An Interview with…Susanna Kearsley
Singletitles.com catches up with much-loved novelist Susanna Kearsley and chats to her about her books, her alter ego and what inspires her sumptuous historical novels
How did you become a novelist?
This is actually one of those stories I’ve probably told so many times people are tired of hearing it, but it’s a good story, and it involves my sister whom I lost to cancer recently, so I don’t mind telling it again. As a teenager I was always at work on the first chapter of the Next Great Novel, and each time I’d finish a first chapter I’d show it to my friends and family, who’d say how wonderful it was, and then I’d decide it wasn’t all that wonderful and I’d put it away and start again, so by the time I’d reached my early twenties I had an impressive drawerful of first chapters. The reason I’d never gone further, I think, is that I was afraid. If you don’t actually attempt to do something, you can’t fail at it, and I was probably afraid that if I wrote beyond the first few chapters I’d find out I wasn’t any good (which is silly, because most of us aren’t any good at anything the first time that we try it – it’s a craft, you learn by doing). Anyhow, when I was 25 I showed my sister yet another Chapter One and she passed it right back to me and said, ‘It’s great. Now finish it.’ And then she bet me that I couldn’t finish it by Labour Day – about ten months away. The bet was, if I failed, I had to buy her dinner at the Grand Concourse in Pittsburgh, which was a bit out of my league at the time, so I had no real choice but to finish the book. I went to the library and borrowed Phyllis A Whitney’s Guide to Fiction Writing, and ploughed my way through the process. And you know? It was wonderful. Liberating. Getting to the end of something, finally, was the greatest feeling, and it taught me something that my sister said she’d always known: I really was a writer.
Your novels are a wonderful blend of romance, mystery, history, suspense and emotion. What drew you to writing these kinds of books?
The short answer, of course, is that those are the books I love reading. As children, my sister and I were given free access to our parents’ bookshelves, and when we were bored we could choose any book from the shelves that we wanted and squirrel it up to our rooms for a read. So from a fairly early age I was introduced to the books and the writers my mother loved best: Kathleen Winsor’s Forever Amber; Daphne DuMaurier’s Jamaica Inn; Nevil Shute’s A Town Like Alice; My Lord Monleigh and Bride of the MacHugh by Jan Cox Speas, The Masters of Bow Street by John Creasey, and all of Mary Stewart’s thrillers. All those books helped shape my own sense of story and taught me the value of strong and intelligent heroines. My parents also passed their love of history on to me, a passion I still carry, and the mystery’s there because I have the kind of mind that likes a puzzle, wants a challenge, thrives on a whodunit. As for the emotion, well, that likely works its way into my stories because I’m so sentimental. Around the time of the 50th anniversary of D-Day there was an ad on television that I still can’t even describe to anyone without going all weepy. (The one with the old man who goes into a vintage clothing store to buy a pair of silk stockings so he can keep a promise that he made in wartime). (You see? Here I go…)
Tell us about your latest release, Sophia’s Secret…
Sophia’s Secret is really a story within a story. My heroine, historical novelist Carrie McClelland, has set her new book at Slains Castle, on the northeast coast of Scotland, during one of the lesser-known Jacobite rebellions – a time of upheaval and intrigue, betrayal and danger. To make the story easier to tell and give it focus, she creates a fictional heroine and gives her the same name as one of her own ancestors of that time: Sophia Paterson. But when Carrie starts to write about Sophia, strange things happen as the scenes she thought at first were fiction turn out to be fact, and Carrie soon discovers that she might be dealing with ancestral memory, meaning she might be the only person still alive who knows the secret of what happened at Slains Castle those three centuries ago.
What inspired this story?
