Let us Talk of Many Things; of Books and Queens and Pirates, of Mystery and Kings...

Wednesday, 27 April 2016

W is for... When Sorrows Come

#HNSIndie

Click Here for a list of other A-Zers

When Sorrows Come

Throughout April I have invited 26 authors who had been selected as Editor's Choice
by the Historical Novel Society Indie Reviews

to help me out with the 2016 A-Z Blog Challenge...

Except to be a little different I interviewed

their leading Character/s...

Today's Character is from :

HH: Hello! I believe you exist in Maria Dziedzan’s novel – what is the title of the book, and would you like to introduce yourself – who you are, what you do, etc?

Anna: Dobriy den! I am the sixteen year old heroine of “When Sorrows Come”, or at least, that’s how old I am at the beginning of the story. I am also simply a housemaid to a Polish squire in the first chapter of the story. But the Russians soon put paid to that job when they barge into our village and I find myself working on the kolhoz with the other villagers.

HH: When and where are you? Are you a real historical person or did your author create you?

Anna: I live in Halychyna, a beautiful region of Western Ukraine and it is beautiful even when the Russians come in 1939 and when they are driven out by the Nazis in 1941. They have a terrible battle for our village in 1943 and between them manage to destroy many of our homes. But we survive! Even when the NKVD come back to terrorise us.

Did Maria create me? Yes and no…

The Village

HH: How did your author meet up with you?

Anna: We met in the summer of 2006 when Maria came to my village for the first time with her father. He was a very old friend of mine. And by then, I was a very old lady. A bit unsteady on my feet, if you know what I mean. We were introduced outside my tiny cottage and I suspect her father told her a bit about my wartime activities with the partisans. But she also gave me a family, friends, and best of all, my lover, Petro. And she made him so handsome!

HH: What is the novel you feature in about?

Anna: Well, as I’ve said, our village was overrun by one group of bullies after another. The Bolsheviks and the Nazis. We had to outwit them to survive…and when we couldn’t do that, we had to endure. So it is a terrifying war story, but there is a love story too. I can’t tell you more – it would spoil the surprises!

HH: Tell me about one or two of the other characters who feature with you.

Anna: I’ve mentioned my beloved Petro… But there are the girls. The breathtakingly selfish Sofia and my best friend, Vera, who also has her heart broken.The selfless Marusia who hides her Jewish friend, Rachel.

It is difficult to say who is the nastiest man – there are several - but Zadyrak, a Communist bully of the first order, takes some beating.

Beside the Dniester

HH: What is your favourite scene in the book?

Anna: That is a really difficult question. There are some harrowing moments – you might guess that from the title – but there are tender moments, too. I think Maria’s favourite might be when Marusia and Rachel were trying to escape from the Germans at night and they were rescued by a completely unexpected character…but you’ll have to read the story to find out who it was!

HH: What is your least favourite?

Anna: After I am captured, Maria put me through some terrible ordeals. I know because I made her cry…

HH: What are you most proud of about your author?

Anna: That she always wanted to be a writer and she became one in her 60’s. Never give up the dream!

HH: Has your author written other books about you? If not, about other characters? How do you feel about your author going off with someone else?

Anna: No, she hasn’t written about me but she has written about some of the people I know. She takes them off on other adventures – perhaps the word “adventures” is wrong though as it’s still wartime. She has a new heroine but I don’t mind. It’s another part of our history which is little known in the West.

The river valley

HH: As a character, if you could travel to a time and place different to your own fictional setting, where and when would you go?

Anna: That’s another difficult question, Helen! But perhaps, I would like to ride across the plains with the Cossacks. I’d have to pretend not to be a girl, though. They left the women at home when they went on the rampage!

Thank you Anna - and Maria

For readers, you can buy the book here:
or find out more here :
website mariadziedzanauthor.com
facebook page entitled When Sorrows Come.
Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Here is the company we will be keeping on this

A-Z Blog Challenge!

APRIL

A 1^st Friday - Aurelia - Alison Morton

B 2^nd Saturday - Bloodie Bones - Lucienne Boyce

C 4^th Monday - Man in the Canary Waistcoat Susan Grossey

D 5^th Tuesday - Dubh-Linn - James Nelson

E 6^th Wednesday - Evergreen In Red And White - Steven Kay

F 7^th Thursday - Fortune’sFool- David Blixt

G 8^th Friday - Gift For The Magus - Linda Proud

H 9^th Saturday - The Love Letter of John Henry Holliday) - Mary Fancher

I 11^th Monday - In Liberty’s Wake - Alexandra Norland

J 12^th Tuesday - Jacobites' Apprentice - Dave McCall

K 13^th Wednesday - Khamsin- Inge Borg

L 14^th Thursday - Luck Bringer - Nick Brown

M 15^th Friday - Murder at Cirey - Cheryl Sawyer

N 16^th Saturday - A Newfound Land - Anna Belfrage

O 18^th Monday - Out Of Time - Loretta Livingstone

P 19^th Tuesday - Pirate Code - Helen Hollick

Q 20^th Wednesday - To Be A Queen – Annie Whitehead

R 21^st Thursday - The Spirit Room - Marschel Paul

S 22^nd Friday - Sower Of The Seeds Of Dreams - Bill Page

T 23^rd Saturday -Tristan & Iseult - Jane Dixon Smith

U 25^th Monday - A Just And Upright Man - John Lynch

V 26^th Tuesday - Victoria Blake – Far Away

W 27^th Wednesday - WhenSorrows Come - Maria Dziedzan

X 28^th Thursday – The FlaX flower – AmandaMaclean

Y 29^th Friday - Young, Josa - Sail upon The Land

Z 30^th Saturday OZgur Sahin The Wrath of Brotherhood

So call back tomorrow

To meet the next exciting Character!

