Liz Fenwick – Secrets & Lies in Cornwall

Amidst the beauty of Cornwall, two women struggle with their past: one cannot remember hers, the other cannot forget… Hi there I’m your host Jenny Wheeler. The Guardian newspaper called Liz Fenwick the “Queen of the Cornish novel” and today Liz talks about the emotional stories of family secrets and lies across generations she loves to write – and explains why Cornwall is the perfect place for heart-deep drama. Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: Liz’s dedication to getting it right How the ‘Queen of Cornish fiction’ made 34 drafts of one book What’s so special about Cornwall How she hasn’t let dyslexia hold her back Showing them how its done: encouraging her sons to dream Why she’d never put a deadline on dreams Where to find Liz Fenwick:  Website: http://lizfenwick.com/ Facebook: @liz.fenwick.author  Twitter: @liz.fenwick Instagram: @liz_fenwick Pinterest:https://www.pinterest.nz/lizfenwick3/ 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 Liz.  Hello there Liz and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us. Liz: It’s great to be here! Jenny: Beginning at the beginning – was there a “Once Upon a Time” moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction?  And if so what was the catalyst for it? Liz Fenwick – Women’s fiction author Liz: Ooh… that’s always an interesting question because I have always wanted to write from early on. I was an only child, and so books became my best friend, and my grandfather who was from Ireland. He lived with us and he was a great story teller and a huge lover of poetry so I was surrounded by words and stories from an early age, and I was that typical kid that loved the story so much that I would continue the story in my head and I started telling my own stories, and then eventually I started writing it down. And what happened was I went to university, got a degree in English literature, wrote three quarters of a novel for my senior thesis and then the real world happened… I went out and got a job… But the interesting thing was my professor gave me an agent’s name to show her my novel that I’d started for my thesis and at that point I got cold feet and I didn’t follow through. Cornwall became home for Boston-born writer It wasn’t until 2004, when I realized I didn’t want to just be writing non fiction. At that time we were living abroad, I had run a huge expat organisation, I had given many talks about how to move with expat children, I had written many articles for corporate magazines about organising an ex pat life, and I just realized I wanted to write fiction again. I went back through my papers and found the name of the agent and Googled her and I thought “Oh my God, what have I given up?” If I look back now, many years since, I think I was a far better writer when I was coming out of university in 1985 – 86 – but I didn’t have the life experience. The book I had written was called The Irish Woman and it was based on the experience of my grandmothers and aunts who were all living around us in the Boston area. It was a cracking story but I realized when I looked back on it – there were childbirth scenes in there – and I thought ‘Oh My God I didn’t have a clue.’ so I think that to become the writer that even then I wanted to be I had to have lived life, had the shiny edges knocked off a bit, come to understand sorrow and grief – all those things that happen in the course of most people’s lifetimes. So when I came back in 2004 I wasn’t as skilled, because I hadn’t been writing fiction, but I certainly had a better grasp of what it was like to live… Jenny: It is intriguing because you do have an English accent and you have mentioned you were born in Boston, so how did you establish yourself as an American-born writer who has made Cornwall your domain? St Ives, Cornwall – a typical Cornish scene. One visit to Cornwall and Liz fell in love Liz: How did I get rid of my American accent?  Well that was a by product of my working life in the UK. This is one of those funny stories in a way.. I was 25 and I was bored with American men and my father was a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts which is the daughter company of the Honorable Artillery Company of London. They came over when I was 25. They’d been doing exchanges for several years and the first time I met this group of people I was 13 and certainly not at my finest. The Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company . . training gentlemen since 1638 Well move on till I am 25 and I had gone from being a mousy, spotty faced- wearing braces teenage girl to a bit of a blond bombshell and it was one of those lovely things. There was a drinks party on the Quayside and the day before my mother said to me the day before “Oh you go ahead, I’ve done enough of these things over the years, you go so I attended this event with my father, it was a beautiful June evening and we were just at that age where Dad was looking incredibly distinguished and I was looking as I said a bit of a blond bombshell, and people’s jaws dropped and they were saying oh my goodness what happened to Jim and where is his wife? But the funniest thing was one of the