#TRAVEL TO #ENGLAND WITH GUEST AUTHOR COURTNEY J. HALL

The Author at Shakespeare's Birthplace

Courtney J. Hall lives with her husband and a stolen cat in a fixer-upper in suburban Philadelphia. Learn more about her and her books at her website.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a sneaking suspicion that I don’t belong where I am. I live in the United States, in suburban Philadelphia, and have since the day I was born – but something out there, something elusive, has always been tugging at me. Beckoning me. Trying to get me to follow it, find it, whatever it was. And I finally figured it out.

 It was England.

I’ve always been an Anglophile, with a love of the history and an attachment to the Union Jack even before it became a ubiquitous home décor trend. I’ve always been partial to tea, tiny pastries, and gothic architecture. But I thought that was just my taste. Just things I liked. It wasn’t until my husband and I finally ventured across the pond and I stepped off the plane at Heathrow that I knew.

My body might live in the States, but my heart and soul belonged to England.

It felt like coming home after a long trip. My instincts came roaring out. I knew how to ride the Tube, where to get on and where to get off. I recognized street names, buildings and places I’d never seen before, not even on TV. Getting off the train in Stratford-upon-Avon, I somehow managed to walk directly into the village. My husband swore it was because I looked at maps, but I don’t. At least nothing more recent than the 1572 Braun & Hogenberg map, which wouldn’t be all that helpful to me in 2016. I just knew. It was in my head, in my heart. In my bones. I’d come home.

The Author at Tower Bridge

It was, hands down, the best week of my life. Better than any spring break or senior week. Better than any Caribbean vacation. Better than my honeymoon (but don’t tell my husband). I saw thousand-year-old palaces and the tombs of history’s greatest kings and queens. I walked in Anne Boleyn’s footsteps and saw portraits painted by Holbein. I ate lots of delicious food and talked to some wonderful people. And every new experience reiterated that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I loved it. Getting back on the plane at the end of the week was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

People ask me why I don’t just move there. While I’d love to, there are still a few important things holding me here. But if anything ever happened to change that, I’d swim there. Just try and stop me. It’s my home – I just don’t live there.

Yet, anyway…

Some Rise By Sin

Cade Badgley has just returned from an overseas diplomatic mission when he learns that his father is dying. Cade has no interest in filling his father’s shoes, but the inheritance laws of sixteenth-century England leave him no choice: he is the new Earl of Easton, with a hundred souls dependent on him, a rundown estate, and no money in his coffers. A friendly neighbor offers to help, but at a cost: Cade must escort the neighbor’s daughter Samara to London and help her find a husband. 

Samara, a tempestuous artist, would rather sketch Mary Tudor’s courtiers than woo them. But her beauty, birth, and fortune soon make her the most sought-after young woman in London. As Cade watches her fall under the spell of a man he has every reason to distrust, he must balance his obligations to Easton against the demands of his heart and the echoes of a scandal that drove him away from his family twelve years before. 

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#TRAVEL WITH SERENA--TOUR YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND WITH GUEST AUTHOR HELENA FAIRFAX

The Yorkshire Moors in Summer

Award-winning author Helena Fairfax was born in Uganda and came to England as a child. Since then she’s worked abroad in France, Germany, and Austria, and traveled to many countries, from Ecuador to Norway. Nowadays, she lives in an old Victorian mill town in Yorkshire, in the north of England. Today Helena joins us to talk a bit about Yorkshire, England and her latest novel. Learn more about Helena and her books at her blog. 

For many years I’ve lived in Yorkshire, in the north of England. If you live in England, you’ll know that Yorkshire people (or Yorkshire “folk”, as we say in our local dialect) are often subject to teasing from the people who live in the south. The British enjoy “taking the mickey” (teasing in a harmless way) and southerners’ jokes about Yorkshire include our northern accent (we say grass with a short “a”, as in “cat”; in the south, they say “grahss”, as in “harm”), and stereotypes such as our liking for clogs and flat caps, our love of meat pies, and how we live in poverty in a sort of Dickensian grime.

York Minister
photo courtesy of Pixabay.jpg

The jokes might be good-natured, but for many years Yorkshire has been treated as a poor relation to the more affluent south. London, Cornwall and Stratford-on-Avon in the south were always the biggest draw for tourists, and any travelers who ventured north would bypass Yorkshire altogether and head for Edinburgh and the Scottish Highlands.

