Hello, world. I do find it difficult to write my books, hold down my job, parent my children, and blog, so today I’m just going to let you know that I have a new book out and where you can get it, and give you this link to my Facebook page where you’ll have an easier time getting news and info out of me.

New book: Stars Across the Ocean. You can purchase it here.

A rich and satisfying story of two women with indomitable spirits and the high costs they have to pay for being strong-minded, from the author of the bestselling LIGHTHOUSE BAY and EMBER ISLAND.

1874: Only days before she is to leave the foundling home where she grew up, Agnes Resolute discovers that, as a baby, she had been abandoned with a small token of her mother: a unicorn button.

Agnes always believed her mother had been too poor to keep her, but after working as a laundress in the home she recognises the button as belonging to Genevieve Breckby, the beautiful and headstrong daughter of a local noble family. Agnes had seen Genevieve once, in the local village, and had never forgotten her.

Despite having no money, Agnes will risk everything in a quest that will take her from the bleak moors of northern England to the harsh streets of London, then on to Paris, Ceylon, and finally Australia. As Agnes follows her mother’s trail, she makes choices that could cost her dearly. But is Genevieve capable of being the mother Agnes hopes she will be?

An enthralling story about love, motherhood and choosing who you belong to in the world by the bestselling author of Lighthouse Bay and Ember Island.

Emma of Normandy ( c. 985 – 1052)

Everything having been thus duly settled, the king [Canute] lacked nothing except a most noble wife…. But she refused ever to become the bride of Knútr, unless he would affirm to her by oath, that he would never set up the son of any other wife other than herself to rule after him… so she, wisely provided for her offspring, knew in her wisdom how to make arrangements in advance, which were to be to her advantage.

~ Anonymous monk who wrote with and on behalf of Emma, Encomium Emmae Reginae, 1041/42.

 This week, we will dive into pre-Norman England to find a Norman queen co-ruling the Anglo-Saxon and Danish kingdom. Her name was Emma. She was married to two kings of England and mothered two more, and was the great-aunt of William the Conqueror. In fact, it was through her, and therefore his blood ties to her son Edward the Confessor, that he claimed lineage to the disputed English throne.

Her role to play in the politics of the time is usually overlooked in favour of her male, and presumably more exciting, contemporaries: her first husband Aethelred, her second husband, the Danish invader and king, Canute Sweynsson, and of course her very famous great-nephew. Emma’s first marriage was one of politics; her Norman brother married her to his rival Aethelred in an attempt to calm relations between England and Normandy. However, upon Aethelred’s death in 1016, Emma then went on to marry England’s conqueror–a marriage that seems to have been successful, despite its strange, and possibly kidnap-y, beginnings.

Canute spent most of his time in Denmark, leaving Emma, effectively, to rule England for him. During this time, she completed the process of Christianising England, founding many churches and monasteries, and completing Canute’s conversion to Christianity. Emma was clearly seen by her contemporaries as a strong political figure. Yet, even were that not the case, her very existence in England as a Norman directly affected England’s immediate history.

Thanks to my research assistant Heather for this post. She has been obsessed with Emma for as long as I’ve known her!

 

Every book has a story of its own.

My latest novel, Evergreen Falls, has been released this week in Australia (with forthcoming editions in the United States and other places…). I started writing this book over a year ago, when I made a mid-winter visit to the Blue Mountains for research and planning. Most of the book was then written at the lovely place in this photograph, a beautiful nineteenth century guesthouse at Wentworth Falls, over the summer of 2013/2014. Every day, I would get up and go for a run, then come back for breakfast, then write all day, then spend the afternoon hiking around the Falls, trying to nut out plot problems in my head.

Every book has its journey, too, with publication as its final destination. So when the whole world says hello to Evergreen Falls, I say goodbye to it. With that goodbye, I often feel quite nostalgic for the months when I was researching and writing it. Today, with the change of the season up here in Brisbane, I’ve found myself longing to be back in the cool of the Blue Mountains, visiting again with my imaginary friends Flora and Sam and Violet and Lauren.