(unless it is Sunday - in which case, I'll have something different
but just as interesting !)

Tuesday, 26 April 2016

V is for...Victoria Blake's Far Away

#HNSIndie

Click Here for a list of other A-Zers

Victoria Blake

Throughout April I have invited 26 authors who had been selected as Editor's Choice by the Historical Novel Society Indie Reviews

to help me out with the 2016 A-Z Blog Challenge...

Except to be a little different I interviewed

their leading Character/s...

Today's Character is from :

HH : Hello! I believe you exist in Victoria Blake’s novel – what is the title of the book, and would you like to introduce yourself - who you are, what you do etc?

The title of the book is FAR AWAY. My name is Michael Armstrong and when the book starts I’m an officer in the Royal Artillery during the Second World War and I’ve been captured at the fall of Tobruk in Africa and imprisoned in an Italian POW camp. Before the war I’d been studying PPE and law at Oxford.

HH : Where and when are you? Are you a real historical person or did your author create you?

I’m imprisoned in a POW camp in Capua, Italy in 1942 then I’m moved to Chieti and finally Sulmona from which I escape in 1943. The author might like to think she created me but since I am a character based loosely on her father, Robert Blake, I think it would be more appropriate to say that I created her! Incidentally Sulmona is now the confetti capital of the world.

HH. In a few brief sentences: what is the novel you feature in about?

It is about the friendship between two men who meet in a POW camp in Italy during the Second World War. I’m the son of a Norfolk teacher and have just come down from Oxford with a first. Harry Maynard is the son of a Hull tram conductor, a published crime writer and teacher. The book paints a vivid and compelling portrait of the lives of POWs in Italy and the Italians who risked their lives to save them. It is about grief, survival and the inescapability of the past.

HH : I ‘met’ my pirate, Jesamiah Acorne on a beach in Dorset, England - how did your author meet up with you?

I used to tell her stories of my escape – wolves howling, snow covered mountains in the Abruzzi etc when she was a child so I suppose the idea for this fictional version of me came from that and too many viewings of The Great Escape and The Wooden Horse. We did take her to see Where Eagles Dare when she was rather too young, so maybe she’s mistaking me for Richard Burton. Her mother was always elaborating on the actual story so I think that’s what has led to this book. If I’d known she was going to be a novelist I’d have kept my mouth shut! Having a novelist in the family is a profoundly irritating thing.

[HH - as an aside, my father was a POW at the Stalag where the Wooden Horse happened - remember the sandbags being emptied down the men's trousers? Dad helped with that. I'm not sure if he helped acually dig the tunnels, but I suspect he did.)

HH : Tell me about one or two of the other characters who feature with you - husband, wife, family? Who are some of the nice characters and who is the nastiest one?

Harry Maynard is my friend in the book and we escape from the POW camp together. He is already a published writer when the war breaks out. I convince him to write side by side in the same notebook with me. He writes a fairy story and I write an account of my war up to that point. Harry cares deeply about his men and doesn’t like being separated from them. At this stage he is a much more political person than I am and has a more developed social conscience. The nastiest character is probably Harry’s sister, Rose, depicted in old age. She is short tempered and rather disagreeable but this is mainly because she is very elderly and in a care home and waiting to die. She’s not really nasty, more worn out and depressed by old age. Maybe the most difficult aspect of her character is that she’s held onto a secret her whole life about her daughter, Clare’s, parentage.

HH : What is your favourite scene in the book?

I like the scene where my character and Harry are sharpening and then heating up the points of twigs in order to kill the bugs which infested the planks of our beds. It’s in that conversation that I persuade him to write something with me so it’s the trigger for the fairy tale in the book.

HH : What is your least favourite? Maybe a frightening or sad moment that your author wrote.

No soldier will ever forget the moment they surrendered also I wasn’t particularly happy to see my own death depicted.

Victoria

HH : What are you most proud of about your author?

She’s determined. She knows how to keep on keeping on or KBO as Churchill used to say.

HH : Has your author written other books about you? If not, about other characters?

How do you feel about your author going off with someone else!

There was a scene in one of her crime novels, Skin and Blister, when she gave a most disloyal depiction of the inside of my study. Yes, I would like to say, I do know books are a fire hazard but as you know perfectly well that particular electric fire was never ever used so there was no harm in leaning books against it. Incidentally the state of her room today is an absolute disgrace so the term pot and kettle come to mind. I hope to God this will be the only book with me in it. Frankly, I feel it’s about time she does go off with someone else. In fact I know she already has. She is now flirting with that egotistical rogue, poet and pornographer Pietro Aretino in Renaissance Venice.

HH : As a character if you could travel to a time and place different to your own fictional setting where and when would you go?

Well, I wouldn’t mind being alive now although that would make me 99. Having taught politics for most of my life I’d have something to say about this Euro referendum, that’s for sure and I’d like to be put down in Downing Street to knock their heads together. If not now I wouldn’t mind being alive during Benjamin Disraeli’s lifetime. I wrote a biography about him and I’d like to hand him the book, wait until he’s read it and then ask him if I got him right. Every biographer fantasizes about that scenario.

Thank you that was really interesting!

Now where can readers of this A-Z Blog Challenge find out more about you and your author?

Facebook

Twitter @VM_Blake