules to which our culture subjects us.
Change occurs slowly. Very often a legal change might take place but the cultural shift required to really accept its spirit lingers in the wings for decades.
As a novelist it is my job to tell stories that inspire and entertain but I am increasingly mindful that many of these historical tales (which of themselves are fascinating) relate directly to our issues in society today.
An important part of deciding where we want to go, as a society and culture, is knowing where we have come from, and indeed, how far we have come.
The net has provided a level playing field for criticism and comment – anyone and everyone is entitled to their opinion – and that is one of its greatest strengths.
I’ve been obsessed with stories since I was a kid so it’s no surprise that I ended up writing for a living.
You couldn’t predict what was going to happen for one simple reason: people.
They march into the future to the rhythm of the past.
Our archives are treasure troves – a testament to many lives lived and the complexity of the way we move forward. They contain clues to the real concerns of day-to-day life that bring the past alive.
If we don’t value the people who inspire us (and money is one mark of that) then what kind of culture are we building?
In wartime people took action because of what they believed in. In peacetime people were driven by their private concerns.
I think that everyone has something that they will kill for.
Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists.
Molly Bloom is simply the most sensuous woman in literature.
A writer is like a stick of rock – the words go right through.
A word out of place or an interesting choice of vocabulary can spawn a whole character.
I am completely unflustered by whichever medium people choose to read my words. I’m just delighted they’re reading them at all!
When you’re depressed you retreat and you go into a smaller world. This is why Brighton worked well for the story, because it’s a smaller world than London.
We can learn so much looking outside our core field of expertise.
You can’t trust anyone you have to pay, and really, they can’t trust you.
Jack had been the love of her life and he was gone. It seemed now that there had never been bad times, though she knew that wasn’t true.
If you’ve been hurt and you’ve grieved and you’ve been through the mill, it takes a long time to get over it.
I pride myself on making my own decisions, sir,” she said. “I do not welcome gentlemen making them for me.
Vesta was so good with paperwork – you could hand her a file of drab, seemingly dull information and she’d construct a story from it worthy of a novel.
Grabbing readers by the imagination is a writer’s job.
A paucity of material can open up just as many possibilities.
I spend a lot of time imagining things – in fact, you could say that imagining things is my job.
Like good reading skills, good writing skills require immersion and imaginative engagement.
The curve of my waist in a tight fitting summer dress can really make me new friends.
I didn’t expect to love being online as much as I do. I’ve met some wonderful people and discovered that however arcane some of my interests that there are people out there who are interested too.
Most fellas like the races, though, Miss. It’s only human nature
Didn’t young people care what the generation before them had achieved? And if not, why had everyone gone through those grim difficult wartime years?
It was nearly ten years since the peace though her memories of the war still felt fresh.
I’m in my 40s and I’m constantly surprised by how much my childhood still plays a part in my life.
Kindness was too painful. It had been a long time since he had had to endure it.
The jungle is alive. It’s dangerous as a living nightmare and brimful of hostility.
The smell of roasting meat rose from the street stalls in a sizzle and a fiddle player begged for coin as he rasped a haunting melody. Life could not be more perfect.
A journey is an achievement, Maria, just as much as a mathematical proof.
She enjoyed the sights and sounds of the dockside – ports were places of freedom.
We might give her presents, tell some tales, but would she ever be able to really understand what the journey had been like for us?
It seemed to me that these months of watching and listening, second-guessing words and phrases, seeking so much that was new, had somehow changed me.
For me, writing stories set, well, wherever they’re best set, is a form of cultural curiosity that is uniquely Scottish – we’re famous for travelling in search of adventure.
My father could talk about the Romany way of life and its culture. He could talk about freedom and the Scottish spirit. But that was all he could talk about. I was desperate for someone to talk to but there was just nobody there.
Lately Mirabelle had reflected wistfully if people even noticed her – a smartly dressed woman who came and went along the Promenade, always alone.
There were so many wrongs piling up on both sides, so much of the past being dragged into the present, that living there was like carving the story of your life on to a sepulchral monument.
Without archives many stories of real people would be lost, and along with those stories, vital clues that allow us to reflect and interpret our lives today.
My fascination with history is as much about the present as it is about the past.