young men that Dad had met years before and they’d kept in touch and Tony had seen me when I was 13, and Dad walked up to him and said Tony you remember Elizabeth and Tony’s jaw dropped and he said “I remember Elizabeth” and we had the most tremendous fun and he issued as invitation as did a number of the others who I had shown around Boston – “Do come to London, we’d really enjoy showing you the city.” That was June, I went in October and one – I’m sorry to say very intoxicated evening they asked me if I was eligible for Irish citizenship, which I knew I was, so the next morning with a rather large hangover, I picked up the paper work. That was October and the following April I came to London with the expectation that I would stay about three years. I met the man who is now my husband two weeks after I arrived and he is the one who introduced me to Cornwall. Less than a month after we met he brought me down here to his parent’s house; it was a beautiful June weekend, the hedgerows were in flower, there were foxgloves like exclamation marks into the deep blue sky and I fell in love with Cornwall. And I don’t think, if I hadn’t have fallen in love with Cornwall, that we would have been married coming up 28 years in July . . . Cornish foxgloves Jenny: That’s a lovely story and it does bring us very nicely to your writing because you have made Cornwall your domain and I wonder what was special about it as a literary location? There are a range of mysteries set in Cornwall, there are the cozies, but yours are darker and deeper. What is it about Cornwall that appeals to writers and readers? Liz:  There are certain places that speak to people  and Cornwall is one of those places. When I went to Ireland I felt very clearly my roots go deep there and I wanted that. I came to Cornwall and I had no roots here – well I do now, but I will never be Cornish and the only way I could hold onto that was to write about it. The landscape inspires me Cornwall is such a raw and wild place, you cross the Tamar and there is magic and something that is very untamed about it that just spoke to me. Historic Poldark image – Cornwall captures the imagination Jenny: Number seven in your Cornwall books I think is about to be published, is that right? Liz: Yes it’s A Path To The Sea. Jenny: You feel very much accepted by the Cornish community now, is that right? Liz: It is very much so. They’ve taken us very much to their hearts. We have been global nomads. We bought our home here in 1996, and at that time my husband was working in the oil industry and we were sent all over the place. Our Cornish neighbors never treated us as if this was our holiday house, they understood that this was out base, this was the place my children were always going to regard as home. I was if you like, their “token American” and now I am living here virtually full time they have opened their arms and accepted us fully. Jenny: That’s great . . . Now you’ve described One Cornish Summer as a “Marmite book.”  Apart from the fact that it’s surprising to meet an American who has heard of Marmite, what did you mean by that? And may be you should begin by explaining what Marmite is to those listeners who may not know. Quintessential British product – BBC photo Liz:  Well I experienced Marmite because my husband likes it on his toast. It’s very rich and dark and I think quite frankly it’s disgusting. It’s very rich in Vitamin B . . . Supposed to be very good for you and my children like it too – it is very much an acquired taste and one I’ve never acquired. I suppose the closest thing to it – I think the Australians have Vegemite – it certainly isn’t to everybody’s taste – it divides people. And One Cornish Summer I think does that on a couple of accounts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-8683vgO90 I think the biggest one is the use of poetry. there is a lot of John Donne’s poetry in it. The book is about early onset Alzheimer’s which is not an easy subject to deal with but if you have ever worked with or loved anybody with Alzheimer’s one of the things they hold onto is music. You”ll be aware that copyright is an issue particularly in music, so it was easier to use poetry which is out of copyright. But there is another reason I chose John Donne’s poetry one I love it, but two its so full of metaphor and it changes meaning at every reading and I think it really expressed Hebe, the character who suffers the illness is as a person. People also feel uncomfortable about her relationship with a younger man. Jenny: Yes I admit that’s the part that I found the most challenging, particularly in this Me Too environment – maybe a double standard here – one rule for man and another for a woman. Liz: Yes and I suppose also the other main character – Lucy – she isn’t the most likeable character at the start of the book when we don;t know her motivation. There are a lot of challenges for the reader initially but I hope by the end people have embraced both women into their hearts for the various reasons. Jenny: What made you decide to write about two such challenging women? Liz: Well I knew I wanted to write about early onset Alzheimer’s because my best friend’s sister is suffering