Authors are often asked where they got the idea for a book. When I’m asked, I sometimes struggle to answer, because it’s something as nebulous as an old bullying case I remembered or an anecdote I was told.
Truthfully, there is a connected anecdote to The Christmas Love Letters. My dad used to tell me a story about one of his ‘aunties’ (which could be a cousin or a family friend rather than a blood relative) as her wartime husband went missing in action. Long after the war, just as she was preparing to request that he be declared dead so she could remarry, up the missing husband popped.
He’d been hiding out in Italy all this time …
Society being as it was in the fifties, she was given the choice of resuming life as his wife, or to get out without shared property – because as a married woman, her husband controlled the lot – and to face a world that disapproved of divorce. This injustice stayed with me, and although I’ve given Maddy a husband who vanished from a clifftop one snowy night, I also gave her a lot more options than those of my dad’s aunt.
But that’s just a subplot.
The idea for the main thread was literally put in my hands. I was at a writers’ conference, Swanwick Writers’ Summer School, and a lady asked me to take a bundle of letters. They’d been written to her late sister-in-law and she didn’t want them around. They were an embarrassment, but she recognised their value in social history terms, and so she’d hesitated before throwing them away. Did I think I could make a story out of them?
To be honest, I was reluctant. I don’t enjoy people suggesting subjects for my books. But I took them to my room and began to read. I think I’d read two before ideas began to bombard me! The letters cover nearly thirty years of contact between illicit lovers. When they met in the seventies, he was a sergeant in the same British army regiment in which my father served (I’ve just realised Dad comes into this post twice!) and she’d been a civilian working with the army. I recognised the world he wrote about from my army childhood, and her experiences as a woman were universal.
I was hooked, and when I reached the end of the letters, I desperately wished I could just go to Amazon and download the final instalment.
As that wasn’t possible, I wrote The Christmas Love Letters instead, beginning with Raff turning up in a seaside village with the love letters Maddy’s great-aunt Ruthie wrote to his dad. I changed all the names, of course, but I kept the locations and the voices of those long-ago lovers, filling in the blanks and projecting into the future.
Writing The Christmas Love Letters was a labour of love. And though I usually hesitate to admit that I like one of my books over the others, I am very fond of this one!
Her novels, short stories, serials, columns, writing ‘how to’ and courses have appeared around the world. If you’d like to see more of her covers go to www.suemoorcroft.com and click on ‘Gallery’.
10 comments:
What a great story behind your story!!! Thanks for sharing.
Sue, sometimes The Universe lends a helping inspirational hand. So glad that lady handed over those letters.
Thanks very much for your comments, Diana and Judith. I did feel blessed that this story sought me out. :-)
What an amazing story!!!
Wonderful backstory! I understand your initial hesitation to write story, but love the way you have taken real life and created a lovely story!
Tahnks so much for your comments, Ann and Sarah. It may be the only time an idea is actually gifted to me, so I'm glad I was able to make it work.
WOW - what a gift - of both receiving the letter, and then, turning into a story and a legacy of two who loved each other in real life.
It is so true how something small can lead to a larger story.
It was a gift, Deb N! And I did become invested in the lives of these people I never knew. I was disappointed when I'd read the last letter. It was great to be able to fill in the gaps as I wrote the book.
Kathy, I agree. Every book comes from a spark.
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