For this week's #HistFicThursdays blog, I'm delighted to be welcoming Rosemary Hayward to the blog with a guest post about her new release Strait Lace , as part of her Coffee Pot Book Club tour. Read on to discover the history surrounding this fabulous book. But first, let's meet the book... Blurb It is 1905. Edwardian England. Harriet Loxley, the daughter of a vicar and niece to a prominent Nottingham lace manufacturer, spends her days playing cricket with her brother, scouring the countryside for botanical specimens, and never missing an opportunity to argue the case for political power for women. Given the chance to visit the House of Commons, Harriet witnesses the failure of a historic bill for women’s voting rights. She also meets the formidable Pankhurst women. When Harriet gets the chance to study biology at Bedford College, London, she finds her opportunity to be at the heart of the fight. From marching in the street, to speaking to hostile c...
Three years ago, when I launched my first book, Clemency made me two CDs to take with us on our roadtrip. In many respects, those became the soundtrack for my entire family saga. But many of the songs belong to the finished novels. This blog is looking at the music which inspires me while I'm writing. As I mentioned in last night's blog and in my #AuthorOfTheWeek interview, most of the music I listen to when I'm writing has no words. This is the safest way of ensuring I don't just start writing out the song lyrics instead of my stories! But, for the sake of this blog, I'm thinking about a mixture of songs and instrumental music, just to ring the changes! So I've come up with 6 pieces which inspire me (there could have been many more, but I don't want to bore you!) - here they are: 1 - The last three tracks of the Gladiator soundtrack (Elysium, Honour Him, Now We Are Free) [Hans Zimmer] I fell in love with this soundtrack from the moment I went to wat...