Lily Graham – Dual Timeline Dramas

Lily Graham’s dual timeline fiction always finds hope in heartbreak – a result she says of being inspired by people who overcome adversity to pursue their dreams. It’s something Lily had to learn to do very early in her own life. Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Lily talks about how she got started in writing, and gives listeners a great opportunity to enter a draw for a signed paperback copy of her book The Island Villa. It’s a dramatic tale of two sisters living in a time of fear and betrayal in a beautiful old Spanish villa where the walls whisper secrets. Guaranteed, they say, to appeal to fans of Kristin Hannah and Victoria Hislop. You can enter the draw at Jenny’s Facebook author page @JennyWheeler.biz or you can get details in the show notes for this episode on the website thejoysofbingereading.com. That’s where you’ll find also links to Lily’s books and her website. Get your entries in by the end of this month, February 28, (2019) to be in with a chance of winning this fascinating paperback! Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: Best advice: start now – you’ll only get better! Finding the silver lining – a life long quest Appreciating the dark side of sweet romance Lily’s “worst kept secret” Enter the draw for a signed paperback A new series and a new name Where to find Lily Graham:  Website: https://lilygraham.net/ Facebook: @LilyRoseGrahamAuthor  Twitter: @lilygrahambooks What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Jenny: But now, here’s Lily.  Hello there Lily and welcome to the show.  It’s great to have you with us… Lily: Thank you so much Jenny. It’s so lovely to be here. Jenny:   I always like as a good story teller to start at the beginning with the “Once Upon a Time” moment and I wondered if for you there was such a moment when it was like an epiphany. You thought you would like to write fiction and your life would not be fulfilled unless you actually managed to do that, and if so was there a catalyst for it? Lily Graham – Mystery author Lily:  Not quite. I think it’s quite a strange thing. From a very young age I just fell in love with books and I have this line in The Paris Secret where my main character Valerie falls into the arms of books the way some people do with men, and that was the story for me. I was always this reader. I don’t know when it was but I made this secret pact with myself one day that some day I would do this. I remember it quite vividly. I think I was about nine years old and it was the first time I really tried to write something and it was so appalling and I was really, really devastated. You know, you just can’t get something right and everything I tried for many, many years after just fell so short of what I wanted it to look like – the books that I’d been reading and the stories that I loved. But there was quite a thing in me that said ‘one day you will write’ and then I grew up and I studied journalism which was writing of a kind. I think it was in my 20’s that I started writing a novel but it was always this quiet thing you do by yourself. And then my best friend used to read all my material, quite kindly, one day she told me about the Amazon KDP program and she’d been reading so much of my work and she said, ‘look I think you should just do this. Just finish one of these books that you’ve got going and do it.’ That was my catalyst moment because it was this project that I could do and I called it “The Lily Graham Project”. I was probably about 32 at the time and I took an entire year and I wrote The Summer Escape. At the time it was called An Invincible Summer, and I’d sort of written it about eight years before but it was so horrendous, it really needed a lot of work and I just did it. A Cornish Christmas – Lily Graham I took that year and it was such a great moment and when we were finished I didn’t actually upload that one to Amazon because it still needed work but I had got the bug and I really wanted to do this – this sort of self-validating thing for myself. So I wrote another story and by the end of that year we uploaded it and that became A Cornish Christmas. At the time it was called The Postcard and it was a novella and I really enjoyed that process. It was so much fun and I was very fortunate to do it because all my friends were in publishing and the media so one of my best friends designed the cover, my best friend that I was speaking about is an editor so I was so fortunate. I wouldn’t say it was the most polished thing that ever could have happened because we weren’t in the publishing world but it was a pretty good first attempt because I had a professional graphic designer do my cover and that sort of thing. So it was a lot of fun and this phone call telling me that there is such a thing as Kindle Direct Publishing – that was the catalyst. But I never expected the whole Lily Graham thing to happen and to become my career. Jenny: So those first books were under your pen name of Lily Graham were they? Lily: Yes. At the time it was called An Invincible Summer which was released the following May and in November 2014 it was The Postcard. What ended up happening was that I got in touch with my publishers at the moment. Someone had contacted me and then I sent through the full manuscript and then I was offered a three book deal, so those two books were republished but they needed some work. The novella was turned into a full-length novel and then I published a fully new book by the end of 2016 with them. Jenny: You’ve chosen an interesting genre slot for your work and certainly the later books. They are sweet romance shot through with a real sense of loss and darker