from the illness and is sadly close to the end and I am an only child, they live next door to me and she was very much my big sister in a way… when my friend got married 12 years ago she was already suffering but not functioning, and it broke my heart, and then my mother is – not early onset – but at the early stages of it as well, so there was a part of me that was grieving and I wanted to tell that story but I didn’t know how. And then I went to a historic home here in Cornwall, Godophin House. Godolphin House – picture National Trust It used to be the grandest house in Cornwall, but now you have a beautiful loggia and a wonderful facade but it is really nothing more than big farmhouse with a couple of really grand rooms rooms, if I am honest. But in the central courtyard there is a one wall standing that is only half the height it once was it was part of the Great Hall and it is really amazing. I realized that the house – through not being used by the owner, the Duke of Leeds, began to fall down and stone by stone it was taken away and that is a good image of what happens with Alzheimer’s, you get taken away stone by stone until only a shadow is left. The Guardian described Liz as the “Queen of the Cornish novel. . She knows her market and has nailed it utterly” Jenny: I felt very drawn into One Cornish Summer, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to Google the character of Thomas Grylls – but I don’t think that he was a real person? Liz: No obviously I had to know his story . . Normally when a book is published here in the UK , when it goes into paperback, they ask you to put extra material in . . . So I wondered if people would want to read the letters between Thomas Grylls and Lucia? They came back and said “no” and so “OK I will store that away for another time because I was intrigued by him I loved exploring the Civil War history, particularly as a lot of it happened around here, very close to my home. . . Jenny: Yes and for those who haven’t yet read the book, it isn’t exactly a dual timeline mystery but the character of Thomas Grylls is someone who was involved in the English Civil War and he becomes a fascination for Hebe, one of the key characters and so his presences informs the whole book The Returning Tide – Liz Fenwick Jenny: You’ve also worked with other dual time line stories – The Returning Tide for example is partly set in Cornwall in 1943. What is the appeal of the historical aspect? Liz: Well I have always loved history. All of my books touch history in some way. In a Cornish Affair we have another great house, my editor said I could do historical but I was concerned I would get caught up in research. My next book which is coming out in June in set in the 1960s, which I know for some people isn’t considered history, but it will tackle the Cold War period, and I’ve just begun research on my next book, will be partly set in World War I. Jenny: Your books contain romance and mystery and have been likened to Kate Morton.  How would you categorise them? Liz: I could take the broad sweep and say they are women’s fiction. I would like to say I emotional fiction. I love mystery, I love things being solved. I always enjoy love stories, but it won’t be the central driving story of the plot. If I am reading a crime novel chances are I am enjoying aspects of the crime but what I am really interested in is the relationships, and in my own books – with One Cornish Summer the key relationship is really between Lucy and Hebe and all the other family dynamics and in The Returning Tide it is between the sisters and how that sisterly bond can be broken. I normally have at least two protagonists and in all my books and inevitably one of them is not going to have a happy ending. Everything may not be sewn up at the end, but I like to leave them at a place where the reader knows there is going to be a happy outcome. Jenny: One Goodreads reviewer noted “you know it’s not going to be an easy read when one of the primary characters has early onset Alzheimers . . .”  Are you drawn to deeper, darker stories? And why do you think that is? Tackling darker subjects – early onset Alzheimer’s illness in One Cornish Summer Liz:  I don’t know . . when I started writing again in 2004 I thought I would be writing sweet romances but it became apparent that my voice was darker than that, and by the time my first book was accepted I was writing Number Seven and I’d seen my writing develop and mature into the darker things. I have always been fascinated by strong women who have to confront their own weaknesses and beliefs and I don’t think you are going to find that unless you probe some of the problems that happen in real life. My greatest joy is if I reach readers through the emotional sides of the story and that gives me the greatest pleasure.. there was someone who wrote me a letter – she worked in a Care Home and she said “Thank you so much, you have told it beautifully, with heart, with understanding, I really felt lifted by it” And I thought “I’ve done my job.” Jenny: You’re obviously now very rooted in Britain, and I saw a note somewhere that your books were “too English for the US market?” What did they mean by that? A