It is always great to find a book inspired by real people, and even better to find one inspired by the writer's own family research. For today's #HistFicThursdays blog, I am thrilled to be welcoming Alison Huntingford to the blog with a guest post about her book Beyond the Dark Ocean , as part of her Coffee Pot Book Club tour! Read on to find out about how her own family history inspired her new book, and her process of researching it. But first, let's meet the book... Blurb A family united, a family divided… In 1906, the Huntingford family leaves England for a hopeful new life in Canada, but for eldest son Georgy, the promise of opportunity quickly becomes a test of endurance, responsibility, and fate. As he comes of age amid the hardships of immigrant life, the outbreak of the First World War pulls him back across the ocean and into a world forever changed by loss and sacrifice. When Georgy’s brother disappears in the chaos of war, grief and...
Every Christmas holiday, Ginny, Jude and I have a story day. This, quite simply, is a day when we all sit down together and have a mega long writeathon. We are fully immersed in our own fantasy world and our poor parents have to put up with our obsession. We each have our "story story" which is our main story. Tomorrow I am revisiting my old story story that I finished when I was still a kid. There was a reasonably good plot but the writing was iffy, and there were way too many characters. Today, I sat down and wrote a list of characters that I couldn't bear to miss out... Here's my vague list of essential characters to include. To give you an idea of how many have been left out, here's some others I can remember: Jacob, Felice, Calantha, Edward, Nicholas, David, Eloise and Michael. I'm sure there are more which I've forgotten! Yes...that was as well as the list in the picture!! As you can see, some of the characters stick with you...