There’s a little video about the book here:

I spend a lot of time reading about interesting historical women, so I thought I’d share some of their stories on the blog (because I can’t write novels about ALL of them).

First up is Australia’s first female Parliamentarian Edith Cowan, who served during the 1920s (incidentally, the same period during which Evergreen Falls is set). She is the only woman who has had an Australian university named after her, and she appears on the Australian fifty dollar note.

Cowan, the second of six children, had a childhood straight out of the pages of a novel. When she was seven, her mother Mary died giving birth to the couple’s fourth child. Her father, pastoralist and explorer Kenneth Brown, subsequently remarried, but the marriage was not a happy one and he started drinking heavily. By 1871, he had run up a number of debts, and was forced to mortgage his property. He shot and killed his second wife on 3 January 1876 and was hanged for the crime on 10 June 1876. Young Edith Brown did not witness any of this, as she was sent to boarding school in Perth after her mother’s death. The school was run by the sisters of the man she later married, James Cowan. After father’s death, however, she left the school to live with other relatives.

She busied herself with philanthropic work, and campaigned for women’s suffrage. Because her husband was a Master of the Supreme Court, she became aware of the many injustices meted out to women and children in the system, and after women gained suffrage in 1899, she went on to campaign for welfare for the disadvantaged, as well as founding, and heading, various charitable and political groups, such as Western Australia’s National Council for Women. She raised funds for the building of the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth (which opened in 1916), founded the Children’s Protection Society, and as a result was appointed to the bench of the new children’s court in 1915. She became Australia’s first female Justice of the Peace in 1920, as well as being awarded the Order of the British Empire in the same year.

After entering Parliament, Cowan pushed for legislation that gave women the same legal and inheritance rights as men, as well as inheritance rights to mothers of children who died intestate. She also promoted the teaching of sex education in schools.

And all of this with four children!

(compiled with the assistance of my fabulous research assistant Heather Gammage)

Over at my publisher’s Facebook page there is a competition running where you can win an advance preview copy of Evergreen Falls by leaving a comment about what you think luxury is. The competition is only open to Australian readers and closes on 23 July, so do hurry.

Reading all the answers has made me consider how I would define luxury. I’m a simple girl at heart, and expensive or fancy objects tend to make me uncomfortable. But my one indulgence, the luxury that I allow myself once a week, is what I like to call second breakfast (which is a term I got from the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings). I have the same breakfast every morning: peanut butter on wholemeal toast with a hot cup of tea, served to me in bed by my lovely partner. I’m usually very busy, so up and about straight after breakfast getting kids ready for school and thinking about all my jobs for the day.

But on Sunday mornings, I go downstairs after breakfast, find an interesting book on my shelf, make myself a pot of tea and a buttery crumpet. I take them back to bed with me and read all morning. I’m something of tea snob, so it has to be tea-leaves properly brewed in a pot. My favourite at the moment is Irish breakfast tea, which is strong and sweet and malty. Diamonds and furs are for other girls; second breakfast is luxury to me.

I recently did a TEDx talk on creativity and distraction (under my given name, Kim Wilkins). You might be interested to watch it.

 

Over the summer (in Australia, summer is just finishing) I wrote a book. It took me only three months to write, and a little bit of time to edit. It was the easiest book I ever wrote, and it’s called Ember Island. I’ll post more information as I have it. But this post is a shout-out to the person who made it all possible: my research assistant, Heather. Tirelessly, day or night, she responded to my endless texts and emails asking for tiny details that she had to chase down from all over the place. She had to cold-call experts, spend hours in dusty libraries, sort out details of all kinds of random aspects across time and location. Just today, as I was finishing off the structural edit to go to the publisher, I sent her my last query. Would it be possible that a 10 year old girl in the late nineteenth century would have heard of the early medieval Irish poem “Pangur Ban”? Within 15 minutes, I had my answer. And therein lies Heather’s true worth: she told me the truth (it wasn’t possible) and when I told her I was going to ignore her and put it in anyway (for we never let the truth get in the way of the story), she just sent me a smiley face.

