I am delighted to welcome Terri Nixon to the blog today to talk about her writing. Before we hear from her, here is a little about her latest historical family saga, A Cornish Inheritance, which was published by Piatkus on 6th December 2019. There is also the opportunity to win a signed copy of A Cornish Inheritance. Details on how to enter are at the foot of this post.
Welcome
to Fox Bay Hotel, where family fortunes rise and fall.
1920,
Bristol. Helen Fox is happily married to the love of her life: charming, former
playboy Harry. With their three children, glamorous lifestyle and extravagant
parties, they have the perfect life. But after a tragic motorcycle accident,
nothing will ever be the same...
Helen is
forced to leave their home and move to the Fox family's hotel on the Cornish
coast - where she discovers her perfect life has been based on a lie.
Now Helen
must find a way to build a new life for herself and her children with the help
of a vivacious new friend, Leah Marshall.
But when
the future of the hotel is threatened, Helen discovers that she hasn't left her
past behind after all, and unless she takes drastic action, she's going to lose
everything all over again...
Welcome to the blog, Terri. Now, over to you!
All the
Fun of the Easter Egg
“Wow,
small world.” We’ve all said it at one time or another, and sometimes it seems
as if the coincidences in life are too ridiculous to be borne; going on holiday
halfway across the world, and running into your hairdresser at the same hotel?
Really? Lying on your consultant’s bed in an Inverness hospital and realising
you’re chatting to someone who once lived two minutes down the road from you in
Cornwall? Oh, please! But it happens all
the time in real life.
You put
that in a book, however, or on TV, and the entire reading or viewing public
throws their hands in the air and closes the book/reaches for the remote! I’m
guilty of that myself, I must confess, but I shouldn’t be. Truth is stranger
than fiction, and surely the joy of writing fiction is the licence to step
outside the confines of truth, and to embrace every possibility and then some.
It’s the “then some” that has people hopping up and down and crying, “As if!”
But it shouldn’t. Not really. And here’s why:
To date I
have written three complete series, and I’m now embarking on series four.
- The
Oaklands Manor series; three girls from different backgrounds, before and
during WW1.
- The
Penhaligon Saga; a small fishing and mining community in the early 20th century.
- The
Lynher Mill Chronicles; a mythic fantasy series ranging from bronze age to
current day; Cornish folklore and contemporary life twisted together.
- The Fox
Bay Saga; a roaring twenties family drama set in a glamorous hotel in Cornwall.
Each one
is linked to the others in a hundred tiny ways; throughout every one of them
there are little nuggets, hints of the others; some dropped in as a passing
comment, others integral to the plot of whichever book it’s infiltrated.
Lizzy
from the Oaklands Manor books was born in Plymouth, so when I was writing the
Penhaligon Saga it was simple to pop her and her young twin brothers onto the
grass by the lighthouse tower, while my historian mused over the lighthouse’s
origins. Their paths crossed only briefly, but something in the way she was
looking after her boisterous charges made an impression on him, which would
later move him on towards his destination with equal determination and
patience.
The
diaries which form the major storyline in the Penhaligon books have had their
story told in full in the Lynher Mill Chronicles, which had already hinted that
the main character was descended from someone in that town; and in the Fox Bay
Saga a lifeboat is named The Lady Dafna, after a fleeting encounter by a small
child with one of the fae characters from the Lynher Mill books. (Of course
they just smile and indulge him; no-one believes him, because this isn’t a
fantasy book, it’s an historical saga. But we know he’s telling the truth,
don’t we?)
The
pleasure of linking all these books together isn’t simply to give myself a
private little smile, and to see if anyone notices; it actually pulls the
histories of all these places together in the same way places and people are
linked in the “real” world. I feel as if I’ve re-written both the geography and
the history of Cornwall; the people of the town in one series have heard the
awful stories of piracy and slavery that provided the founders of another town
with the money to flourish… because that town is only a short hop up the coast,
and of course they’re aware of it. It would be weird if they weren’t.
A very
young character from the Oaklands Manor trilogy is now sixteen in the era of
the Fox Bay saga, and a logical series of events brings her into the sphere of
the Fox family and their hotel. It makes everything feel so much more real to
have paths crossing and memories shared, and that one major character might be
seen by another as a fleeting moment in their own story just highlights the way
we see others as we hurry through our own stories, forgetting sometimes that
they are massively important to the lives of others, even if they aren’t to us.
This
definition from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows says it best:
sonder
n. the
realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as
your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and
inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an
anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of
other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only
once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic
passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
My
characters appear and disappear to one another, are mentioned once and
dismissed, but often influence one another without even knowing it, and that’s
what makes the strange, sharp pang of finishing a series bearable. On to the
next!
Thanks so much Terri. That is a fascinating insight into your characters.
About the Author
Terri was
born in Plymouth. At the age of 9 she moved with her family to Cornwall, to the
village featured in Jamaica Inn -- North Hill -- where she discovered a love of
writing that has stayed with her ever since. She also discovered
apple-scrumping, and how to jump out of a hayloft without breaking any bones,
but no-one's ever offered to pay her for doing those.
Since
publishing in paperback for the first time in 2002, Terri has appeared in both
print and online fiction collections, and is proud to have contributed to the
Shirley Jackson award-nominated hardback collection: Bound for Evil, by Dead
Letter Press.
As a
Hybrid author, her first commercially published novel was Maid of Oaklands
Manor, published by Piatkus Entice.
Terri's
self-published Mythic Fiction series set in Cornwall, The Lynher Mill
Chronicles, is now complete and available in paperback and e-book.
Terri
also writes under the name T Nixon, and has contributed to anthologies under
the names Terri Pine and Teresa Nixon. She is represented by the Kate Nash
Literary Agency. She now lives in Plymouth with her youngest son, and works in
the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Plymouth University, where she is
constantly baffled by the number of students who don't possess pens.
You can read my review of Penhaligon's Attic here.
Catch up with the rest of the tour
To win a signed copy of A Cornish Inheritance,
just Follow and Retweet the pinned Tweet at @bookslifethings. Closing Date is 14th December 2019
and there is one winner.
*Terms and Conditions – UK only. The winner will be selected at
random via Tweetdraw from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter
and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then I reserve the right
to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the
competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with
third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed
to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize. I am not
responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
Thanks for the blog tour support Pam xx
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