themes. Did those first two books have the dark side as well? A Summer at Seafall Cottage Lily: Yes, I would say that the first three books that I wrote were more commercial women’s fiction, so in the UK they sort of have holiday themes, so that’s when you find a lot of books with, say, Christmas in the title or Summer or Spring and somewhere, but I’ve always loved drama and speaking about human emotions and tragedies, but exploring all these deeper darker themes but in quite a hopeful way. It always comes out, I can’t help it. So those first few were kind of genre-bound. That was about as dark as I was allowed to go and I then had a discussion with my editor and my publisher so the later books, The Island Villa and The Paris Secret are a new genre. They are more historical fiction, and that’s the path I’m now going down. So I’m very happy to have switched genres and I’m very happy that my readers have been so amazing and have come along for the ride. Jenny: They do kind of divide in their settings as well because in the earlier books there is that cosy Cornish thing. I realised when I started to look that there’s quite a sub-genre of Cornish romance. I wondered if there was some particular attraction about Cornwall. Lily: It wasn’t deliberate. I have since seen that there’s a lot of books out there, but I think you come here to need to understand – it’s so beautiful. Cornwall is just this place where I would love to go and live. It’s so far. With my publishers and being in London and the fact that I need to be around for work purposes and my husband. It’s just too far away, it would be about seven hours on the train. But it’s just this magical place and it’s so wild and you really do get the sense of magic when you’re there. Anything can happen and it’s just a wonderful place to be. Every time I go there I develop new ideas. I think it comes from Daphne du Maurier and her Rebecca and as soon as you go there you really feel this intense atmosphere that she describes in her books and, I don’t know, maybe it’s something about death that I tapped into or tried to tap into. I’m a huge de Maurier fan. Jenny: So you were living in England by this stage. For readers who don’t know, you did originally start out in South Africa, but for this writing journey were you already based in England at that time? The Summer Escape – Lily Graham Lily: By the time I was published by Bookouture, so the first books would have come through and I was living here and had traveled to Cornwall quite extensively. You know I’ve always been such an Anglophile – I was watching Poldark and that’s set in Cornwall and those things influenced the second novel. Jenny:  But you don’t think you’ll set any more in Cornwall now? That’s something that’s in the past? Lily: I would never say never. Actually the next book that I’m writing at the moment is set in Devon which is the county next door and then the following one will be back in Cornwall. There’s a big history of UK writers writing about this place. It’s almost like Scotland. There’ so much to it and it almost becomes like a sort of second character. You can have cosy romances or you can have that deeper, darker, ghostly atmosphere – and there’s a lot of ghost stories set down there as well. It’s a good playground I think. Jenny: Now the more recent books, as you’ve mentioned, are set in Paris and on the Spanish island of Formentera. Did you find that you had slightly different readerships for those from the Cornish ones? You mentioned earlier that you felt grateful to your readers for following you, so they came across quite happily with the change in tone, did they? Formentera Island – setting for The Island Villa by Lily Graham Lily: Yes. I think my books were probably packaged more as these commercial novels but at their heart a lot of them, aside from the Christmas stories which are an entirely different beast, a lot of them are quite magical, but all my Summer books were very much along this vein. I just hadn’t really allowed myself to properly go down that dramatic path. So a lot of them I don’t think were very surprised. Even my first novel, it’s about a woman who loses her partner, her future husband, on the day they are about to get married, you know, he gets killed. It’s not as light hearted so I don’t think it was an absolute shock for them that I was going to go down this darker road. But I’m glad that they were happy to come. Also I started writing it when I was 31 or 32, I’m 35 now so you start maturing and I’m happy that they are going along. Jenny: It makes me wonder whether there’s something in your own experience that’s led you to this world view – to be aware of the sun through the clouds or vice versa, to anticipate clouds even in sunshine.: Lily: Yes, I think in some ways it’s growing up in South Africa. Definitely. It’s such a troubled but beautiful country and you do learn to live in a different way, you have a different outlook on life just because there’s a lot of crime, there’s a lot of things to get through. And then from my own personal experiences, I was born with a disability. I was born without my left arm – well part of my left arm – and so I think it’s that sort of thing as well that does in some way – it can’t help but influence what you write about. So there’s always a little bit of darkness because I do believe that when we face our adversities it makes us stronger. And I think the one thing my arm has taught me about life is having the courage to really go after my own dreams because it’s not that this is the worst thing that can happen but it’s just like, ‘well now what?’ It influences you because, I don’t know if it’s just that people don’t expect much from you. I remember in high school there were people who would always congratulate you just for showing up. You’re special just because you came to school today. So I suppose I had a thirst to be worth a little bit more than that. So you start really going after things and see what you can accomplish and I suppose it’s learning how to do things differently like with my arm tying my shoelaces, putting on a watch strap, all of those things. It suppose it just translates into what else can you make happen then that might seem impossible. One of those was I really wanted to work from home and so I moved into becoming a full-time writer so you keep having different goals and dreams and I love to explore that in my books. So a lot of the time there’s someone who’s doing something different. Jenny: So do you mind me asking, just in a very practical way, do you use a keyboard? Do you type with one hand? It just seems remarkably brave to choose a job where you need a keyboard when you are living with that particular challenge. Lily: My agent asked me this as well. I do use a keyboard, maybe because if I write, I think like any sort of millennial, if I write with my hand I just get a cramp. Writing takes as long as it takes and I am quite a fast typist and I take breaks. I suppose an extra hand would maybe make it a bit faster but I feel like I type as fast as I can think,as it is. My dad has two hands and he watches me and it’s like “Wow! How do you do that?” And I say, “How do you write so slow?” The Island Villa – Lily Graham Jenny: So that helps explain a lot about the underlying story of The Island Villa for example. I don’t want to put any spoilers for people who haven’t read it but it is about a dying husband who leaves his wife a poignant legacy. I’ve got a sister-in-law who lost her husband coming up four years ago but it still is a very sad journey for her to walk, and as I was reading it I was thinking, you know, she would love this book and I’m going to recommend it to her because I think it would really help her to feel what other people share with her. And I wondered if you’d got that sort of feedback from bereaved people – that it helps them in a strangely comforting way to read a story like that. Lily: Yes I have, and I’ve been quite surprised by that. Not just this book but I think I really felt that with my second one, A Cornish Christmas, which is about a woman who’s struggling after the death of her mother and I had so many women particularly write in to me to say that they’d just lost their mothers and had gone through something like this and that story was very much inspired by my own experience with my mum who had stage 4 breast cancer and I was terrified about losing her. I think that’s one of the things that writing does – it allows you to explore your worst fears and almost what you hope or what you wish would happen if that had to come to light. The Island Villa was very much that sort of story and I had a reader who had lost her husband. She’s become quite a dear friend and I was quite worried about her reading this novel and how she would receive it and she said that it was quite helpful. I don’t want to give away a spoiler but there’s this moment when she’s still speaking to her husband a lot and she said “Oh my God, Lily, it was like you were in my head!” But it’s just that I know it’s the level of crazy I know I would go to if I ever had to, God forbid, lose my husband. I’m quite sure I’d be wearing his clothes and just going mad. Jenny: Yes, I did have quite a big bereavement in my earlier life, I lost a stepson and I did consciously understand that for a very short time I did have a crazy head. I did recognise that the thoughts I was having weren’t logical and normal but I think everybody who has a major bereavement has those times when they know they’re being a bit crazy but it’s actually quite therapeutic to be like that. Lily: My granny, when she lost my grandfather, went through such a dark time as well and she said she went through this moment when she decided that’s it, enough of this, I’m going to end things. So she went to the bathroom, and it shouldn’t be funny but it really was, and she had all these pills and she thought, well how many do I want to take because I don’t want to end up a vegetable so I just need to know how many will do it. So she ran to the phone to phone up her chemist to ask. And at that moment she thought “well, he’s not going to tell me, is he?” And she says thank God for her good humour so it occurs to her at moment “Okay. No point. Moving on.” Jenny: So if we sort of move on a little from this rather macabre topic, that The Island Villa is a dual timeline story like The Paris Secret. Formentera is an unusual place to set it, I mean it’s not an island I’d ever heard of, set next door to the famous Ibiza, but it’s a wonderful place to set a story and there’s obviously a really interesting historical heritage there. I wondered if there were challenges in doing the research because I guess a lot of the information would have been in Spanish? Adolf Hitler in Paris – on the terrace of the Palais de Chaillot on June 23, 1940, – the setting for Lily Graham’s novel The Paris Secret.Picture thanks to German state archives: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H28708 / CC BY-SA 3.0 DE Lily: Yes, a lot of the information was in Spanish and it was really hard to actually get to the truth of that story – the myths that had surrounded it. I was fortunate enough to get in contact with a few people, historians who lived there and had written books there, because I’d got myself into such a muddle. I think it was the most intense research novel I