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Featured Interview With Anne Allen

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Hello! I’m a Brit, born in the middle of England in a place called Rugby. You may have heard of it as it’s the birthplace of the ball game so beloved around the world, thanks to a man called Webb Ellis. I’m not into ball games but never mind. ☺
My father wasn’t a local, but a Welshman from Anglesey, in North Wales, where we holidayed through my childhood and beyond. This was where I learned to love the sea, my grandparents owned the village shop just a few hundred yards from the beach – idyllic for us children. So I’ve spent my adulthood moving around, living by the sea in Scotland, Guernsey and Spain. I now live in Devon, on the south coast of England, to be close to my daughter and two small grandchildren. One son lives in Guernsey and one in London. I was a psychotherapist for many years and loved working so closely with people, but have now settled to writing full-time.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I loved books as soon as I could read and would visit the local library every Saturday morning to exchange borrowed books for new ones. My family were not ‘bookish’ so not sure where my fascination came from, and as soon as I earned money, I would buy my own books.
Although I enjoyed writing essays at school, I never really gave much thought to becoming a writer. My ambition was to find a good job with security before marrying and having a family. I was a single parent for many years and had no time for writing until about eleven years ago. I entered a 500-word true story competition in a UK national magazine and won. This spurred me on to write my first novel, Dangerous Waters, published in 2012.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I have eclectic taste, veering from pure romance when I was, ahem, younger, to suspense, thriller, mystery and historical fiction. Authors I’ve enjoyed include Mary Higgins Clark, Robert Goddard, Joanna Trollope, Maeve Binchy and Erica James, CJ Sansom, Barbara Erskine and William Boyd.
I’m not sure there’s anyone author who inspires me, I think I soak up so much from all the books I read and it forms a melting-pot of ideas. I would aspire to write as well as authors like Barbara Erskine or Mary Higgins Clark.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
My most recent book is ‘Echoes of Time’, book 5 in what is now known as The Guernsey Novels, for the obvious reason that they are all set in Guernsey, where I lived for many years. It’s a beautiful island a few miles off the coast of France but is British. My books are my personal homage to both the island and the people I learnt to call friends.
Each book has a standalone story, but they are linked by characters who pop up occasionally, like one big family. The Germans occupied Guernsey and the other Channel Islands during WWII, and this has played a huge part in forming the islanders’ psyche as well as affecting the geography.
‘Echoes of Time’ is a time-slip story, set between WWII and the present day. The focus is on Olive, a farmer’s wife in the 1940s and Natalie, a woman who buys the renovated farmhouse once belonging to Olive. Natalie soon feels uneasy after she moves in, hearing a disembodied voice, finding objects moved and experiencing horrifying and realistic dreams. She forms an uneasy friendship with Stuart, Olive’s grandson who lives in the nearby Old Barn, and they set out to find out what really happened to Olive, who disappeared in the 1980s.
This is the first time-slip novel I’ve written and I enjoyed all the necessary research as well as the writing, which took about nine months. Oh, and there’s a ghost!

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Featured Interview With Millie Thom

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in the seaside town of Southport in Lancashire, UK, in 1947, the eldest of three children. Times were hard for most people in those years following WW2 and we lived in a prefab (prefabricated house) until I was seven. Prefabs were quickly constructed in many parts of Britain, especially in areas where bombing had been heavy. Although Southport itself wasn’t badly damaged, the city and port of Liverpool, eighteen miles south along the coast, was. My mother’s old family home in Liverpool was completely obliterated, fortunately while the family was out. But it brought about the move to Southport in 1942– where my parents met when my dad was home on leave from the navy.
I lived in Southport until leaving university, after which I moved to Doncaster in Yorkshire to take up my first teaching post. I met my husband (also a teacher) during my first year there and we were married two years later. We’ve now been married for forty-six years. We’ve lived in various parts of England during that time, the moves mostly being for job promotions. It was while we lived in Wantage, in Oxfordshire, the town where King Alfred was born, that I first got the idea of writing about him.
We now live in Nottinghamshire, midway between Newark and Lincoln, and all but one of our six children live in the area. The youngest lives in London.
Since retiring a few years ago, I spend much of my time writing, but my husband and I also enjoy travelling, both abroad and around Britain. We still have a very long list of ‘places to visit’!

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I’ve been an avid reader all my life, mostly thanks to my dad, who was rarely to be seen of an evening without his nose in a book. It was Dad who took us (the three children) to the library on a Saturday, a place I’ve always adored, even in the days when ‘Silence’ was demanded. I liked nothing better than quietly browsing through lots of books before making my selections. Mum was more of a storyteller than a reader, and found no trouble in telling us bedtime stories, which she made up as she went along. She had such a vivid imagination.
I still have a passion for reading, and never go to sleep without having read at least a few chapters. I read mostly historical fiction because I’m mad about history, and I also love a good crime novel – preferably a murder mystery.
I wanted to write for many years before I actually had the time to do it. Six children and a teaching career left little time for much else. But I suppose I did plenty of writing at school … little pantomimes at Christmas and scenes and short plays for weekly assemblies, for a start. Not to mention the thousands of reports!

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Most of the books I’ve read in recent years have been historical, set in a variety of countries and at various time periods. I enjoy straight historical fiction as well as historical mysteries. There are many historical crime novels around at the moment and the genre has become very popular. In fact, once I’ve finished my trilogy about King Alfred, I plan to write one, too.
I’ve read and enjoyed historical books by a number of well-known authors, including Wilbur Smith and Bernard Cornwell. I also loved Harper Lee’s wonderful book, To Kill a Mocking Bird. One of my very favourite authors was Dorothy Dunnett who, sadly, died in 2001. She wrote such complex historical novels, set in her native Scotland. Her books are hard to get into for many new readers, due to the dated style and Scottish dialect, but for me, her characterisation is second to none.
I can’t really single out one particular author who has inspired my writing. I think most books I’ve read have given me much food for thought. I’ve always loved the Classics, and although they aren’t historical fiction, the time periods at which they are set have always fascinated me. I first read ‘Jane Eyre’ by Charlotte Bronte when I was eleven, and quickly followed it with ‘Wuthering Heights’ by her sister, Emily. I continued to read everything from ‘Robinson Crusoe’, ‘Little Women’, ‘Anne of Green Gables’, ‘Moby Dick’ and several Jane Austen novels – to name just a few.
I also enjoy crime novels set in the present day. Authors I particularly like include Val McDermid, Mark Billingham and Patricia Cornwell. Their plots are so gripping and I can only imagine how much research goes into the modern police procedures and forensic methods.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
The last book I published was ‘A Dash of Flash’, which is something totally different to my historical trilogy. I’d been writing flash fiction on my blog for some time, and decided to put some of the stories into a book. They are a mix of contemporary and historical, with a few fairytales and ghost stories. I didn’t want all the stories to have been previously published, even if only on WordPress, so I wrote several new ones, including the longer stories of almost 1000 words. All in all there are 85 stories and I found illustrations for two-thirds of them.
At the moment, I’m writing Book Three of my trilogy (‘Wyvern of Wessex’) which will complete the stories of both King Alfred and Eadwulf and have spanned almost fifty years. If all goes well, it should be published in a few months’ time. The trilogy has taken me several years to write, mostly because I started Book One ten years ago when I was still teaching. Unfortunately, I simply hadn’t the time to complete it and left it ‘on hold’ for the next six years. Not a good idea!

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