The question shouldn’t be, ‘Are we guilty about our Colonial past?’ it should be, ‘Why aren’t we more guilty about our corporate present?
He cannot think. He can scarcely breathe. But he has no desire to either, he simply wants to keep kissing her.
When you want something badly enough it’s amazing what you’ll ignore.
Wellsted will remember this moment for the rest of his life. It is the first time he desires something for himself that is not dedicated to his own advancement. It is the moment he falls in love.
The scraps of information she’d gathered knocked against each other, like balls in a pinball machine in one of the arcades on the front. Secrets drew her in every time – the unsaid.
Covert operations relied on the unguarded slip, the unconscious choosing of one word over another.
The good thing about the aristocracy – German or English – was that they were easily traced, Mirabelle thought.
This investigation felt difficult, like driving in fog.
Mirabelle was always an enigma, and he had the sense that if he pushed her, she’d bolt.
Writing is a profession that has no real career structure and your best advice when you hit a difficulty is probably going to come from another writer one or two rungs on the career ladder ahead of you.
If you tempted a poor man with a fortune, who could blame the fellow for taking what he could?
Writers have a well-deserved reputation for being eccentric. Everything you’ve heard is true.
There are as many different kinds of books as there are writers – as many different responses as there are readers.
Everyone assumes writers spend their time lounging around, writing and occasionally striking a pose whilst having a think.
Being able to read well in public and talk about your work in an engaging fashion is part of most writers’ job specification.
Writing the same kind of material is no guarantee you’ll be working from the same ethos so that writers from different fields are just as likely to have an understanding of each other’s work as someone working in the same genre.
Writing is such a solitary occupation that it takes a long time to build up a group of professional peers with whom you genuinely identify.
The new contract between writers and readers is one I’m prepared to sign up to. I’ve met some fascinating people at events and online. Down with the isolation of writers I say! And long live Twitter.
Crime writers, I’ve noticed, can be jumpy. They live in a world where there are murderers on the loose and they haven’t been caught yet!
Writers are, as a profession, nothing if not eccentric.
I’d never be where I am if more successful writers hadn’t taken an interest in me and done me a good turn.
One of Scotland’s most important cultural exports – stories.
Many existing top 20 Scottish writers have flourished in part because of good turns done by institutions, arts community, libraries and bookshops.
Scotland consistently produces world-class writers.
Writers are a product of where we come from but by looking at alternatives to the culture in which we live, we can find ways to change and hopefully improve it.
I had never really understood what an adventure life could be, if you followed your heart and did what you really wanted to do, which is what we must all do in the end.
I had loved poetry and the theatre. Now I loved adventure more.
I am torn between the freedom of this adventure and the benefits of civilization despite its constraints.
I knew that I was talented. I was positive about that. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was talented at, but I was ambitious enough to wait it out and see what turned up.
Sometimes life isn’t what we want, it’s what we get.
It is through our extended family that we first learn to compromise and come to an understanding that even if we don’t always agree about things we can still love and look out for each other.
That boy is talented. You don’t develop those gifts in houses or in schools.
Those who have not been stung will hardly fear a bee the same as those who have.
The lively oral storytelling scene in Scots and Gaelic spills over into the majority English-speaking culture, imbuing it with a strong sense of narrative drive that is essential to the modern novel, screenplay and even non-fiction.
The financial value put on the job of the writer and the misconceptions around that make it extremely difficult to enter the profession.
As it stands there is a very strong argument that as the book trade becomes increasingly corporate it’s our literary heritage that is at risk – a vital part of our culture.
It is one of the benchmarks of a culture I always think – the page at which it operates. A good way to measure it is to order a taxi and see how irate local people get if it is late.
I’m proud of the culture I come from – we’re a small country and a close-knit community.
On of the prerequisites for my mobile phone is that I have to be able to fling it at a wall if I lose my temper.
Only a man with nothing to hide could make that kind of racket.
Food in wartime Britain, she had to admit, was hardly inspiring.
You became the sum total of where you lived, where you shopped, which church you went to, how many kids you had and which taxi company you used, and you only associated with people who had the same responses on their list.
Aunts offer kids an opportunity to try out ideas that don’t chime with their parents and they also demonstrate that people can get on, love each other and live together without necessarily being carbon copies.
