Guest Post With Georgia Hill
Thank you so much for having me on again, Jan!
So, where do you get your ideas from?
Writers
are often asked this. Anywhere, everywhere and from anything is the short(ish) reply.
The longer answer is that inspiration is a fleeting and ephemeral thing.
Disparate strands float around and then crash into each other until impossible
to ignore. While writing The Sea Glass Necklace, set in a sleepy Devon
town called Flete, the nugget of another dualtime historical novel was playing constantly
in the background …
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It’s been impossible to ignore the popularity of witch-themed books. I read and enjoyed Weyward and Widdershins, loved Elena Collins’ The Witch’s Tree and devoured every witchy book Syd Moore has written. Witches and their persecution hold a fascination for me, which probably dates from visiting, as a small child, The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall. It left an indelible impression.
I love the research so began diving more deeply into the subject. It was engrossing but distressing. Then I happened upon the story of The Bideford Witches, three women who have the sad claim to be the last women in England to be hanged for witchcraft. They met their fate at Heavitree in Exeter. A Devon-born friend told me Heavitree means hanging tree … The Bideford Witches inspired Prudie Tenpenny, one of main characters in Magpie. Like many women who were accused of witchcraft, she is old, marginalised and her status is gradually stripped away.
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When I decided Flete would have a cobbled street with half-timbered buildings, I knew I had my link. Tenpenny House is the place my heroines share – just at different times in history – in 1660 and 2018. It’s as much a character as the humans in the book. The other strand which began working its way in was the English Civil War. I find it an intriguing period; complex and confusing. It tore the country into pieces, families were riven apart, and brother was set against brother. But I was interested in the aftermath. How did you reconcile living with people who had once been your sworn enemies? Surely old resentments would bubble up? Things were beginning to come at me thick and fast!
I began to get that tingle, that sixth sense that I was onto something. I struggled with making the modern narrative as dramatic and emotional as the historic until I happened upon a Radio 4 programme about a woman who had suffered from deepfake porn. And there it was, my twenty-first century plot.
I’m
back to writing a contemporary romance at the moment, the fourth in my Lullbury
Bay series. The next one is out in October.
I
love writing dualtime historicals but they are involving and, quite frankly,
exhausting. It’s good to mix it up and write something different. Have I
finished with Flete, my sleepy seaside town in Devon? I don’t think so. It’s
just a matter of which historical period to land in next!
Bio
Georgia Hill writes warm-hearted and up-lifting contemporary and dual narrative romances about love, the power and joy in being an eccentric oldie and finding yourself and your community. She lives near the sea with her beloved dogs and husband 9also beloved) and loves the books of Jane Austen and collecting elephants. She's also a complete museum geek and finds inspiration for her books in the folklore and history of the many places in which she's lived. She's worked in the theatre, for a charity and as a teacher and educational consultant before finally acknowledging that making things up was what she really wanted to do.
You can find her here:
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/georgiahillauthor
Website www.georgiahill.co.uk
Two women. Two centuries. One house full of secrets.
A spellbinding tale for fans of Weyward, where the past never truly dies…
When Beth Loveday retreats to a shadowed corner of the Devon coast, she hopes
to rebuild her life in peace. But the old timbered shop she buys—Tenpenny
House—has other plans. Strange objects hidden in the walls. A book of forgotten
remedies. And dreams that feel like memories.
In 1660, Susanna Loveday walks the same worn floors. Apprentice to a healer,
she's swept into a deadly game of suspicion and power when whispers of
witchcraft begin to spread. As danger closes in, a single choice will echo
through time.
Linked by blood and bound by secrets, Beth and Susanna are caught in a web that
spans centuries. The truth lies buried—but Tenpenny House remembers everything…
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