Hi everyone,Today, please welcome the uber cool Alison Stuart. Alison writes historical romances and she is here today to chat about her new book, Gather The Bones. It is published by Lyrical Press and is available now.
Alison, thanks so much for visiting today. Would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself?
Hi
Nicole, Thanks for hosting me today!
I
was born and brought up in Kenya in the dying days of
the British Empire. We moved to Australia when I was ten. When I was in my
final year at University, where I was studying History and Law, I did the unthinkable (at least to those who
knew me), I joined the Army Reserve. During a navigation exercise in officer
training, a (very!) handsome young man offered to share his pencil with me, our
eyes locked...and the rest is history. A long and interesting career in a peace
time army ensued and I rose to the rank of Major in the legal services.
A move to Singapore in 2000 brought both our military careers to an end.
However the shared interest in the military and military history in particular
continued and in Singapore we retraced the events leading to the fall of
Singapore in 1942 and have gone on to explore battlefields in America and
England. In 2005 we finally made it to Belgium and Northern France, a trip that
coincided with Anzac day on the Somme. Walking the still visible trenches and
craters of the Western Front had an enormous impact on us both and sowed the
seeds of GATHER THE BONES.
Where abouts are you from and why do you love living there?
I am a Melbourne girl through and
through. As a lonely and unhappy child from darkest Africa, Melbourne just
picked me up in its arms and held me close.
Do you incorporate other elements into your historical romances?
I write historical romance but
GATHER THE BONES is a departure from my passion (the Stuart era). It is a
venture into a more modern time with a bit of a paranormal thrown in for good
measure. Great fun to write.
What was the first thing you had published?At school, my best friend and I dreamed of being writers (something she achieved before me!). We used to sit in the willow tree at lunch with our latest magnum opii…Hers was futuristic sci fi and mine, yes, historical romance set in the English Civil War. My first real publication came with the short story anthologies published in Singapore.
How do you overcome writer's block?
When my imaginary friends won’t
talk to me? Sometimes doing another, but different, creative task such as
needlework releases the block. I also find jigsaws very inspirational and then
there’s Spider Solitaire (or at least that’s what I tell my husband!)
What was the most romantic moment you ever had?
My husband is not the most romantic
man in the world but there has been a couple of moments when he has surprised
me…by producing a bottle of champagne on the top of Mt. Stanley in Hong Kong at
sunset or likewise, on the banks of the Tiber in Rome.
*sigh* But that was romantic!
What inspires you?
Inspiration
can come from the strangest sources. Often it is a building. Holdston Hall in
GATHER THE BONES is loosely based on Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire just as
Harvington Hall was the inspiration for BY THE SWORD. Something about old
buildings just makes me want to create the stories around them.
Thanks Alison for coming to play.
Nicole x
The
horrors of the Great War are not the only ghosts that haunt Helen Morrow and
her late husband's somewhat reclusive cousin, Paul. Unquiet spirits from
another time and another conflict touch them.
A
coded diary gives them clues to the mysterious disappearance of Paul's
great-grandmother in 1812, and the desperate voice of a young woman
reaches out to them from the pages. Together Helen and Paul must search
for answers, not only for the old mystery, but also the circumstances
surrounding the death of Helen's husband at Passchandaele in 1917.
As
the mysteries entwine, their relationship is bound by the search for truth, in
the present and the past.
Helen Morrow took a deep breath, her hand tightening on her
daughter’s. She felt a corresponding squeeze, looked down into Alice’s upturned
face, and smiled. Why were children so much braver than adults.
She raised the knocker on the old oak door and let it fall. The
sound reverberated around the quiet courtyard and she took a step back as the
door opened to reveal a small, round woman wearing a spotless white apron over
a flowered dress.
Before Helen could speak, the woman’s face lit up with a smile.
“Mrs. Charles,” she exclaimed. “Welcome to Holdston. I’m Sarah
Pollard and you must be Miss Alice.” She turned a beaming smile on the child
before standing aside to usher them both inside the cool, dark hallway and
through to a grand room, smelling of beeswax and dominated by a long table and
a large fireplace emblazoned with carving. “We expected you on the later train.
Sam was all set to take the car to the station to meet you.”
“We caught the bus from the station and walked. Sorry if that caused
any inconvenience,” Helen said
“Oh none at all. You’re here and that’s what matters. Come in, come
in. Leave your suitcase. I’ll take it up to your room. Lady Morrow’s in the
parlour. I’ll show you through.”
Helen removed the pins from her hat and set it down on top of the
case. She took off Alice’s hat and fussed over the unmanageable fair hair that
refused to stay confined in a neat plait.
“Are you ready to meet Grandmama?” she asked her daughter, with what
she hoped was a confident smile. She didn’t need Alice to see the nerves that
turned her stomach into a churning mass of butterflies.
They followed Sarah Pollard’s ample girth across the wide,
stone-flagged floor. Helen looked up at the portraits of long dead Morrows who
glared down at her from the wainscoted walls. If Charlie had lived, she would
have been the next Lady Morrow and her portrait would have joined theirs, a
colonial interloper in their ordered society.