Writers don’t write in a vacuum. There is a large machinery of support all around them. From family and friends, to agents and publishers, to helpful people at stationery stores and the reader who sends you fan mail at precisely the moment you feel you should give up this writing caper and retrain as a podiatrist. I am grateful for all of those who support me to write my books, but especially to the lovely Heather, whose wisdom and intelligence and vast store of historical knowledge made my summer so easy.

I’m editing Isabella’s Gift/Lighthouse Bay/Not sure yet what it will be called in various territories, but it will be out in Australia and the US in September. Here’s a sneak preview from a scene, set in 1901 in a lighthouse on the Queensland coast.

The kettle boils and Matthew wordlessly makes the tea. Isabella sits and waits, wishing for something she cannot articulate. She had been feeling fine and light, just half an hour ago. Now the dark network of memories is closing around her again, just as the dark clouds outside are pressing out all the light.

But the tea helps. Hot and sweet.

“Tell me about your sister,” he says gently. “Are you close?

Isabella smiles, thinking of Victoria: as dark as she is fair. “We were terribly close as children. We grew up on the north Cornish coast. Father was a jeweller. Oh, he was quite mad. He’d work late late in the night, with his hair all stuck up…” She gestured to her own hair. “He had the strangest clients: barons and so on from European towns I’d never even heard of. He was terribly popular. All his jewels were made with cold connections. Every clasp bent and wrapped into shape by hand. His hands were so strong he could crush a tea tin with his fingertips. After Mama died, he let us run wild. We’d spend all day down at the beach collecting shells and stones, then come home and make brooches and bracelets.” Isabella drops her eyes, thinking of Arthur. Once in her life, she’d mistakenly thought that Arthur and she would have so much in common. But Arthur never took joy in making jewels, not the way Papa did. Everything Arthur did was without passion. Bloodless.

“Do you not think it strange,” she asks, after a few silent sips, “that I haven’t missed my husband at all?”

“No. I presume you left him because he didn’t treat you well, and that you were prepared to miss him.”

“Sometimes I worry that there is something wrong with my heart.”

Matthew doesn’t answer. He seems comfortable simply to sit and wait for her to continue.

“Perhaps it is broken,” she says. “Not a broken heart in the usual sense, not a simple crack down the middle. But broken like a clock that has been taken down from the mantel, disassembled by a rough hand, then left in pieces on the floor. Broken so it cannot work right again.” She checks herself. She is talking too much about nonsense. If Arthur were here, he’d admonish her for drawing attention to herself with her wild ideas.

But Arthur isn’t here, he’s dead at the bottom of the sea.

“My husband is dead, Matthew,” she says softly.

“Then what have you run away from?”

“His family.”

He nods, seems about to say something, then thinks better of it. “You don’t have to tell me anything. In fact, it’s probably better if you don’t.”

She tries to be bright. “Then you shall think me too mysterious. A secret-keeper. Perhaps even a liar.”

He holds her gaze in his a moment, another moment, time winding out. The sense of his masculine presence, the oil and sea smell of the place, the darkness of his eyes.

“I couldn’t think ill of you,” he says at last. “Put it out of your mind.”

Something flares into life inside her, something she has never felt properly before so at first it puzzles her. A warmth, down low. A tide of longing to press her whole length against his. This is desire. She desires Matthew, the lighthouse keeper. It surprises her, but not unhappily. She doesn’t know what to do, so she stays where she is. It’s unlikely he feels the same, and he would not think it proper for her to express her feelings. She finishes her tea. The rain has eased. It is time to go.