I started writing my first book when I was still at school. It wasn't historical fiction, it was high fantasy, and it was the first of ten books, under the collective title The Watcher's Heir . I knew from the word go that it was going to have this number of books, although I didn't really work out exactly what would happen in each one. Twenty-five years on and the books are still not finished, although I now only have a couple more to go! Every Christmas I settle down and manage to write a chapter or two more, and every New Year it is my resolution to finish them. I suspect this will go on for a few years more. In the passage of time since then, I've written more than a dozen books. I can't quite pinpoint what it is which keeps obstructing the conclusion of these books. It could be that I am not the same person I was 25 years ago (who is?!), and so the voice which began the books is almost unrecognisable. It could be that I have now passed the age almost all of my ...
This week, I'm delighted to be teaming up with The Coffee Pot Book Club to host Ellen Read's fabulous new book The Feathered Nest on the #HistFicThursdays blog! But, enough from me... let's meet the book: Murder comes to Norfolk Island, but is the killer after Alexandra Archer’s Tahitian black pearl or a lost illustration of the rare Green Parrot? The Thorntons, along with a small team of people, mount an expedition to Norfolk Island, a small island in the South Pacific, to study the Green Parrot and set up research programmes to help protect it and other endangered birds. As a birthday surprise, Alexandra’s father tells her she is to be the official photographer for the expedition. Her father gives her a black pearl brooch that Alexandra’s great-grandfather had bought off a merchant in Hong Kong in the 1850s. The pearls are Tahitian black pearls. Before they depart Melbourne, they learn that Norfolk Island has had its first murder. It sends ripples of unease th...