Cornish Affair in translation – in 14 languages Liz: The reason I said it is I am not published in the US. Editors in the US have said they are “too English” and part of that is potentially they are slightly slower bringing you into the story – there’s not a car chase at the start.. I understand where they are coming from. I have a solid core of readers in the UK, and I became the equivalent of a Sunday Times best seller in Sweden with A Cornish Affair, I do very well in Germany and in Holland, I am published in 14 languages, so a pretty broad sweep. Jenny: Women’s fiction often does open in a slightly more reflective way, not a cataclysmic event.. It seems to me that’s typical of the genre . . . . You’ve also never made any secret of your dyslexia. . . Liz: That’s right. I am dyslexic. In some ways it’s amazing that I have a degree in English literature, and I have the rise of computers partly to thank for that. I embarrassed myself on Facebook , as the world becomes much smaller. The principal of my high school was making a comment online and I was saying that I didn’t get the mark I deserved in my senior year at school because I couldn’t spell. In one essay on Samuel Johnson I spell Johnson in five different ways, and I wasn’t aware of it because I couldn’t see it. Any my English teacher could not accept that there were times when I cannot even look up a word in the dictionary because I don’t know where to begin. In some ways its become a blessing… my spoken vocabulary is reasonably rich but when I go to write I simplify because I don;t know how to spell many of the words that I can say which means my books are accessible to a wider audience. Jenny: When did you first realize there was an issue? Liz: At primary school. Because my reading comprehension is far superior to my spelling and reading aloud it was always a problem. To me the words don’t stay on the page in the right place – they move. If I had to read aloud – and it still is one of the things that gives me horrors. I practise laboriously – and another author with mild dyslexia said to me “Noone is going to have the book open at exactly the same page as you are reading from, so relax” which did make be feel a little better. One of the pieces of advice given to writers who want to get published is to read their work on the page, which I think is brilliant advice, but I can’t do that, so I have a computer read it to me – I use text to voice software which is just great because it doesn’t inject any emotion into it, so you can hear ‘clunky’ sentences from what the computer says. Jenny: And is that now part of your writing process? Liz: Oh very much part of my writing process, particularly now I am writing a book a year.. . . The reason is I don’t have time to put a book aside for very long between edits .. sometimes I might only have a weekend… And that’s not much time to develop a bit of distance from it. Hearing it strikes a different part of my brain and I can assess it differently. Jenny: That’s so interesting that you interact with it differently from the written word on the page. Liz: Very much so. I find it is very good for transitions. When a computer is reading it you can pick up the plot holes – it’s a huge part of my editing process. the only thing is it takes a long time – it will take me a week or ten days because I do a paragraph repeatedly until I get it right. But it does prepare you well for the audio book because there’s nothing worse than hearing someone reading your work and not liking it! Jenny:  I don’t know if you know Joanna Penn who is an expert in the indie publishing area. In her podcast she’s been talking about getting voice training to voice her own audio books – and how it has made her so much more aware to how they sound from the page. she would write her earlier books quite differently. Turning to your wider career  . . .  Liz in Dubai – 11 years there Jenny: You describe yourself as a “expat expert” and you’ve moved internationally nearly a dozen times…Tell us something about your life before settling in Cornwall. Liz:  Well I spent the first 26 years of my life in Massachusetts, but then I made the decision to move to the UK and very soon after that I met the man who was to become my husband. He worked in the oil industry and we married two years later. He had never been posted abroad before we married but very soon after we married he got posted abroad. We went to Calgary, then to Moscow, we came back here briefly, and I had my third child, Sasha here at that time, then we went to Houston, Indonesia, we were in Dubai for nearly 11 years and a couple of times we came back here – so I did learn a tremendous amount in that time and got good at advising companies on how to move families more effectively and more compassionately. Jenny: Is there one thing in your writing career, that you’ve done perhaps more than any other, that is the secret of your success? Liz:  Perseverance! I was on a writer’s panel just this past Saturday and talking about the second book that was published – A Cornish Affair – and that book has been re-written 34 times. . . so I would say the reason I’m here, Book Seven is coming out, I am working on Book Eight. Believe