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These people have been populating my head for the past while, so I want to share them with you – I’m looking forward to readers getting to know them better next year, if they don’t recognise them already, that is! For the gentlemen in Lucia’s life, I also have visuals 🙂

Lucia Percival, by the time this novel begins, is an accomplished opera singer, a dramatic soprano with considerable coloratura range, whose talent and ambition are hampered only by attitudes towards her race. But in the late Forties, on the eve of her last performance, she has no intention of going onstage, and she has a story to tell. Thirty years earlier, as a poor, ambitious young Jamaican girl seeking her fortune as a musician in London during the First World War, her life took a wrong turning and has never recovered its course. Her brother Reginald is also overseas, on active service, and bitter about his prospects, to an extent which alarms Lucia.

Her friend Eva is her Irish housemate – and, being white if not of high class, a useful ally, helping Lucia meet people, manage a life in a hostile city, and get herself together again. But can she be relied upon while struggling with demons of her own and cranky a lot of the time? Eva’s friend Sybil, an aristocrat living a dangerous life, is intelligent but has little time for Lucia.

Edgar, a fellow Jamaican, was supposed to study at the Bar, but ended up in a munitions factory then became a private investigator. Lucia seeks him out for certain details.

William Butler Yeats is a rather annoying Irishman in his mid-fifties, whom Lucia encounters at a séance in Euston Square and has to work hard to shake off. Writes poems too.

Arthur, a charismatic and seemingly easygoing African-American composer, is drawn to Lucia and they share an intellectual and emotional bond as musicians. But while he understands her in a way few else can, Lucia is uncertain if she can confide her secrets in him.

Here is a visual of Arthur as I see him, represented by the tenor Lawrence Brownlee:

Image from lawrencebrownlee.com – who is a lovely singer and well worth checking out

Robin, on the other hand, Scottish doctor and “ginger midget”, who forges a different bond with Lucia during the thick of battle, is blunt, forthright and “Lord Mayors” (swears) far too much – not to mention challenges Lucia to a game of chess with fiery results! But when it comes to his family, he is not quite so courageous, with disastrous results…

Here is a visual of Robin as I see him, represented by the actor Scott Grimes:

courtesy of imdb.com – and Robin’s the kind of guy who would *totally* have the top button open!

Lilian, meanwhile, is an old woman scarred by the war, and its rules on how she is expected to behave in the face of great loss. Damaged and lost, rejected by society, she falls into Lucia’s life and the fellow feeling between the two women, as well as the secrets Lilian uncovers, galvanises Lucia in spite of herself.

And of course there is the most important character, the centre of Lucia’s life, whom I will refrain from discussing at this juncture, but who absolutely informs her decisions, her life and her regrets…

So, that’s it!

I learned today, with sadness, of the opera singer Jessye Norman’s passing at the age of 74. She was a vocalist who had the power to move mountains, and a deeply serious musician. Her loss is mourned all over the world.

During my research for Lucia’s War I have listened to many singers,  but it’s safe to say the book is deeply influenced by Ms Norman’s sublime work, and Lucia’s later character by the aura she carries. There is an imperial streak to a dramatic soprano, and Jessye Norman always had it in her bearing. Strauss’s deceptively easy Last Songs, heard in my mind as rendered by Ms Norman, feature near the beginning of the book (don’t worry, it’s not an anachronism!)

But if any of her wonderful repertoire stands out for me, it must be her rendition of Iseult’s ecstatic, despairing Liebestod at the end of Tristan und Isolde (which resonates in the fictional universe as the story of an Irish princess who cannot live without her lover) which Lucia, with her temperament, could not but someday sing when at the zenith of her God-given talent.

Thank you for the music, Jessye Norman. The world is a little meaner for your departure. If you can, take part of a morning to have a listen to her works. She was wonderful.

 

 

 

Today marks five years since White Feathers was launched. Weird to think it was so long ago! In honour of this, I’ve decided to write about the experience of listening to the audiobook that came out much more recently, and what I learned from it. I haven’t read very many accounts of what it’s like for an author to listen to their own work, though this vivid account by Caroline O’Donoghue was very well-observed. (I really really enjoyed her book!) So, here goes:

It’s nerve-wracking.

There is something about hearing your own words read back to you that’s difficult to handle. I wrote a nice polite tweet to the actress about the audio of White Feathers back in March but the truth was, I had hardly listened to any of it. I was way too nervous. Only when I saw the chapters guide on Audible and chose to listen out of sequence was I able to start getting stuck in, and her reading blew my mind completely. I would go on periodic binges then get scared again then go on another binge. I got almost a high listening to it, especially when Amy de Bhrún did such a good job getting me engrossed in the milieu.

Things you wouldn’t expect to work so well, really do

Long action scenes work very well in audio. I was not expecting that. The battle scene where Joseph Cronin makes his stand (of sorts), as well as the later butchery of the Somme depicted behind the lines, were really vivid when I listened to them in the car and the tension did not drop. I learned anew that this is where research excels – binding the narrative together with confident knowledge of the facts behind the fiction, without pushing itself forward too much.

Good dialogue is great too, with medium attribution by the writer being best for listening. No attribution is infuriating, but too much slows the pace down. It’s something I will bear more in mind now when I write longish exchanges between characters.