She was herself in their company but a very specific version of herself.
It took a certain kind of person to come from luxury and seek out danger.
The telling of any character is what they do in a different situation.
It may take a village to raise a baby, but hell! it takes an army to produce a book.
It’s entirely possible to base an entire book on a long-forgotten letter.
I’ve always been attracted to stories about rebels – things that are unusual and sometimes dangerous.
History is full of blank spaces, but good stories, invariably, are not.
I love stories that suck you in, that you can’t stop reading because you are quite simply there.
I’ve always had a keen sense of history. My father was an antiques dealer and he used to bring home boxes full of treasures, and each item always had a tale attached.
What used to be edgy (divorces) has become mainstream and what used to be mainstream (racism and sexism) has become shocking.
In wartime, she thought to herself, you don’t call a death murder.
We have more choice than ever before about where and how we buy and read books.
Writing about the 1950s has given me tremendous respect for my mother’s generation.
I’ve found myself moved by letters and diaries in archives as well as trashy, summer blockbusters. It’s possible to make a connection with any kind of writing – as long as the writing is good.
I’m very aware we are the first generation ever to have such incredible opportunities to express ourselves publicly to a worldwide audience.
I believe that being able to communicate directly with readers is a boon. I certainly enjoy it as much as they do.
For a novelist, the gaps in a story are as intriguing as material that still exists.
Most people do a good deal of whatever they do motivated by love. For me, few stories are truly complete without it.
At the end of the day, that’s what a family is – a group of different people who accept each other.
Researching books gets you into nothing but trouble.
Sometimes I create a character from a scrap – a mere mention that has been left behind.
In the industry, trying out new genres is not always encouraged but what I’ve discovered is that as a writer, a jaunt outside my comfort zone generally brings new skills to the main body of my work.
For a writer it’s a genuinely interesting and hopefully profitable era that makes a variety of books available to a variety of readers, extending both what’s available and who gets to read it.
I remember calling the council’s cemetery department to ask about body decomposition in different soil types. Once they had verified that I was a novelist and not a sicko, they were extremely helpful.
It’s part of a writer’s job to be nosy about everything.
I love writing, and just as much, I love undertaking research.
I jealously guard my research time and I love fully immersing myself in those dusty old books and papers. It’s one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.
When a chap is passionate, the readership can sense it.
Being a writer is a more difficult job than people imagine.
I realised early on that being an author is a hugely misunderstood job.
I’m a professional writer and I consider it part of my job to publicise my work and these days part of that job is done online.
As a historical novelist, there are few jobs more retrospective.
Today is the anniversary of my husband’s death,” Maria announced. It was a dramatic statement, but the occasion seemed to demand it. “And I am going to leave.
Parts of my 20s and 30s have gone by in a flash but my childhood is with me all the time.
It’s not until you’re older that you realise how important the things that happened to you when you were a kid are. Even things you only half remember.
An eerie atmosphere leeched from the soot-damaged walls. It was as if the house had died, and yet she felt she belonged here. It was as if the old place wanted to claim her from the grave.
A chap’s impending death has a way of focusing the mind.
The sky was a sparkling succession of black diamonds on black velvet made crystal clear by the blackout.
New technologies and resources offer exciting opportunities. They democratise access to information.
Sometimes a person’s first assumption was very telling. It revealed how they perceived the situation.
I didn’t want to give up my job and join the ranks of the Doing Fuck All brigade no matter how much money I had in the bank.
The smell of tobacco usually reminded Mirabelle of being a child – coming downstairs in the morning when the dinner party her parents had hosted the night before was cleared away, but the scent of cigars still lingered.
The law don’t like jazz clubs. No one wants anything to do with that kind of trouble.
One of my favourite parts of writing is doing the research. It’s the door into that magical reading/writing state – the raw material for making the story real.
The hard fact is that writing is available to readers because of market factors as much as particular writing talent.
This is the cusp of an age at least as exciting and as brimful of potential as the early days of the printing press.
We are in the middle of the biggest revolution in reading and writing since the advent of the Gutenberg press.
History was my favourite subject at school and in my spare time I read historical novels voraciously from Heidi to the Scarlet Pimpernel and from Georgette Heyer to Agatha Christie.
