A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about SA Laybourn’s
excellent WW2 romance, A Kestrel Rising. This
week I’m delighted to have Sue guesting on my blog to tell us how she came to
write the book.
Many years ago, when I was still living in Arizona, I
was driving home, across a section of tumbleweed-dotted desert. White clouds
billowed to the northeast with their taunting promise of rain that would never
arrive—a common occurrence during the annual monsoon. Eva Cassidy’s ‘Fields of
Gold’ played on the car stereo and I was hit with a wave of homesickness so
strong that I nearly cried. At the time, I thought our future in the US was
secure and my job didn’t pay nearly enough for us to fly to the UK for a visit.
So, I decided that, if I couldn’t go home to England, I’d write about it.
My first effort was a historical romance set in
Berkshire during the Great War. I liked it, it was pretty, laden with
descriptions of a glorious countryside that only a homesick Brit could write.
But…and it’s a big ‘but’, it was a horrendously boring story. The heroine was a
passive drip for most of the time. Needless to say, I had no success with
agents. However, I’d fallen in love with the setting and with the family. I
decided that the next story would be set in the same place, but during World
War II. Now we were talking. I’m an
utter plane nerd. The older, the better and don’t even get me started on
Spitfires…I could wax lyrical about those beauties for hours.
Anyway, the characters were easy to find. And a song, Closer to Believing
by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, sparked off a scene in my head that drove the plot
into place. I knew what my hero,
Francis, would do and all I needed to do was make sure that he and my heroine,
Ilona were able to get together in spite of the demands of serving in the RAF
and the WRAF. It was tricky finding an RAF fighter squadron that hadn’t moved
around too much during the war but, in the end, I did and Francis being
American made it easier, once the USAAF joined the war. With the squadrons
established, a little research into their history dictated the plot. It was all
there and it was easy enough to make sure that Ilona’s postings brought her
within a reasonable travelling distance of Francis.
Then there was the planes. Happily, there is a lot of
good information about all of the planes I needed to write about—from the
Blenheim bomber to the P51 Mustang, the fighter that, arguably, won the war for
the Allies. In fact, my first draft was so weighted down with plane nerd
technobabble that my beta reader said that, in places, it reminded her of a
bunch of gearheads sitting down to talk about engines. That is the danger of
having loads of good sources combined with enthusiasm, it can lead to the author
wanting to share as much about their subject that they can. Needless to say, I
red-lined a lot of stuff.
A Mustang. Airshows featured prominently in research for the book |
Apart from the obvious information about the war, the
battles, and the planes, I needed details that were harder to winkle out. By
happy coincidence, my dad had a friend who runs a business restoring old warbirds.
When I needed that extra bit of reality, I asked Dad, who asked his friend. I
think that inside info adds a little more authenticity. But there were other
things, every day realities, like ‘would Ilona be able to catch a bus from
Mildenhall to deepest Norfolk’? that I needed to know. Again, my dad rode to
the rescue. He happens to be a bit of a transport fanatic and he was able to
find out that, yes, Ilona could have caught a bus or two.
While I wrote the first draft, I immersed myself as
much as I could in the period. No, I didn’t feed my family spam fritters, mock
fishcakes or eggless mayonnaise, but I did find a digital radio station that
played non-stop music from the 30s and 40s. Some of the songs found their way
into the story, which I hope, adds to the ‘feel’ of the era. When I’m writing,
having that soundtrack helps a lot. I also attended a couple of the fly-ins at
the city airport, mainly because there was always the possibility that someone would
turn up in a restored warplane. The day a couple of P-51s flew in was a happy
day indeed. Can I add that just touching one of those beautiful machines made
me want to cry?
Speaking of crying, ‘A Kestrel Rising’ does also deal
with death in combat—the loss of a loved one. When I wrote the first draft, I
had to rely on my imagination and some empathy to put myself in Ilona’s place.
It obviously worked, because I did manage to make my dad cry. Years later, long
after I’d consigned the book to the trunk, I revived it again when my
publisher, Totally Bound, added a ‘sweet romance’ category. I went through the
manuscript and tidied it up, using my three years’ experience as an editor to
make it better. At the time, my husband was entering the final stages of
terminal cancer. I’d been grieving for ages, since the day we were told he
would not survive. So, reading the sad passages came hard and I put my
grieving to good use by tweaking things a little. It seems, judging from the
reviews I’ve seen, that it worked.
There is no doubt in my mind, that A Kestrel Rising was a labour of love. It’s a love letter to England, to warplanes, to a time
when, according to my dad, everyone pulled together. I am proud of my story and am glad that it’s
out there to be read by everyone.
About S.A. Laybourn
S.A. Laybourn lives in Wiltshire with her son and two needy cats. She works as a freelance editor and sometimes writes stories. Her alter-ego S.A. Meade writes gay romance. She loves cooking, reading, gin and tonic, and the occasional glass of wine. She is not terribly domesticated and has trouble finding things that she thought she’d put in a ‘safe’ place.
You can find her books at:
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Congrats SUE!!!
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