had done to that point and I really felt it was just this moment when I’d stumbled across something that was so powerful and that was the reason I decided to set it there. I always wanted to do something Spanish and something about the Inquisition but when I came across this little bit of research about this hidden community, I just knew I had to write this story. I have a bit of Jewish ancestry myself and I spoke to a college in Israel that had these papers from this lady named Gloria Mound who’d done a lot of research in the area. Then I spoke to a guy by the name of Martin Davies who’s also a historian and together with those old papers and then Martin who sat with me, just while I was Skyping – he lives in Spain – and telling me where to go and so I got a lot of help. I was very, very fortunate but there were a lot of things that I’m sure I did get wrong and you just have to take this leap of faith because you can get lost in the rabbit warren of research and I was just terrified of getting it wrong – and I’m sure there are bits – but I did try my best. Jenny: Do you read or speak Spanish yourself? Lily: I did one year of Spanish at university and that was great but no, not enough to help me read historic texts. I was putting it into Google translate because there was so much I needed to know, it wasn’t just this ancient world, it was the salt trade and how that worked. And there’s nothing, there’s so little about the salt trade in that area that’s even known. And so I was reading so much more because there’s so much more about different areas of Spain and their more prolific roots but because of how things worked out a lot of that history was just erased, which is quite sad. Jenny: Now we’ve mentioned The Paris Secret and I’m interested to hear you say about the Jewish link in your own history because there’s a key character in The Paris Secret, Madame Joubert, who also shares that heritage. In that story Valerie returns to Paris to discover the truth about what happened to her family during World War II. I wondered if researching that one also presented particular challenges? Bastille Day in Paris, 1940 – from Patrick Buisson book Sex and the Stormtroopers Lily: Yes, that did. That was Kismet in a way. I was reading up about something else and I came across this story about France finally acknowledging its war children, and I don’t want to give away spoilers but it was the story about children born to Nazis and it was so fascinating and it just led me onto different research paths. But the nice thing about it is that there’s so much that we do know and so many readily available sources that you can go to. It was a historical novel but I also tried to make sure it was a novel first. The story was more about Valerie’s story in the 60’s than, say, the Second World War but I just needed to have as many facts as I could in place to make this believable. It was easier to find that information definitely than say compared to The Island Villa set in 1700. Jenny: Now turning away from the specific books to looking to your wider career, I wonder if there’s one thing you’ve done more than any other that you see as being the secret to your success as a writer.  Lily: I think maybe it’s just keeping going. I know that sounds so trite but the one secret I would say is that you just keep going, you keep trying. I remember reading one of the first novel attempts that I tried, and I think it goes back to that nine year old little girl who really wanted to be a writer but the first thing I tried was horrific, it really, really was, and just knowing that eventually you’ll get there. I don’t know where this dogged belief comes from, I mean I think sometimes it’s delusion, but you have this idea and you think I’ll come to it and it will get somewhere and I think that has been the recipe for me. It’s just to keep going, so even though things are bad and there’s been one or two of my novels that weren’t as well received, not in terms of negative press but my third novel just didn’t sell quite as well as the previous two and it was just this blip and I think it was just about keeping going and saying, ‘well this is no guarantee,’ no-one knows if they are ever going to do well but you love this so let’s keep going and who knows what will happen on the fourth one or the fifth one. I’m so grateful that my “success” happened in my later novels, so the last two particularly. For instance, this is the first time I’ve had an audio book deal and I’ve had two foreign rights deals now. So it’s just about persevering and I know that’s so trite but it’s so true. I didn’t get that big debut success that we all dream about – you want to be successful, sell a million copies. It’s just about enjoying the process and keeping going because who knows where you might get. If I’d stopped on the third book I might never have got to a stage where I would have had my first audio deal and that kind of thing. So I would say my secret is so boring – it’s just persistence. Jenny: It sounds great and actually I’m sure you wouldn’t be surprised that that’s what many of the people that I speak to on this podcast say. Lily: I’m glad. I wish it had something to do with lighting candles or beautiful music. Jenny: So talking about lighting candles, I wonder, are you a workaholic and if so, how do you discipline yourself to switch off and unwind? Lily: I’m not really a workaholic, I’m a worrier-holic. So I think the worry’s always there. I’m actually such a procrastinator and that is my worst flaw. I’m a bit of a sprinter when it comes to my novels. So I enjoy – and I hate that I do this because it’s just become my process – I do lock myself up into a room and