The fifties is a decade when every year is markedly different from the one before and after. That doesn’t happen every decade. 1983 isn’t that much different from 1986. But 1953 is very different from 1956.
Cases fired by emotion rather than money were dangerous.
People who inspire such contradictory emotions must be worthwhile, I reasoned.
Parisians were not easy to engage in conversation. Perhaps that was why the Resistance had been so successful.
An aunt is a safe haven for a child. Someone who will keep your secrets and is always on your side.
Mrs Beaumont shrugged. ‘Dougie travelled light in life,’ she said. ‘He knew it was people who were important.
The smog curled between the streetlamps and the spokes of the wrought iron framework. It seemed through your body and into your bones.
I have a very strong sense that we only know where we are by looking clearly at where we’ve come from.
Everyone was important during the war. Everyone. We worked together and we won.
Once they have dedicated themselves to a cause, women will fight to the end for it.
I find it inspiring to actively choose which traditions to celebrate and also come up with new ideas for traditions of my own.
If peace came it would have to do so when there had been time to allow the hatred to grow out of people’s thinking.
The writing talent of Edinburgh is textured – we have poets, novelists, non-fiction writers, dramatists and more.
Having instant feedback on twitter to research material I’m considering is an enormous help.
If there’s one shade a woman of colour can’t wear it’s got to be the one everyone expects, hasn’t it?
Like most little girls, I found the lure of grown-up accessories astonishing – lipstick, perfume, hats and gloves. When I write female characters in my historical novels, getting these details right is vital.
Once you’re on the pleasure express, it’s hard to get off and switch to another, slower service.
Muscat is like a mind-altering drug. A stroll in its streets is like getting drunk for the first time
The devil was always in the detail. And here the detail was certainly devilish.
There was something about Maria Graham that you could believe in – a slice of home. If not unique in her travelling, she was at least extraordinary.
Readership is highly dependent upon format and distribution as much as it is on content.
Britain wouldn’t have won the war without its eccentric geniuses.
It’s ridiculous – a girl steps out, goes dancing, gets her hair cut, decides to spend the summer in Italy and it’s a scandal. A chap does it and no one bats an eyelid.
She tried to focus on the element of riddle or at least puzzle contained in the letter and ignore the sense of doom that was sweeping through her like clouds rolling to the shore over open water.
The mass communications that could enable our politics for good have instead turned it into a bland conglomeration of stinted opinion cloaked in the occasional media frenzy of blame or denial.
I’m drawn to the 1950s for lots of reasons – everything from the fashion to the increasing sense of freedom and modernity that builds throughout the decade.
Edinburgh is a great big black bastard of a city where there are ghosts of all kinds.
We are living in glorious days where each readers’ voice can be heard.
During the war some of the country’s sharpest minds had looked as if they had been dragged through a hedge backwards.
There’s nothing like a military man, even out of uniform.
Books exist for me not as physical entities with pages and binding, but in the province of my mind.
I’m a library user and I just don’t hoard books. To me, they’re for sharing.
As a historical novelist, there is very little I like more than spending time sorting through boxes of old letters, diaries, maps, trinkets, and baubles.
She picked up the stout and took a sip. It slid down her throat like silk.
Afternoon drinkers shifted in the gloom as if they sensed new blood.
People are so different in wartime. No one gets to be ordinary. Not really.
I wondered if that was what I was doing myself – caring so much about something that was so long gone that I was only propping it up.
He finds himself bored by the shenanigans of highly spirited young men. Their concerns reside somewhere between balder and dash.
Archive material is a fabulous starting point – individual documents are like signposted roads, heading to a variety of intriguing possibilities.
They should be taking bonuses from bankers, not library books from schoolchildren. What kind of society are we building?
Social and cultural history is often comprised of whatever diaries and letters remain and that is down to chance and wide open to interpretation.
Mirabelle sat down, dropping into the cushions like a ball being caught in a large leather glove.
Reticence was clearly a national characteristic, even if the other person spoke French.
We don’t live in a society that has genuine equality, and every woman we know has experienced that.
Living in Edinburgh, I consider myself particularly lucky – we have the biggest book festival in the world, a plethora of fascinating libraries and museums, and some of the greatest architecture in Europe.