Susan Leona Fisher, author of historical & contemporary romance
  • Home
  • Books
  • Blog

May 2019 - visits that inspired a story-line

4/29/2019

0 Comments

 
 If historical research provides story themes, visiting places can inspire a setting and add that touch of authenticity. Looking back at my story-lines over the past 10 years, here are some that were born following a particular visit:
​
Carlo Gatti’s ice wells at the London Canal Museum near King’s Cross led to my exploring just how ice-cream was made before the advent of modern refrigeration and the early development of refrigerated ships. So was born ROSE GLACE, CONFECTIONER TO A DUKE, about an orphaned young girl who makes a new life for herself as an ice-cream maker, and encounters a self-make businessman who runs a shipping line and is looking to inherit a dukedom. (a finalist for historical romance in the EPIC awards 2016)

Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire was my model for the cotton-spinning mill that features in A MASTER OF INDUSTRY, except my version isn’t run quite as well and provides the opening scene of the story when the heroine (a feisty governess) confronts the earl on whose land the mill operates about some pretty telling health and safety issues!
​
The Gladstone Pottery Museum, Stoke-on-Trent put on a special exhibition of the history of the toilet and inspired IN FOR A PENNY, in which the heroine is the daughter of a sanitary engineer. Then there’s the ne’er-do-well younger son of a duke who needs reforming, a philandering viscount after a new mistress, and a good dollop of society scandal. Quite a raunchy tale.
0 Comments

April 2019 - Creating a plot

4/7/2019

0 Comments

 
A friend recently asked me where I got ideas for the plots of my books. Usually it’s been a single fact/event that grabs my attention when researching a particular period and then that seed germinates and grows. I began, 10 years ago, with attempts at contemporary romantic fiction, but wanted to avoid the instant communication of modern technology so checked out the 1980s. 1987 stood out as a year when so many terrible events happened that I wove them into ‘The Year I found Great Aunt Alice’ as the context against which the heroine compares her great aunt’s experiences in both world wars.
​
 I then researched the 2nd Boer War, including the records of the British Red Cross, where something caught my eye. One of the volunteer doctors (referred to as ‘civil surgeons’) was listed as ‘missing’ at the end of the conflict. Did he die? Probably, but I imagined a scenario in which he actually survived, but there was a reason why he needed to hide away, for his own safety. After various attempts that finally turned into ‘Miss Deacon investigates’, about a British woman sent to France in 1918 to investigate the behaviour of the WAACs on the Western Front and coming across the mystery of the missing doctor, which she uncovers by talking to various ‘witnesses’ of the time

​After that I got into Victorian events such as the Baccarat scandal at Tranby Croft (the context for ‘Fair Play and Foul’) and the Cleveland Street scandal (‘Heiress to a Duke’). More recently I’ve gone back in time to the Regency period, post Waterloo. The inspiration for the first of these, ‘A Master of Speculation’ was the real involvement of some radical British aristocrats in helping one of Napoleon’s former marshals (Lavalette) escape from France after his wife had daringly visited him in prison the night before his execution and swapped places with him.

 
​The real events provide the inspiration but I then play with them, ask ‘what if…?’ and create my own version and my own characters to fit in with the rest of the romantic tale.


0 Comments

    Author

    Susan Leona Fisher : an author's progress.

    Archives

    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.