A heatwave tale

I’m sitting now in the living room of my Cornish cottage, enjoying a very welcome coolness. If that sounds smug, let me assure you the recent heatwave didn’t spare me. After two hopeless nights of wakefulness, I finally admitted defeat, took my sorry brain and body downstairs, and kipped on the sofa. A very comfortable Laura Ashley sofa, I should add. I still woke several times, but by morning I was refreshed enough to face a day of writing — which is what I’m doing now, musing on why I write what I do.

For context, I’ve been writing for a good few decades, but only in the last one did I shift into historical fiction, slightly unconventional romances woven into a family saga. When I first began writing all those years back, I didn’t really know what I wanted to write; I only knew that writing was the ambition. I tried all sorts of things.

Then my dear dad, still alive then, suggested I try a Mills & Boon. This followed something he’d seen on television about writing romance for that publisher. Startled by his TV viewing habits, and even more startled that he thought I might be any good at writing genre romance, I began a period of research.

My reading habits were broad, as they are now, but they did not include Mills & Boon. The nearest I got to romance was the classics: Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, the usual suspects. So off to the library I went, gathered a stack of romances (I think we were allowed eight books in those days), and checked them out while attempting a sort of method acting: These aren’t mine… I don’t read these… They’re for a friend. Whether any of that showed on my face, I’ll never know, but the librarian said nothing.

A week later, I did the same thing — still embarrassed, perhaps more so after reading the contents of the first batch. Another week on, I began the first of two Mills & Boon romances I would write that summer while my son was at nursery school. By autumn, both had been rejected.

Looking back, I’m not at all surprised, but I remember those rejections fondly. They were kind, and judging by the job titles at the bottom, the manuscripts had reached someone senior. So perhaps they weren’t entirely hopeless.

Even so, my confidence took a hit, and with a new full‑time job, I didn’t have the energy to try again.

Until, one September lunchtime, wandering around town and having a tussle with my inner voice about giving up on writing, inspiration struck: Why not try short stories?   It was a genius suggestion from my inner self. In those days, magazines still published women’s fiction, so I decided to give it a go. Maybe some still do today, I'm a stranger to magazines nowadays. Anyway, I digress. That day I decided that if, after a few serious attempts with short stories, I was still getting rejected, I’d stop.

Instead, the very first submission was accepted. Thank you, D.C. Thomson.

After several years of short fiction, family responsibilities made it impossible to continue, and it wasn’t until a decade or two ago that I returned seriously to writing. First contemporary romance, and in the last five years, historical fiction.

Which brings me, after that long and rambling introduction, to the real purpose of this blog: environment, specifically the place where I write.

Home for me is a Cornish miner’s cottage which is approximately 150-years old. Downstairs is always cool, bliss in summer, almost life‑saving during last week’s heatwave, but that same coolness becomes a bone‑deep chill in winter. Still, thinking about the cottage as an environment, and what it does for me, got me wondering whether it has been doing more than simply keeping me cool.

Has it influenced my writing?

When I moved from contemporary romance to historical, there were several reasons. I wanted the chance to weave interesting facts into the stories, not to teach, but to share. But there was no obvious reason why I should begin the Aucourte Chronicles in the Victorian era.

Unless…

Unless the granite walls around me have been whispering all along. Unless the essence of the era, locked inside this cottage for a century and a half, has seeped quietly into me.

A fanciful thought, perhaps — but on a hot day, after a night on the sofa, it feels entirely possible. What do you think? If you're also a writer, is environment important to you? Share your thoughts.