Guest Interview with Juliette Lawson
Today I'm delighted to be joined on the blog by debut historical author, Juliette Lawson, whose novel 'A Borrowed Past' was published in February this year.
Please introduce yourself, Juliette, and tell us what
you write.
Hello, and thank you for the opportunity to join you on your blog, Jan. I
have been an avid reader all my life, but I reached my 50s before attempting to
write a novel myself. With a busy career as an accountant in education and a husband
and three children, there wasn’t the space for it. Then I became a freelance
consultant and finally made time to wrestle an abandoned manuscript into some
sort of order!
My Classics degree and my love of local history and family history were big
influences in choosing historical fiction, besides it being one of my favourite
genres to read. I have dabbled in contemporary fiction, but the saga genre kept
pulling me back. I love the idea of bringing the past to life through stories, especially
portraying my local community in days gone by.
Juliette Lawson is your pen name. Why did you feel
you needed a different name and how did you settle on the one you chose?
I had already written three nonfiction books on finance and funding for
school leaders, and I didn’t want to confuse those readers by publishing fiction
under the same name. I also felt my real name, Julie Cordiner, didn’t sound
quite right for a historical saga author.
Oh, how I agonised over the pen name; it’s hard when you have a virtually
free choice. In the end, I decided that if I ever did an event, I’d be more
likely to respond to a name that wasn’t too different, so I simply lengthened Julie
to Juliette! The surname Lawson is a tribute to my grandmother.
I’m full of admiration for the fact you have self-published
‘A Borrowed Past’. What was that process like?
It’s been hugely satisfying. I had already indie published my nonfiction,
where timeliness is important, so it was an easy decision to follow suit for my
fiction. Besides, I like to be in control! Today there are lots of tools that
make the process much easier than it used to be.
As the book took shape, I had an early manuscript assessment then a
developmental edit (from two separate editors). I’m a copy editor for indie
authors, so I was able to do that stage myself, although I became quite paranoid
about missing anything! A professional cover designer was essential.
I have spent a lot of time learning the professional approach, through online
courses and following blogs and podcasts by successful indie authors like
Joanna Penn, Mark Dawson, Orna Ross and Adam Croft. I’m also a member of the
Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLI), which gives brilliant advice. The indie
author community is incredibly supportive, and I’ve made a lot of friends.
The cover of your novel is very atmospheric and together
with its intriguing title, a potential reader is drawn to delve inside. Please can
you describe what to expect by summing up your story in a few sentences.
Thank you, Jan; I absolutely adore the cover. Jane Dixon Smith is such a
talented designer, and she instinctively understood what I wanted the cover to
convey.
It’s a heart-warming story about a young aspiring artist, William Harper,
who overhears a family secret and runs away to search for the truth about his
past. Despite a host of setbacks, he makes some progress, but then a tragedy
happens and a whole new set of lies unravels. Can he make the right choice in
love and decide where he belongs?
I’ll let some review extracts give more of a flavour:
‘An engrossing and fulfilling story with a wonderful sense of place.’
‘Lovely story with a few twists and great sense of the history of the
time.’
‘The combination of strong characterisation, vivid scene setting, and
convincing motives for all the characters made this a compelling read that I
truly didn't want to end.’
Your novel is set in the years between 1875 and 1883.
How much research did you do? Is your main character, William Harper, based on
a real person?
 |
| Inside the church for Harvest 1888 |
In 2012, I wrote a parish history to raise funds for my church’s
restoration. Most of the research was from the Victorian era, so a lot of it
was already in my head. It included some old photographs, such as the interior
of the church at Harvest time, which features in my first chapter. I was also lucky
in having copies of diaries written by my husband’s great-grandfather, which
gave a vivid picture of the village and the community in the 1860s and 1870s.
William is completely made up, from a lot of ‘what if…’ thinking.
What was the inspiration for your novel?
Firstly, I’d say it was the sense of belonging within the Seaton Carew village
community that emerged as I did the research for my parish history. All William
really wants is to belong. It also provided rich material I could use, such as our
ancestor’s aunt keeping a chest of cleaned and mended clothes for shipwrecked
sailors. The villagers sent wreaths and attended the funerals of unknown
seafarers whose bodies were washed up on the beach and who had no one to grieve
for them. A shipwreck from the past is an important part of my story.
Another source of inspiration was a couple who lived in a house on The
Green with their 14 children. A descendant gave me transcripts of letters sent
by the wife to her husband when he was working on the Continent (as they called
Europe then). Her writing is so evocative, detailing her daily life and what
the children were getting up to. I uncovered a secret in the father’s family
history, which sparked a totally different idea that I could use as a twist in
my story.