Pitch variation matters, especially with romance

With a novel that unapologetically foregrounds romance as White Feathers does, it is absolutely vital for a sole reader to be easily able to use the lower register for male characters (or the higher, for female, if the reader is a man.) You do not want to be listening to a conversation where both characters sound the same! The writer’s job, I think, is to help the actor by writing dialogue that creates such unmistakable sexual tension (or whatever dynamic is required) that it will be a matter of natural inclination to drop or raise tone for the other protagonist.

I’m delighted to say that the pitch variation here is perfect, and as for sexual tension? I reckon I needed to stick the phone in the freezer on occasion to cool it down 😀

Accents, accents, accents

I really didn’t appreciate the importance of accents until listening back and realising how many there were. And my God, the very narration of the story is a political act (which suits me fine: the entire damn novel is political) because it’s close 3rd person from Eva’s point of view, and she is a second generation Irish immigrant, a disrespected group in 1910s England. There is a line somewhere early in the book which says that Eva tries to suppress any trace of an Irish accent but it comes out when she’s angry or impassioned and when you hear this being done, it introduces a political context which was not always on my mind when writing, but is inescapable in the context of recent anti-Irish sentiment expressed by parts of the British media.

(I felt particular joy at the line where she’s so furious with Christopher that she calls him an expletive, and I forgot to clarify that her accent slips, but the actress leans in with such enthusiasm that there could be no doubt of it – hurrah!)

There’s also a matter of versatility. Fitting in Lucia’s Jamaican and Robin’s Glaswegian accent in two lines of dialogue takes a lot of vocal flexibility, I’d imagine. I really really liked how Lucia’s accent is portrayed so sensitively, the requisite Caribbean lilt without ever forsaking real emotion or being parodic. For such a volatile and emotional character, this is perfect. (And that scene invoking the goddess Erzulie was way creepier than in the book!)

Minor Characters

THE POOR CANADIAN GUY! Sniff! This fellow has probably max four lines but when he’s brought into the operating theatre during the Somme horror and he’s begging for a drink, in her reading he does it in this really soft Canadian accent and hearing him plead, I was heartbroken for him. I definitely did not feel that emotion writing the scene, to be honest I hardly thought twice about him once it was written. But that’s the thing about hearing people speak. They might not have much to say, but there’s something distinguished about it. Roma was a particular revelation: everything she said had cool authority, poised and perfectly pitched. You are going to get back in that van, Sybil, and there’s an end to it.

Also, a late, dishonourable mention for the odious Breedagh Stewart and her prurient perving over Eva’s stash of banned D.H. Lawrence novels. In the middle of some horrific scenes she provided much-needed, if grim, levity. Humour can be tricky, but here it works.

You Learn Stuff About Yourself

That nasty line from Christopher to Eva about how she fills up a space with talk? Delivered with such a blood-chilling, malevolent snarl that it quite shocked me? I realised why a little later. Being forced to hear it like that made me realise: it’s my own damn inner critic again. In the novel, he’s being an a**e, and he apologises. I guess my inner critic owes me an apology too. Or at least my turned back and a book of poems chucked out the window.

The Isle of Wight Scene

Because, just listen to it. It has everything ::beams::

Right, so that’s it for the audiobook. Many thanks to Amy de Bhrún for doing such a sterling job and giving me hours of happiness listening to it. Now, roll on the film, or Netflix series, whichever comes first 🙂

A couple of things have brought the idea of resistance to my mind recently. First and foremost the ongoing downward course of the Trump administration, its depravities and outrages exhausting us daily. Also some internal questioning as to how we as authors are reacting to that and other issues: Are we catalysing them into our prose, or giving  up trying, or putting our hands over our ears and saying “La, la, la, I can’t hear you”?

Continue reading “Tales of the Resistance” →

But see, if you will, a rainy evening in August 1917, and a down-at-heel chamber in Soho. A girl of twenty-one, of mixed race, two years out of Jamaica and altogether jaded with life. Three years into the great Bangarang and no sign of an end. Pleasant weather, fresh fruit, courtesy from strangers – all lost dreams. Rain the whole time. Skin with a bloom of grey on the surface, mind shrunk down. An open heart of late turned surly as the weather.

I’m delighted to announce the winter 2019 early 2020! publication of my second novel, Lucia’s War. This book will tell a story of motherhood, music, loss and redemption, set in the latter part of WWI and post-Armistice. The cover design is by Richie Cumberlidge of More Visual Cover Design and editing will be undertaken by Liz Hudson of The Little Red Pen who so ably shaped its predecessor, White Feathers.

It was always my desire to continue on with Lucia’s story where it began in White Feathers, and while Lucia’s War is in the same universe, with a few characters reappearing, her tale is separate and complete in itself – and one that I feel should be told in its own right. Among other themes, it explores how the propaganda machine weaponised motherhood during that war, and how black intellectual life flourished in London in the late teens and early postwar years. Not to mention fending off advances from W.B. Yeats and Bertrand Russell…:)

I’m excited to spread the word and keep folks updated. Feel free to enter your email address in the “Subscribe by Email” box on the right-hand side of the page if you want to hear updates and progress.

 

Announcement coming soon…