About twenty years ago I was having a look through the history section of the World’s Biggest Bookstore in Toronto, and I happened on a book called Playing the Scottish Card by Edinburgh historian John S. Gibson, about the failed Franco-Jacobite invasion attempt of 1708. I’d never heard of the incident before, but I’ve always been fascinated by Scottish history and Mr Gibson’s book intrigued me, so I bought it and tucked it away, thinking it might make an interesting subject for a novel some day. Mr Gibson drew his facts from many of the original documents of the period, which led me to search out those same documents myself and track down others that could flesh out the personal histories and actions of those who took part in the ’08. The prized possessions of my research library now include my copies of some letters written by my novel’s hero, John Moray, to his family, and an original edition of the printed memoirs of Nathaniel Hooke, one of the invasion’s architects, whose detailed descriptions of the people involved (right down to their conversations, in some cases) proved to be an invaluable resource for me in writing Sophia’s Secret.
In 2006, using the pseudonym of Emma Cole, you wrote a mystery novel featuring Canadian sleuth Kate Murray, called Every Secret Thing. How did this change in writing name and style come about? Will there be more Emma Cole novels in the future?
Every Secret Thing, again, was a story I’d wanted to write for a long time, based on an idea that simply wouldn’t go away. While I knew from the start it would be more of a thriller than the books I’d written before, and that it wouldn’t have a paranormal element, I didn’t immediately think of using a different writing name for it, since to my mind it was still the same type of story – written in the first person with a strong female lead, a blending of romance and mystery, with past and present narratives entwined. My German publishers, in fact, brought it out as a Susanna Kearsley novel. But my UK publishers and agent thought it might be more fair to my readers if I used another name, the way Ruth Rendell does with her “Barbara Vine” books, so that people would know they were picking up something a little bit different than what they were used to. So “Emma Cole” was born. And yes, I hope my sleuth Kate Murray will have more adventures. I’ve already outlined the second book in the series, with ideas for a few more, so we’ll see what comes of that.
What’s a typical day for Susanna Kearsley like?
Up at 6 with my husband, then having seen him off to work I have a bit of time to myself to read email or watch the news before getting the kids up, though during the school year they have to be up very early as school starts at 8. This will be the first autumn I’ll have both children in school full time, so I’ll be able to have two 90-minute writing sessions a day, separated by the school lunch period when I need to be in the classroom with my son, who has life-threatening food allergies and is still a bit too young to leave alone with others eating round him. At 2:30 I collect the kids from school, and from then on it’s the usual round of running errands, cooking supper, washing up and getting the children to bed, after which the evening (or what’s left of it!) is mine, though to be honest by this time I’m often too tired to do anything productive with it.
Who are your favourite writers?
Mostly older ones. Mary Stewart leads the list, and Nevil Shute, and Jan Cox Speas, Evelyn Anthony and Agatha Christie. I also have a science fiction side that really likes Kurt Vonnegut and Asimov, and I’ve just recently discovered Neil Gaiman – Stardust is one of the loveliest books that I’ve read in a long time.
Any advice for aspiring writers?
Don’t give up. The French writer Flaubert said that ‘Talent is nothing but long patience’, and I’m convinced he was right. Shut your ears to the negative voices that say you can’t do it, believe that you can and stay true to the story that you want to tell, and you’ll get there in time.
If you weren’t a novelist, what would you be?
Miserable! The truth is, I’ve been writing ever since I can remember, it’s a part of who I am. It’s how I process what I see, what I experience, so whatever else I might do – I worked some years in museums, and my earlier career plans ranged from nursing to the theatre – I feel certain that I’d still be writing stories, because that’s what makes me whole.
What’s next for Susanna Kearsley?
The novel I’m working on now tells the tale of a modern-day woman who comes to the south coast of Cornwall and finds herself sharing a house with a man living there in the 1700s. I’m hoping that I’ll have it done by Christmas, so with luck it might be on the shelves next autumn.
Thank you for joining us at Singletitles, Susanna. If you want to find out more about Susanna and her books, visit her website at www.susannakearsley.com. Susanna’s latest paperbacks, Sophia’s Secret and Every Secret Thing, are out now and on sale at the following links: http://www.cataurl.com/OTEqS and http://www.cataurl.com/uQhzB
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