Recently, though, our status in Yorkshire as poor relations has changed. In 2013, The Lonely Planet named Yorkshire as one of its top tentravel destinations in the world. For those of us who live in Yorkshire, the accolade from The Lonely Planet came as no surprise. We call Yorkshire “God’s Own County” (we’re not modest, here in the north!) and we already appreciate the variety and staggering beauty of our large county.

Here are just a few of the attractions on offer in Yorkshire:

A visit to York, a former Roman city with Roman walls still surrounding it, and a medieval Cathedral, cobbled streets and fabulous shopping.

A visit to Whitby, a seaside town, chock-full of history, with an abbey, whaling, Captain Cook, and scenes from Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

A visit to Bradford, the so-called “Curry Capital of Europe” and home to a renowned film festival.

A Street in Saltaire

A visit to Saltaire, my own hometown, a former Victorian mill town and a UNESCO-preserved World Heritage Site.

A visit to Conisbrough Castle, built just after the Norman Conquest in 1066, and featured in Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.

A visit to Harewood House, stately home of the present Earl and Countess of Harewood with a magnificent interior open to the public, and the setting for Brideshead Revisited.

The Yorkshire Moors in Winter

The area of Yorkshire I love the most, though, is the Yorkshire moors. Many years ago I spent a week in a hostel in the middle of the moors with a group of teenagers from an industrial city in Germany. They were on an exchange with a group of English young men from a similar urban environment. I remember sitting in the coach with them on the way from Leeds/Bradford airport, watching them gaze out at the rolling heather, the moors stretching into the distance, all greens and purples, with not a bar, or a café, or a McDonald’s in sight.

One of the Germans murmured, with his face pressed to the window: ‘Ich habe Grün-Schock.’ Literally: I’m suffering from green shock. What a great expression!

Over the years I’ve thought a lot about that week on the moors, and last year I began to turn the experience into a story. The moorland setting is wonderfully wild and romantic. Kate, the heroine of my novel, takes a group of disadvantaged London teenagers on a trip to the Yorkshire moors, in the company of an upper-class journalist. In the middle of the countryside, surrounded by sheep and moorland, how will they all get on?

Heather on the Yorkshire Moors

Although I’ve lived in Yorkshire for many years, I’ve traveled an awful lot in my life. One thing I’ve learned from my travels is that people are the same the world over. One of the teenagers in my novel is from Afghanistan, and I took the theme of my story from an old Afghan proverb: ‘There is a way from heart to heart.’ My story is filled with differences in culture: between town and country, between north and south, between rich and poor. Despite the outward differences, the theme of the novel is that people are the same across the globe, whether from Yorkshire, London or Nigeria, and have the same human emotions and the same capacity for love. ‘There is a way from heart to heart’ is the positive, uplifting message I wanted to leave readers with at the end of my novel, and it’s also the main lesson I’ve come to learn from my own many travels.

A Way from Heart to Heart

After the death of her husband in Afghanistan, Kate Hemingway’s world collapses around her. Her free time is spent with a charity for teenage girls, helping them mend their broken lives—which is ironic, since her own life is fractured beyond repair.

Reserved, public school journalist Paul Farrell is everything Kate and her teenage charges aren’t.  But when Paul agrees to help Kate with her charity, he makes a stunning revelation that changes everything, and leaves Kate torn.

Can she risk her son’s happiness as well as her own?

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TRAVEL WITH SERENA--GUEST AUTHOR KATHLEEN HEADY

Parliament and the Thames River

Kathleen Heady is a native of rural Illinois, but has lived and traveled in many places, including numerous trips to Great Britain. Additionally she lived in Costa Rica for seven years. Her second novel, Lydia's Story, was released in 2012. Her first novel, The Gate House, was a finalist for an EPIC award in 2011. Learn more about Kathleen at her website/blog.--AP  

Since I was a little girl, I have been fascinated by Great Britain and its history, probably at first because it was a country with a real queen and princesses. Later my interest developed into a desire to learn more about the history, and I read as much as I could.