‘A Borrowed Past’ is the first part in the
Seaton Carew Sagas series. How much planning have you done for the subsequent
novels?
As I was writing ‘A Borrowed Past’, I developed a strong sense
that Grace was willing me to make her the lead character in the next book, so I’ve
been mulling it over for a while. Although I should have been editing ‘A
Borrowed Past’ during November, I couldn’t resist sketching a story outline
and writing a rough draft of book two for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing
Month). I produced 51,000 words and I’m returning to it later this month. All I’ll
say is it involves smuggling and a romantic dilemma for Grace!
I have a couple of ideas for book three but won’t decide between them
yet. I prefer to finish the previous book before I commit to the story idea for
the next one, as you never know what will occur to you as you’re editing. My
intention for each new novel is to pick up a character from previous books and
explore their story, weaving more connections between all the villagers as I
go. They’ll be standalone stories in their own right, but they will all be rooted
in the village community.
I’ve signed up to your Reader Club newsletter. Can
you tell us more about it and why you set it up?
It’s great to have you in my community, Jan. As you’ll know, on signing
up for the Reader
 |
| Seaton Carew Lifeboat 1888 |
Club, you receive the original first chapter of ‘A
Borrowed Past’. Sadly, I had to delete it from the final version, in the
interests of getting into William’s story more quickly. I’ve called it ‘The
Lifeboat Rescue’; it involves his adventure on a lifeboat similar to the one in
this photo from Seaton Carew. In my monthly newsletter, I’ll be sharing
interesting snippets from my research, talking about my writing process or my
progress with the next book, and giving a rundown of the books I’ve been
reading.
I love the idea of being able to talk directly to readers in a more personal
way than I would in a blog. It partly derives from my own enjoyment in receiving
newsletters from favourite authors. I also want readers who enjoy my stories to
be the first to know when the next book is coming out.
What is a typical writing day for you?
An early start, around 6 am, although since lockdown I’ve been starting a
little later. I like to have silence and get a good number of words down while
my husband (who’s retired) is still in bed. After PE with Joe Wicks (a recent addition!)
and a shower, I return to my desk and do around another hour’s writing. That
leaves me the rest of the day to balance my fiction research, planning and
marketing with my consultancy work, the writing and marketing for my nonfiction
books and my new venture of online courses. I try to walk on the beach every
lunchtime (two minutes’ walk away) to refresh my brain for the afternoon
session.
What
is the most useful piece of advice you’ve received as a writer?
To write the
first draft for yourself (without stopping to do any editing) and the subsequent
drafts for your reader.
But oh, how I
struggle with letting the words just flow onto the page and not putting on the
editing hat! Editing is my favourite stage, possibly because I’m a left-brained,
logical accountant who likes figuring out solutions to problems.
What
has been your proudest writing moment to date?
I think it was the day the parish history books arrived - all 9 boxes of them! Foolishly,
I’d volunteered to write it without any previous experience, and to hold my
very first book in my hands was such an incredible feeling. Happily, we soon broke
even (phew!) and started adding to the Restoration Fund. I was keen to repeat
the creative experience, and soon afterwards, I decided to challenge myself to
write a novel.
A close second
was a wonderful letter I received from an early reader who said ‘I have just
spent the last three days reading your ‘Portrait of a Seaside Parish’ from
cover to cover, and it has been one of the best reads of my life. I cannot
thank you enough for the interest and pleasure I have gained from it, and I do
hope it becomes a ‘sell out’!’
After spending
so long writing a book without knowing whether it will hit the mark, hearing
words like this means so much to an author.
LINKS:
Thank you for coming onto the blog and giving us so much information about your novel, Juliette. I do hope it's a big success and you get lots of sales.
Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed finding out more about Juliette and her novel.
My son was diagnosed with mild Aspergers when he
was about ten. A few years later, I stumbled across a statistic which claimed
that eight out of ten marriages with a child on the spectrum ended before the
child was sixteen. Whilst that didn’t reflect our experience at all – or those
of families we knew in the same situation – I did wonder how I might have
reacted if I’d known about the statistic several years before. And so the idea
behind Another Us was born …
Ha! None. For the first draft at least. I just
ploughed in and started writing and about two thirds of the way through, I
ground to a sticky halt. I soldiered on to the end, and then I had to revisit everything
and more or less start again. The trouble was, I had spent ages polishing and
wordsmithing passages in the first draft that didn’t make the final cut. I
won’t make that mistake again! 
