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I am delighted you are interested in the forthcoming publication of EMERALD. I have always been fascinated by Tudor times. If I could choose to be stuck in a lift with anyone, it would be Elizabeth I. With EMERALD, I wanted to find a voice that was modern and engaging. Emotions don’t change like fashions and while I tried hard to make Emerald a girl of her time, she had to be first and foremost a girl who had problems and worries that anyone now might understand. At first I tried to write the story in the third person but that didn’t work because I wanted the same immediacy of voice as in RASPBERRIES ON THE YANGTZE and CLIMBING A MONKEY PUZZLE TREE, alongside an authentic and believable historical background like that of WENDY or THE UNRIVALLED SPANGLES. So I wrote EMERALD in the first person and that was the breakthrough. EMERALD took me a long time to write and many of the issues in the book are ones that I have faced in my own life. It seems to me that you write best about what you know and certainly I knew a lot about how EMERALD was feeling about herself. I also intended to make the story funny and real and there are many ‘laugh out loud’ moments in the story.
I would like to think that EMERALD marks a new, distinctive and personal approach to writing a historical novel. I hope my readers will enjoy it.
Hi Karen! Thanks for this thoughtful comment! EMERALD intrigued me because of the historical time setting. Books with Tudoric elements and especially books set in the Elizabethan era appeal to me the most. I think that in books like EMERALD, the first-person voice is very effective. Since you wrote EMERALD based on certain issues you’ve faced, I’m certain this book will be a very interesting read. I’m looking forward to reading it!