I first visited Britain with my parents in 1985, and was awestruck by everything I saw. I was overwhelmed when visiting the Shambles in York, formerly a street of butcher shops, which was renovated in the 1400s! I pressed my hand against the stones in Conwy Castle in Wales, thinking of all the men and women who had passed through those passageways over the centuries. What were their dreams, desires, fears?

Monument to Women of World War II

But the most poignant experience occurred during our visit to St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Behind the main altar in this magnificent edifice is a small alcove dedicated to the men and women of the U.S. Armed Services who fought for the defense of Britain during World War II. My dad had tears in his eyes. He had been there and he had returned. Not everyone did.

I visited the Churchill War Rooms, the vast underground complex in London from which Prime Minister Winston Churchill directed operations during the years that Britain fought against Germany. I crossed the Thames to the Imperial War Museum, housed in the former Bethlem Royal Hospital, London's first hospital for the mentally ill, and the origin of the word "bedlam" meaning "chaos" or "madness." This museum brings alive the suffering and heroism of victims of wars since World War I. One exhibit in particular always brings a tear to my eye. In an unassuming spot on the main floor is a small wooden fishing boat, the smallest boat to cross the Channel in the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940.

Ruins of Coventry Cathedral

In Coventry, I visited the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, bombed by the Germans in 1940. Since that terrible night, the cathedral has become a symbol of peace and reconciliation.

Eventually, I decided to write Lydia's Story, in which I recreated the connection between a young woman and her ancestor, in this case her great-grandmother, who worked in her own way to defend her country during World War II.

Whether visiting historical sites or relaxing in one of London's many parks, I always travel with my eyes open. I always remember that I am a guest in someone else's culture, and that we have more in common than differences. I have returned to Great Britain several times after my initial visit with my parents, and my love for the country and culture has not faded.

Lydia’s Story

A simple box of mementos, hidden in a farmhouse in Wales for nearly seventy years, is enough to set Nara Blake on a search for the truth about her great-grandparents, and to put her own life in danger. Even as she begins to read her great-grandmother's diaries, a French brother and sister, whose family lost everything in World War II, blame Nara's family for their lost wealth, which includes a priceless Cézanne painting. As both families learn the truth of their ancestors' activities during the war, they are put on a collision course that can only end in the destruction of long-held beliefs, and ultimately one must pay the price for the losses of the past.  

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BOOK CLUB FRIDAY - GUEST AUTHOR ALEXA BOURNE

Today’s Book Club Friday guest is Alexa Bourne, teacher by day and romantic suspense writer by nights, weekends, and all school holidays. When she's not concocting sinister plots and steamy love scenes or traveling and exploring new cultures, Alexa spends her time reading, watching brainless TV and thinking about exercising. Visit her at her website or blog. 

Alexa is offering a copy of Her Highland Champion to one of our readers who posts a comment to the blog. -- AP

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love Great Britain. If I could move tomorrow I'd go without reservations. I love the food, the beer, the culture and especially the accent. Whenever I hear a British man speaking, I get all gooey inside. I swear even hearing a Brit read the phone book would make my knees weak. Of course I don't judge him COMPLETELY on his accent, but that is definitely a starter.

Speaking of accents...can I tell you a secret? Promise you won't tell? When I read a book set in Great Britain, I hear the accent in my head. It makes for a more interesting story for me to “hear” it. I'm also one of those people who loves to have the words and phrases of the culture in the book because it puts me right in the center of the action. It helps to make me feel like I'm there in the story with the characters. Some people, I know, don't like a lot of the “different language” in their reading. Maybe it makes the reading harder when the reader has to stop and figure out what the characters mean by the strange words. With Britain, I’m familiar with deciphering the language since I have relatives there. Huh. Maybe that’s another reason I love to “hear the accent” as I read.

Not only do I hear the accent when I read, I actually hear it when I write, too. Now, many industry professionals will tell writers not to bog down the story with words and phrases of a different culture. They request we put in just enough to give the readers a feel for that setting or that character. As a writer, I follow that bit of advice, but not right away. When I'm writing my rough draft, I usually toss in A LOT more of the British terminology. As I go through each draft, I throw out more of the complicated words and phrases and revise the story for the majority of readers. Hearing the accent in my head even while I’m writing makes me love the process even more.

