The Renaissance Theatre and murder - the Next Big Thing by Gabrielle Kimm

I'm totally thrilled to welcome Gabrielle Kimm, author of His Last Duchess and The Courtesan's Lover to tell us about her Next Big Thing - a game I was nominated for by Helen Hollick.

I'm a big fan of Gabrielle's page-turning books, so here are her answers to the next big thing questions.

1) What is the working title of your next book?

It’s now a fixed and final title!  It’s called ‘The Girl With The Painted Face’.

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

My publishers told me that they were keen for me to write another novel set in Renaissance Italy, as the two previous books (His Last Duchess and The Courtesan’s Lover – both set in that era) have been selling quite nicely so far.  As a trained drama teacher, I had been interested in writing a book about actors for some time, but had presumed that it would be difficult to come up with a sensible central female character, if women’s parts in plays at that time were always taken by boys.  (Other than the ‘girl pretends to be boy to learn to act and then the truth of her identity is discovered’ scenario, there didn’t seem to be much opportunity for an original story.  But then in the course of researching, I came across the biography of an amazing woman called Isabella Andreini – a consummate Renaissance actress and a writer of some distinction – and discovered, much to my surprise and delight, that in Europe, unlike in Puritan Britain, women were as numerous and as successful as men on the stage.  It was an exciting discovery!  The aforesaid Isabella makes a cameo appearance (as herself!) in my story.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

Historical Fiction.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Oh, this is such a difficult question! (I’m not that clued up about young actors at the moment ...)  There’s a very pretty girl called Jenna Louise Coleman, who I think would be rather good as my lovely Sofia, and as for my central male character, Beppe Bianchi ... oh, that’s hard.  Beppe’s an actor, a tumbler and a juggler – he’s quirky and funny and tall and leggy ... the closest I can get is a much younger David Tennant (Beppe is only twenty-three).  But even the adorable Mr Tennant is not quite right.  I’d need to spend time ploughing through ‘Spotlight’ (directory of actors) to find the right person, I think!   There are parts in the story which could happily be played by Jude Law, Simon Callow, David Suchet and ... oh, possibly Alex Kingston – but you’ll have to read it to find out which parts!

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Seventeen-year-old seamstress, Sofia, adopted by an anarchic troupe of travelling actors, is wrongly accused of murder; a catalogue of misunderstandings and deliberate deceptions threaten her future happiness.

6) Will your book be self-published or traditionally published?

Traditionally – like my other two novels, it will be published by Sphere, an imprint of Little, Brown (in November 2013).

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Rather terrifyingly, I was given just over a year to complete the first draft to a standard fit to be handed in.  Each of my previous books having taken the best part of three years to write, this was something of a challenge!  I did manage to make my deadline, but only just!

8) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

As I’ve said, I was originally inspired by the discovery of the extraordinary Isabella Andreini (who amongst her many, many achievements, could improvise in front of a paying audience  ... in rhyming verse!!), but that then sparked a desire to write about the buzzing and exciting world of theatre.  I’m teaching in a small performing arts school at the moment, so I regularly spend a couple of days a week surrounded by ‘the buzzing and exciting world of theatre’ – perhaps it’s not that surprising that I’ve been wanting to write about it!

9) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

The story centres around this troupe of travelling Commedia dell’ Arte actors.  The traditions of Commedia dell’Arte are totally fascinating, and they’re alive and well in the modern world! (I’ve had the best fun researching - including practical acting workshops with a modern troupe – the Rude Mechanical Theatre Company - so that I could learn to move and stand like a real commedia actor.) Although never formally adopted in Britain,  commedia traditions have in many ways filtered down into our own modern theatrical inheritance, from people like Charlie Chaplin, through to (surprising though it may seem ...) The Simpsons!  Commedia is a comedy of archetype – it sets up recognisable pastiches of types of individuals, and then makes sure that the ‘little man’ wins out over authority and pomposity. 

I’m also bringing out a little ebook ‘prequel’ in October – like an appetite whetter for the main novel.  It will be called ‘Playing a Dangerous Game’ and will be on Kindle for 99p.  It’s 12,000 words long – so perhaps more of a long short story than anything else, and it features my central character, Sofia, in a self-contained story, which leads into the beginning of ‘The Girl with the Painted Face’.

