As I received the paperback copies of my latest release 'Changing the Future' today, I thought I'd re-post here a blog I did for Rosemary Gemmell last week (at
http://ros-readingandwriting.blogspot.co.uk/. I'm sure she won't mind!
‘Changing the Future’
has had a long history!
Four years ago, while on holiday in the USA, I happened to
meet a Harlequin best-selling author who, on hearing that I’d had 3 books
published by HQ in the 60’s and 70’s, encouraged me to start writing romances
again.
When I got home, I found the box in which I’d dumped a pile
of half-written stories 30+ years earlier when I was a divorced and single
parent with two young daughters and a full-time teaching career, and simply
didn’t have any time to devote to writing.
One novel was complete but was rejected by HQ in the 70’s.
At that time they wanted brooding and domineering alpha-men as their heroes so
my story of two teachers who meet again (at a school in North West England), a
few years after an acrimonious break-up obviously didn’t fit their new formula.
 |
The original ms, typed
on a portable typewriter |
I thought about this story and, as I was still setting my
sights on Harlequin, decided to re-locate the story in America. The heroine
became a teacher at a college in Virginia but I decided the hero had to have a
more upmarket job. He’d previously been a geography teacher; instead, I decided
(or maybe he decided?) he was a famous volcano expert. What did I know about
volcanoes? Nothing, apart from the fact that they occasionally erupt and send
ash clouds into the sky!
I started reading up about volcanoes in general, and
specifically those in Hawaii. I studied photos and videos, and read a lot of
reports and first-hand accounts of eruptions. At the same time, I was checking
my facts about American colleges with a couple of friends.
Six months later, I sent the ms. to Harlequin, and then had
to wait for nine months for them to reject it! By this time, I’d written
another novel which had been accepted (by another publisher) and was part way
through two more. So the volcano story was put to one side.
I picked it up again last autumn. By this time, I was well
aware of its weaknesses, particularly too many flashback scenes which slowed it
down in the first few chapters, but I still thought it had possibilities, so I
settled down to another re-write. I moved the setting (again!) back to England,
abandoned the flashbacks, and added several more scenes to develop the
relationship between the hero and heroine. Hawaii was now too far away, so I
had to start researching volcanoes in Iceland. I made masses of notes but
probably used only about five percent of what I’d found out about volcanic
eruptions. However, that other ninety-five percent of research was necessary to
ensure my five percent was reasonably accurate!
The final version of ‘
Changing
the Future’ is very different from the one I wrote back in the 70’s (I
think I retained and adapted about three scenes from that original story). It’s
different, too, from the re-write I did four year ago, not simply because of
the different setting, but also because writing my other novels taught me a lot
about tightening my writing style and developing my characters.
P.S. And, just to show that research for novels can come in
useful elsewhere, I did win a point for my team in a quiz when I knew what
a correlation spectrometer measures!
 |
| The final product - after 30+ years! |
Blurb:
Lisa Marshall is stunned when celebrated volcanologist Paul
Hamilton comes back into her life at the college where she now teaches. Despite
their acrimonious break-up several years earlier, they soon realise the
magnetic attraction between them is stronger than ever. However, the past is
still part of the present, not least when Paul discovers Lisa has a young son.
They can’t change that past, but will it take a volcanic eruption to help them
change the future?
‘Changing the Future’ available from Amazon, as e-book or
paperback
Before the Industrial Revolution, the river had an abundance
of fish and wildlife, and the people of Manchester used its water for drinking
and washing etc. However, when factories, cotton mills and poor housing grew up
along the river, it became ‘proverbial for the foulness of its water’ as it
received the refuse from every industry (cotton factories, bleach works, dye
works, chemical works, etc.), not to mention sewage of course. At one time,
after the opening of the Suez Canal, the river was jokingly known as ‘Sewage
Canal.’ Even the popularity of passenger boat trips on the river
ended because of the vile smells from the river. 
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