Sarah opened a door and announced her. A slender woman, in her late
middle age, her graying hair piled on her head in a manner fashionable before
the war, rose from a delicate writing table by the window.
“Helen. You’re earlier than I had expected,” Lady Evelyn Morrow
said. “I would have sent the car for you but you are most welcome to Holdston
at long last. And you.” She turned to the child. “Let me look at you, Alice.”
Alice looked up at her mother, her eyes large and apprehensive.
Helen gave her a reassuring smile and with a gentle hand in the girl’s back,
urged her forward for her grandmother’s inspection.
“You’re not much like your father,” Lady Morrow concluded.
Helen could have listed all the ways in which Alice was, in fact,
very much like her father, the father she had never known, from the hazel eyes
to the way her upper lip curled when she smiled, and her utter lack of concern
for her own safety. She must never stop forgetting.
Sarah Pollard bustled in with a tea tray and Lady Morrow indicated
two chairs. Alice perched awkwardly on the high backed chair, her feet not
quite touching the floor. Her eyes widened at the sight of the cake and
biscuits piled high on the tea tray.
“I trust you had a good voyage?” Lady Morrow enquired as she poured
the tea into delicate cups.
“Yes.” Helen smiled. “It was a wonderful adventure. Wasn’t it,
Alice? We thought about Cousin Paul as we sailed through the Suez Canal. He
must have some incredible stories to tell about the archaeological digs.”
The lines around Evelyn’s nose deepened. “If Paul has incredible
stories, he does not share them with me, Helen.”
“But he writes to me and tells me all about them,” Alice said.
“Every Christmas and every birthday. Last birthday he sent me a little glass
bottle from...where was it, Mummy?”
“Palestine,” Helen replied. “He said it was Roman.”
“Does he indeed?” Evelyn’s eyebrows rose slightly. “I am glad to
hear he recognizes his responsibility to you, Alice.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting him. They told me he was with
Charlie...” Helen began.
Evelyn stiffened, the teacup halfway to her lips. She set the cup
down and folded her hands in her lap. “If you are hoping that Paul will shed
any light on what happened that day, Helen, then you will be disappointed. Paul
was badly injured in the same action and has, apparently, no memory of--” her
thin lips quivered, “--the incident.”
Helen caught the sharp edge of an old bitterness in the older
woman’s voice. “I see,” she said.
“You and I, Helen, must mourn over an empty grave,” Lady Morrow
said.
She rose to her feet, walked over to the piano and picked up one of
the heavy silver-framed photographs that adorned its highly polished surface.
“Did you ever see this photograph?” She handed it to Helen. “I had
it taken before Charlie went to France in March 1915. Paul was home on leave
and Charlie had just taken his commission.”
The photograph showed two young men in the uniform of infantry
officers, one seated and the other standing, a photograph like thousands of
others that were now the last link with the dead. Helen had a single portrait
of Charlie, taken at the same photographic session, sporting an elegant,
unfamiliar moustache and grinning from ear to ear, like an over-anxious school
boy, keen to join the ‘stoush’, kill
the ‘bloody Bosch’. She felt a keen
sense of pain that reverberated as strongly as it had on the day he told her he
would have to return to England.
“I can’t leave them to fight the Huns, Helen,” he said. “Damn it, I
have a duty to England.” The drunken words came back to her and she could see
Charlie in the kitchen of Terrala with his arm across her brother Henry’s
shoulders, as they celebrated their mutual decision to join the war.
Henry had already enlisted in the Australian Light Horse and Charlie
told her a few days later that he intended to return to England to join his
cousin’s regiment.
“Do you think I would leave Paul to uphold the family honor?” he
said.
And he’d gone.
Even as she had stood on the dock at Port Melbourne, the cold winter
wind whipping at her ankles, she had known he would not return. She wondered if
his decision to go would have been any different if they had known she was
carrying his child. Probably not.
She turned from her husband’s smiling face to his cousin, Paul
Morrow, the professional soldier, never destined to take the Morrow title until
one day in a muddy field outside Ypres had turned his fortune.
The long months of war had already begun to leave their mark and,
while he affected a smile, she saw no warmth in his eyes. In normal
circumstances, with the strong jaw and good bone structure, it would be a
handsome face but he looked tired and drained, and years older than his cousin,
although he was the older by little over a year.
Yes, Paul Morrow had survived, but at what cost, she wondered?
“Is Paul here?” she asked. “When he last wrote to Alice, he said he
would be in Mesopotamia for the digging season.”
“The digging season is over
for the year and I expect him home in the next few days.” Evelyn rose to her
feet. “Now, let me show you your bedroom, Helen. I’ve given you the green room.
As the nursery wing is shut up, I thought Alice could sleep in the dressing
room. It’s so hard with just the two of us.” Her voice wavered and she looked
past Helen to a point just beyond her shoulder before recovering her composure
and continuing. “Much of the house is shut up, but Sarah can let you have the
keys and you are free to go wherever you want, except my rooms and, of course
Paul’s rooms. When he returns, he will also be working in the library.” Evelyn
looked at Alice. “Then it will be strictly out of bounds. Sir Paul is not to be
disturbed, Alice, do you understand?”
Alice
nodded and looked up at her mother.
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