me there were times when I thought I should stop. I joined the Romance Writers Association and they have a new writer’s scheme which I joined. In that you need to produce a new novel a year and and established writer will critique it… I was doing that one summer – you had to submit the MS in August – and it was a summer nothing like the one we’ve just had – that’s been brilliant – but they can be quite rainy.. and in the two weeks coming up to the deadline the kids were young and they couldn’t do much except play in the garden unless I took them somewhere. Well I was under deadline and I felt really bad because they spent an awful lot of time watching videos and trying to kill one another in the garden while I was trying to hit my deadline – at the end of the summer I said to the kids and to my husband do you want me to give up and my son who is now 26 and a mechanical engineer looked up and said “No Mum, I just want you to be better at time management.” I also knew at the point because they were behind me – what would I teach them if I gave up? I wanted to show them that having dreams is important, and also it is important that there isn’t a deadline on reaching your dreams. Jenny: You’ve mentioned once that you were a “dreamer” who became a “doer” That seems to fit quite nicely into that last sentence..! Liz:  Yes! I had lots of dreams. The biggest one was to be a published author. In my early life I didn’t have the perseverance, or the thick skin it takes, because not everyone is going to like your book. And editors will usually not tell you what they like, they tell you what’s wrong, so you can fix it, so you don’t get the glowing pats on the back that you would quite like along the way. I’ve learned how to take dreams and make them happen. Turning to Liz as reader Jenny:    The series is called “The Joys of Binge Reading” because I see it as providing inspiration for people who like to read series. Once Upon A River – Diane Setterfield Liz: Well I just picked up Diane Setterfield’s Once Upon A River. She wrote The Thirteenth Tale and Bellman & Black. I love her work, I would love to be able to write like her. But if we are talking about binge reading, I think the writer I go to for binge reading is Georgette Heyer. If I really need to “lift my soul” I will dive in and read a couple of those back to back.. But also, I love Kate Atkinson – inevitably I should have written some names down – but those are some of those I am looking forward to. Historical fiction is my “go to” read, it’s what I enjoy the most, which is why I was probably afraid to write it, which is why my books tend to straddle two time lines. Jenny: You know I feel there might be a Civil War book in there somewhere because Thomas Grylls seemed to indicate quite a fascination with that time. Liz: Well it’s hard to around here. We have a Civil War cannon ball that was found in our house when we were renovating it. So it’s very close to the surface here. But I think the purely historical market is fairly tricky right now so I think I will stay with having a foot in both camps! It gives slightly wider appeal, perhaps. 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?  Liz: I wouldn’t change anything. I have been absolutely delighted. I am so grateful that it came to me at this time in my life. The kids were raised, we’d stopped travelling around the world, what could I do? I was in my late forties and I hadn’t practiced my profession in years, so it was just the ideal time to blossom. I wouldn’t change a thing. Jenny: What is next for Liz the writer?  What are you working on, and new projects? Liz: New projects – Book Eight is coming out it’s set in World War I and current day and it will about the Tamar, the river that divides Cornwall and Devon, so that will be a very interesting one to write, and then the one that comes out in June, A Path To the Sea – three protagonists a mother, grand daughter and daughter and secrets beyond belief! Jenny: Do you enjoy interacting with readers and where can they find you online? Liz: I love connecting with my readers and I feel very blessed to have met quite a few of them. I am on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook I am also on Pinterest but that is more for people who might be curious about what things look like so if you wanted to find out that Kit from One Cornish Summer actually looked like Paul Bettany, you’d find that there. Paul Bettany – a good model for Kit in One Cornish Summer? Jenny: I was just wondering if you ever thought about your characters as famous actors . . . Liz: I most certainly do, particularly as I usually write in the female point of view. I rarely give much description about the women I am writing about unless if it is essential to the story. But I have to really describe the men well, because they are seen through her eyes, and I really have a hard time with that because I tend to pick actors I am fascinated by. So Paul Bettany is definitely Kit in One Cornish Summer. He was in the film Wimbledon . . . Jenny: It’s been wonderful talking thank you so much for your time, and we wish you all the best with your writing. 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]