then I don’t do anything else – literally nothing else. Sometimes it’s hard work to go to the loo. The house looks like an absolute tip, my husband is grumpy because he hasn’t got a wife, my dog is as cross with me because we haven’t gone for walks but that’s how I get a book done. I don’t know how to pace myself, like these people who just do 1,000 words or 2,000 words and then they stop and they do this every day like a marathon – I don’t know how they do it. I feel like that’s some special skill that I just didn’t get and so I worry, worry, worry, and then the deadline gets closer and closer and the next thing you know I’m flat out, I’m pulling all-nighters but that’s when it comes alive because you’re so immersed in this world, it’s almost like that heady rush of when you’re studying for exams, that’s how it feels. And then everyone’s speaking to you and that’s how I write books. And it’s not healthy, I wouldn’t recommend it. Jenny:   Oh that’s fascinating. Moving right along . . . This podcast is called “The Joys of Binge Reading” so let’s move on to talking about who did you like to read and binge read, and you’ve mentioned Daphne du Maurier as one of your classics, but tell us a little about your reading. Gillain McAllister’s best selling thriller Lily:  Yes, I love reading. I think one of my favourites is Kate Furnivall. I could read shopping lists of what she writes. I think she’s just phenomenal. Kate Morton as well, I haven’t actually read her latest, “The Clock Maker’s Daughter” but that’s on my to-be-read pile. I read very eclectically. Under my own name I will have my first children’s novel out this year so I read a lot of middle grade, which I think people might be surprised about. I read a lot of fantasy fiction and that kind of thing I have just discovered crime – specifically psychological thrillers – and I recently enjoyed a novel by Gillian McAllister called No Further Questions – it was phenomenal! Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine It all depends on my mood, so if I am feeling a bit sorry for myself I might re- read Harry Potter, but if I’m feeling quite brave then I will go for something hopeful. I might go for something like Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman – I love that genre it’s quite uplifting. Jenny: You mentioned you’re just publishing a children’s novel – tell us about that? Lily: Yes, the first book is going to be published in New Zealand and Australia on May 2, 2019 its called Star Fell: Willow Moss and the Lost Day. And its about a little girl who has the worst magical power in the family, noone thinks she is special at all until last Tuesday goes missing. For such a long time I’ve been writing under one name, and now with this I am finally writing under my own name. Jenny: Mention that name for people who may not know it. Lily:  My own name is Dominique Valente – which is quite funny because I know it sounds more like my made-up name . . my maiden name was Bradley, and then my husband’s name is Valente. Launching the Lily Graham Project was a way of protecting myself in case it was a horrible failure. I was a journalist and I thought if the first book was a roaring disappointment I didn’t want my colleagues laughing at me. Jenny:  Oh I’m sure they wouldn’t have! Lily: Oh, it was so stupid because I used the same photograph so I had friends asking ‘me is this you?’ It was the worst kept secret! Circling back to the beginning at the end  Jenny: At this stage in your career, if you were doing it all again, what would you change – if anything? Lily:  I think I would have wished I’d had the courage to pursue fiction writing from the beginning. I don’t regret working in journalism at all, because I am quite a sensitive soul and the newsroom was a really good experience and toughened me up a lot. I would have tried to finish a novel earlier and know you don’t have to wait ten years. You will get better – but you can’t get better if you don’t write. Jenny: So what is next for Lily the writer?  What are you working on, and new projects? Lily:  I have now moved into a one book a year schedule – I used to write two, but I have had to scale back because of my children’s novel. so I am still writing two books a year, but one is for my traditional publisher and one for my new children’s series. That is going to be quite different and a little bit of fresh air to be honest because I get a little more breathing room. The next novel will be out in October, it’s set in the Second World War in the Blitz and its a group of women, friends who live in the Devonshire countryside. I have made a start, it’s in first draft stage and I am quite excited about that. Jenny:  We are really excited about your generosity in making available a signed paperback copy of The Island Villa to our readers. that is really very generous of you. Listeners can enter the draw at Jenny’s Author Facebook Page, @JennyWheeler.biz Entries must be in by February 28, 2019. Jenny: Do you enjoy interacting with readers and where can they find you online? Lily:  Yes I love hearing from my readers and they can find me on my website, https://lilygraham.net/ on Twitter,  @lilygrahambooks, and Facebook @LilyRoseGrahamauthor, It gives me so much joy – I had this one reader in America but almost every couple of weeks she would send me messages, encouraging me “You Can do this!” My reade4rs are so kind, to take the time to send such nice messages and emails, its fabulous it really is… Jenny:It’s been wonderful talking to you today.  Do take time to enter the book giveaway and thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with. Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]