Merryn Allingham's Blog
November 14, 2016
The Buttonmaker's Daughter
I have a new book coming - yippee!
The Buttonmaker's Daughter will be published on January 12 and full details, including the gorgeous cover, will be in the next newsletter. If you'd like to join my list of subscribers, here's the address: www.merrynallingham.com
The Buttonmaker's Daughter will be published on January 12 and full details, including the gorgeous cover, will be in the next newsletter. If you'd like to join my list of subscribers, here's the address: www.merrynallingham.com
May 31, 2015
The Nurse's War
I see with shame that it's a long time since I posted on Goodreads. So with the publication of the second book in the Daisy's War trilogy, it seems a good time to mend my ways.
I never meant to write a trilogy, but when I came to the end of The Girl from Cobb Street, I realised that I couldn't leave my heroine where she was. There was so much more of Daisy's story to tell. I have to say that I had no idea what it would involve!
One of the problems with writing a trilogy, I found, was how to 'do' the back story. If you tell too much, the reader who has been following the series, becomes bored and may even feel cheated by any repetition. Too little and a reader who is new to the trilogy feels confused and annoyed with the writer for making their life difficult. It was a hard balance to achieve but I hope I got it more or less right.
Other issues raised their heads as I wrote on. I had to make sure that Daisy's character developed in response to her experiences over a period of ten years. And not just Daisy's. It held true for every character who had a significant role. And those same characters would need to appear/reappear more than once, so that readers weren't left wondering whatever happened to so and so? In other words, I had to finish their stories as well as Daisy’s.
And I was well into The Nurse’s War, when it dawned on me that I needed to plot much more carefully. Not only did I need a beginning that would kick the whole trilogy off, rather than just the first book, but even worse, I had to know the ending of the last novel in order to offer clues along the way that would make the final denouement plausible for the reader. Needless to say, there was some hasty rewriting at this stage!
And, of course, I needed to develop overarching themes to hold the series together and act as a kind of umbrella, under which each book could shelter and connect - themes like the growth of self-belief, the search for identity and the recognition of true love.
Will I write another trilogy? Maybe in the future. My current project, though, is based around two books that are linked by a setting rather than a character. But I'll blog about that later!
I never meant to write a trilogy, but when I came to the end of The Girl from Cobb Street, I realised that I couldn't leave my heroine where she was. There was so much more of Daisy's story to tell. I have to say that I had no idea what it would involve!
One of the problems with writing a trilogy, I found, was how to 'do' the back story. If you tell too much, the reader who has been following the series, becomes bored and may even feel cheated by any repetition. Too little and a reader who is new to the trilogy feels confused and annoyed with the writer for making their life difficult. It was a hard balance to achieve but I hope I got it more or less right.
Other issues raised their heads as I wrote on. I had to make sure that Daisy's character developed in response to her experiences over a period of ten years. And not just Daisy's. It held true for every character who had a significant role. And those same characters would need to appear/reappear more than once, so that readers weren't left wondering whatever happened to so and so? In other words, I had to finish their stories as well as Daisy’s.
And I was well into The Nurse’s War, when it dawned on me that I needed to plot much more carefully. Not only did I need a beginning that would kick the whole trilogy off, rather than just the first book, but even worse, I had to know the ending of the last novel in order to offer clues along the way that would make the final denouement plausible for the reader. Needless to say, there was some hasty rewriting at this stage!
And, of course, I needed to develop overarching themes to hold the series together and act as a kind of umbrella, under which each book could shelter and connect - themes like the growth of self-belief, the search for identity and the recognition of true love.
Will I write another trilogy? Maybe in the future. My current project, though, is based around two books that are linked by a setting rather than a character. But I'll blog about that later!
January 29, 2015
Launch Day
It's finally arrived! The Girl from Cobb Street is published today,The Girl from Cobb Street and tonight by way of celebration, I'm going to the Brighton Pavilion to hear Kate Mosse and Antonia Fraser talk. There's mention of a glass of wine too! We're in the sumptuous Music Room which is certainly worth a visit. My heroine, Daisy, makes it there in the second book of her saga. You can see a picture at
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Merryn...
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Merryn...