So, what about you? Do you hear accents in your head when you read a book with a character from a country different than your own? Or am I alone in this? Leave a comment here and be in the running for a copy of my contemporary Scottish romantic suspense, Her Highland Champion. (Then you can “hear” the accent as you read my book!)

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Thanks for joining us today, Alexa! Readers, let’s hear from you if you want a chance to win a copy of Her Highland Champion. Don't forget to either include your email address in your comment or check back on Sunday to see if you've won. We can't get your books to you if we can't contact you. -- AP

BOOK CLUB FRIDAY -- GUEST AUTHOR MARNI GRAFF

Today’s guest blogger is writer Marni Graff, author of two mystery series and co-author of Writing in a Changing World. A former writer with “Mystery Review” magazine, Graff has interviewed Ian Rankin, Deborah Crombie, Val McDermid, and her mentor P. D. James. A member of Sisters in Crime, she runs the Writers Read program in North Carolina, and is also a founding member of the Screw Iowa Writers Group. Her English series features American children’s book writer Nora Tierney; The Blue Virgin is set in Oxford.

Read more about Marni at her blog: http://auntiemwrites.wordpress.com/ and also at www.screwiowa.com and www.bridlepathpress.com.

Marni is offering a copy of The Blue Virgin to one lucky reader who posts a comment to the blog this week. -- AP

WHY OXFORD?

Believing that setting often functions as a character in itself, I’m very careful when choosing where my stories will unfold. Having a lifelong affinity for England and its environs, I originally choose Cumbria as the setting for the opening of the Nora Tierney series. My visits to the land of Wordsworth and Beatrix Potter hold a fascination for me. It is one of the most lovely natural areas I’ve ever seen, and the book seemed to belong there.

Then life intervened with an opportunity to study at Oxford, and I found myself in the hallowed halls of Exeter College, studying Wilkie Collins and Daphne Du Maurier. Sworn in as a reader at the Bodleian Library, I was able to read the original broadsheet reviews of The Woman in White.

Oxford is a jewel of a town encircled by the lush green countryside of the Thames Valley. Its mellow limestone “dreaming spires,” as described by 19th C. poet Matthew Arnold, change color with the light and weather. Magnificently preserved architecture reflects every age from Saxon to present, all exhibited somewhere amongst the federation of forty-odd independent colleges which make up the University of Oxford.

This mix of “town and gown” is noticed at once when visiting: The university has its dons lecturing in sub fusc, scouts bringing students morning tea, an historic tutorial system, and those forbidden grassy quads, while the town has its own muddle of traffic-choked streets, packed with bicycles and pedestrians, pubs and shops. Both exist alongside green meadows with grazing cattle, and rivers teaming with punters and canal boats.

Small wonder then that I fell in love with the place. I could picture Nora here, too, and suddenly the idea for a new mystery, one that had Oxford at its heart, took over. I set aside the original Lake District manuscript and started writing The Blue Virgin, a combination of cozy and police procedural. Trying to clear her best friend, Val Rogan, of the suspicion she has murdered her partner, Bryn Wallace, Nora quickly becomes embroiled in the murder investigation, to the dismay of DI Declan Barnes, the senior investigating officer. And did I mention Nora’s four months pregnant with her dead fiance’s baby?

I took great care to be accurate in describing Oxford’s history and the colleges, as well as the various locations and sites my characters visit. After all, this is the town that gave the world Lewis Carroll, penicillin, two William Morrises, and graduates spread across the centuries whose influences are still felt. A very short list includes: Shelley, Tolkien, Browning, Auden, Waugh, C. S. Lewis, Oscar Wilde, Robert Graves, T. S. Eliot, and Christopher Wren. More modern grads you will recognize include Dorothy Sayers, Stephen Hawkings, Richard Burton, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, Hugh Grant and Val McDermid.

And Oxford exudes mystery, as any Inspector Morse fan can tell you.

The next Nora Tierney mystery, The Green Remains, is set on the shore of Lake Windermere in Cumbria.

Well, now I’m itching for a trip to Oxford. Too bad Dead Louse of a Spouse left me up the wazoo in debt. What about you, readers? Let’s hear from you. Post a comment to enter the drawing for a copy of The Blue Virgin. And don’t forget to check back Sunday to see if you’re the winner. -- AP