Touched by Angels (31 page)

A2:  An instinctive feeling for the period mostly; an abiding fascination with the Edwardian era and the Great War. Why? Because it was a time, more than any other period in history, of such rapid social and technological change; and of course, each one propelled the other. Through writing, I want to put myself, and by extension, you, there, via a virtual time machine, so we can see it, smell it, warts and all; and talk to the people, both good and bad, and see what makes them tick. People had a vastly different mind-set then and I try to tap into it. Yes, the physical facts, dates and details are vitally important, but so too is the feeling of total immersion. Without it, a novel becomes, in my view, a lengthy essay.

Q3: Lil is an extraordinary woman in every sense of the word. Do you have a feminine figure in your life you have based your character on?

A3: There is not one single feminine figure I have based Lil on. She was created organically, almost by herself. She largely tended to write her own dialogue, and fight her demons in her own inimitable way. She detests injustice of any sort, as I do. Even without the Suffragette Movement, she was campaigning for women’s rights without ever spearheading marches and rallies, by her innate intelligence and energies that were directed to hers and Robert's every day survival. If she had joined the Suffragettes, the vote for women would have come long before 1918.

Q4: How do you think readers will react to Bob Smith's life sentence for a crime he didn't commit?

A4:  Bob Smith, aka ‘Fighting Bob’, is a cowardly, pig-ignorant, foul-mouthed, idle, filthy, drunken slob of a man. He is a wife- and child-beater too. It cannot even be said that he is a likeable rogue. In one scene, he even stoops so low as to kick a blind ex-soldier outside a Mission and steal a pile of farthings he had obtained by begging. One might cry, "Oh, for Heaven's sake! How could a bright, attractive woman like Lil have been so stupid as to get tied up with a man like that?!" But we all know women, and indeed men, who, barely out of their blissfully ignorant teens, have walked up the aisle with totally opposite spouses. By the time Bob stands in the dock for a murder he didn't commit, it is hopefully a testament to Lil's character that even after all she has been through, she is still determined he will not hang. She breathes a sigh of palpable relief, when instead, he gets a life sentence, and hopefully, the reader will feel the same. Or maybe not.

Q5: What are you currently working on?

A5: A good tag line for my current project would be, "Even amidst the horrors of war, your dreams can still come true." Set in July 1916, on the eve of the Battle of the Somme, it is provisionally entitled
Parallel Lives
. Just like
Touched by Angels
, it is a highly graphic tale, but unlike it,
Parallel Lives
is set in two completely diffewrent arenas that eventually converge.