1. Hi and welcome to Wanderings! Our audience is dying to get to know you, so tell us a little bit about yourself! Thank you for having me. It’s nice to be here. I’m what would qualify as a ‘lady of mature years’, having raised five children, unofficially adopted another, who between them have brought twelve gorgeous grandchildren into my life, two of whom are now married. It’s rather disconcerting to also be mother to a grandfather, since we now have a great-grandchild. Yikes! Where did the time go? And here I am, only 26 years old! The upshot of all that is that I have loads of life experience to bring to my writing, as you can perhaps imagine. I’ve always been a writer. It captured my heart as soon as I realised I could express myself that way, and I used to love essay writing at school. I wrote articles for the Women’s Page in a local newspaper when my children were young. Then progressed to short stories for magazines. And now, I write Contemporary Women’s Fiction, and have 9 published novels sitting on my bookshelves. I’m currently enjoying a bit of a departure out of my comfort zone and have a historical romantic strand in my contemporary work in progress. It’s still in the early stages, but I’m thoroughly enjoying the research I’m having to do and the adjustments I have to make to my writing style to invoke a different era. Although I was born in London, England, I have lived most of my life in Scotland - ten miles outside Edinburgh for the past forty or so years and my novels are all set in and around Edinburgh, though some of them wander elsewhere in Scotland in the unfolding. I love going ‘on location’, checking out the settings and making sure of my facts. 2. What inspires your writing? Stories! I have so many stories buzzing around in my head all the time. It’s great to have a way to record them. I’m a ‘people person’, sociable and interested in people of all sorts. A ‘people watcher’ too, making up stories about the man running for the bus, the woman in the checkout queue ahead of me who has rather a lot of wine in her basket, or the teenager looking round furtively as she walks along the street. My novels are very much character-based as a result. There’s always a story, but it’s people who inspire me. 3. What inspired you to write Gold Plated? My latest release, Gold Plated, was inspired while I was on holiday in 2016. My husband and I were walking on a beach in the North of Scotland. Often, walking is a great time to chat, sharing thoughts and dreams, decisions and schemes, but today we were silent. There was a heavy mist on the North Sea and the horizon was hiding, taking our words with it. There was something about the haar: it silenced birds, the wind, the whisper of long grass as well as our words - but it couldn’t silence the continuous rolling waves as they broke onto the beach - and it couldn’t silence our thoughts. Often, thoughts would tumble out of our silence and we would share them. There was no reason not to today - yet we didn’t. We were enjoying a world shrouded in a soft, white veil, from which rays of sunshine struggled to break free while the sea, ruthless, relentless, ripped through to crash on the shore. I didn’t ask what he was thinking, but concentrated on the story that was forming in my mind. We were here on vacation with our family and there, set like a pearl in the middle of the two weeks in 2016, was our anniversary. Forty-nine years of married bliss. But that’s never true, is it? No-one is perfect, so no two imperfect people can forge a perfect marriage - not even us. We’d had ups and downs - never ins and outs - and some years were better than others - but we’d never not wanted to be married to one another. Our children had asked what we wanted to do to celebrate our Golden Wedding Anniversary the following year, 2017. The conversation still swirled in my mind as my husband and I walked in our misty, magical silence. Then, in a sudden rush of gold, the sun won the struggle to light the world, compelling us to pause to take a few photographs. I stood at the water’s edge. Wave after wave of water rolling in, breaking with cold white froth over the landscape of the beach - year after year of life rolling in, breaking with warm love over the landscape of our marriage. But what if? What if it had been different? So I wrote a story about a very different couple who had a very different fifty-year marriage from ours. 4. What is your new book about? Gold Plated is about a couple, Rosanna and Paul, who are celebrating fifty years of marriage. When the story starts, their daughter, Heather, is helping Rosanna plan a Golden Wedding Anniversary party, and it looks like being a wonderful night: sixties music, all their friends and family present, good food and a beautiful location. Rosanna has been wresting with what to get the man who has everything, but has now bought the perfect golden gift for Paul: “I can already feel the glow in my cheeks at his surprise in my choice. I think he assumes I’ll be getting him solid gold cufflinks or something.” When an uninvited guest shows up at the party, Rosanna’s world is shaken and she is forced to look back over their fifty golden years and see them as they were. Were they golden? Or just gold-plated? So this book traces the ups and downs and drama of a love affair that lasts more than fifty years, surviving against all odds - but has it? And will it continue to survive? 5. Romance is the best! Which classic couple is your favorite: Elizabeth and Darcy? Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester? Romeo and Juliet? Or do you have another favorite and if so, what makes them the best? Of the ones you mention, I’d have to say Elizabeth and Darcy. I think theirs would be a love that would last. They were both mature and made their decision to marry based on a love so deep it was able to overcome the constraints of the era. I don’t usually write romance novels as such, though there is always some romance in the course of telling the story. I write about life, relationships, family - and romance is certainly part of that, just not always the main story line in my novels. Having said that, this latest one, Gold Plated, is a love story so plenty romance in it. In fact, it is Contemporary Romantic Fiction. All of my books, including Gold Plated, are ‘clean reads’ with no sex, swearing or gratuitous violence. I find it’s possible to allow the reader to feel romance and emotion without being graphic, by using a few well-chosen words and phrases. Like Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice, it is possible to show passion in your writing while still keeping the book family friendly. Bonus Question: So, you’ve just written a book: what’s next? Another book of course. Set in Scotland again, this time partly contemporary and partly set in the early years of the 20th Century. And I’m having a great time writing it. Check Out All of Christine's Links Here!Amazon author page: http://author.to/ChristineCampbell
Blog: http://cicampbellblog.wordpress.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WriteWhereYouAre Twitter: https://twitter.com/Campbama Instagram: https://instagram.com/christine_writes/ Facebook Group: Christine’s Kist Of Stories: https://www.facebook.com/groups/199853890760414/ YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/Cw0Dyt1Yeq4 Trailer for The Reluctant Detective Series: https://youtu.be/kg8HIhMszg4
1 Comment
7/9/2018 11:19:03 am
Thank you, Killarney, it was a pleasure and an honour to be interviewed by you.
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