Now, let me introduce you to a couple of my writer friends. I live and work in rural West Sussex, and am lucky enough to have two other novelist friends living nearby.  Isabel Ashdown and Jane Rusbridge and I all met through the MA in Creative Writing course at the university in Chichester, and we now do lots of author gigs together, both locally and further afield, under the banner of ‘The Three Sussex Writers’.  Jane and Isabel are wonderful writers, and I feel very fortunate to be able to work with them regularly.

Take a look at their web sites:

http://isabelashdown.com

http://www.janerusbridge.co.uk

Thanks Gabrielle - all the best with Playing a Dangerous Game and The Girl with the Painted Face.

www.gabriellekimm.com

The History Room by Eliza Graham

I am delighted to welcome Eliza Graham today,  to talk about her new novel, The History Room.

Hello Eliza, nice to have you here. Letchford, the private school in The History Room feels very genuine. Did you base the school on any particular place?

My children are at schools that sometimes play matches against various other schools in the South that look pretty amazing: acres of grounds, beautiful old buildings.Some of the pupils are pretty slick and amazing-looking, as well. It's easy to think that everything must be perfect. But of course, teenagers are teenagers wherever they are. I certainly had an idea of what the school looked like and it was fun building the world in my imagination.

I was interested in how you parallelled the effects of the past, particularly war, on two different generations. The repercussions of the injury to Meredith's husband and his rehabilitation must have been difficult to write. How did you go about tackling this subject?

We live quite near Wootton Bassett, to where repatriation of dead service personnel used to take place until recently. Every time I saw one of those big Globemasters overhead I'd feel a sense of dread and wonder who was waiting for a lost son or husband or father. I spent some time watching documentaries about how emergency medical transfers are operated between Camp Bastion and England to get the contemporary details right (I sincerely hope). Very sadly it seemed that almost every week there were details of casualties in the newspapers and it wasn't hard to learn about the work institutions such as Headley Court in Surrey, the rehabilitation centre, offer. It was tragic to read about the effects on relationships of injuries in warfare. But some of the stories of service personnel who'd survived appalling injuries were inspirational, too.

How did you research the Czechoslovakian wartime history? Were any of the events based on real incidents?

I read biographies to try and get a real sense of the tragic history of Czechoslovakia from 1938 and through the Soviet occupation and there were stories I came across that were similar to the one I tried to portray of young people deciding they couldn't bear to stay on in their own country once the Soviets smashed the Prague Spring. The escape stories were quite gripping in many cases. It must have such a hard decision to make: to leave your home or stay on.

Emily is a very dark character and pivotal to the plot. Please give us an insight into how her character developed. 

Although she is dark she was actually really interesting to write, which sounds awful. But most of the other characters are more or less decent people, or aspiring to be so. So writing about someone who has no scruples was rather a release. I wanted to play a rather unpleasant stunt involving a very lifelike 'Reborn' doll and I needed someone who could do unpleasant things and was exploitative, preying on younger girls.
 

On a more serious note, I have read quite a lot about adolescent girls who cut themselves. I found it hard to understand at first but the more I read about it the more I wanted to know. So Emily was quite intriguing for me and I enjoyed writing her parts of the novel.

Thanks very much, Eliza. 
Check out Eliza's other novels, Playing with the Moon, Restitution, and Jubilee 


Review of The History Room
This is a novel where nearly everyone has a secret past, and their past impacts on the present to create a plot that gradually unfolds for the reader. The plot begins with a prank at a private school, which shocks the pupils and staff. In trying to find the culprit, Meredith Cordingley, a teacher at the school, must delve into the motives of her pupils and into her family's past. In doing so she discovers her father, the headmaster, is not the man she thought he was, and that the repercussions of war still haunt him. Not only must she contend with family secrets, but Emily, a teaching assistant at the school has an axe to grind, and will stop at nothing to get revenge for events of the past. Chilling and mysterious, this is a book I can highly recommend.