- there are others, too, for you to explore! So I asked Carmen if she would mind telling us a bit more about them and about herself.
So, Carmen, your first Alyssa book was inspired by a real event - can you tell us more?
I’d just read that one of Jane Austen’s aunt had been sent on a bride ship to India, together with other surplus women of good family (she made an excellent match) and idly researched. I came upon one paragraph, about a group of brides who were sent from recession-stricken Australia to the new colony of British Columbia. They never made it. They were last seen when the ship arrived for a stop-over in San Francisco. The boat they travelled on was by all accounts horrible. I’ve tried to give them the future they should have had and a much more comfortable ship.
Yes, that long sea voyage (I'm glad it wasn't me!), and then the second book is set in gold rush Canada. How do you do your research to make these settings come alive?
Read, read, read. For The Case of the Missing Bride I took it as a sign that I found a book with private letters from Melbourne covering exactly the period I needed as soon as I had conceived the idea. And then I discovered a journal published by a ship’s surgeon. He’d crossed the seas in the 1890s but gave me great insights. Hence the deck quoits!
Personal accounts are wonderful because they tell you all the little things going on behind closed doors. I also love old newspapers and early advertisements and finding out about mundane things like the price of bread and butter, and how much people earned. Or medical treatment – especially interesting because there really was an epidemic in British Columbia at the time the brides should have arrived. And it was fun to research how the gold would have been assayed.
Without spoilers, if you can, what's your favourite scene in The Missing Bride?
The hurricane! I was on a ferry from Germany to England once during a gale force 11 storm, and I lived through the worst earthquakes in the history of Christchurch, New Zealand, so I remember the panic only too well. I also enjoyed that Alyssa proved herself more than equal to the judgmental doctor in that storm.
You're clearly immersed in your work! What drew you to writing - and why historical crime?
I’ve always been writing, since I was a child. Later I became a newspaper reporter which explains my love for research. The books I loved most as a child were classics like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, and later Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. The historical aspects allow me to hopefully make sure that people and their situation aren’t forgotten. Like the brides, who, one century later, were dismissed by one journalist as unwanted and undesirable anyway (which is of course plausible when the church selected them and paid for them to have a better future!) The crime, or rather cozy or traditional mystery, part helps with restoring balance. I don’t like to say justice, because while there can be retribution, there will never be proper justice for innocent victims. But it’s a great way to get rid of my anger over the unjust treatment of people or societal ills. Sorry if this sounds dogmatic, but I promise at least on the literary side there will be fun in these themes as well.
I'm still a big fan of Dickens and Dorothy L. Sayers, too! Do you write novels full time?
I also write free-lance content articles on a variety of subjects. It’s nice to see something that’s finished within a few hours!
Apart from Christie, Sayers and Dickens, have other writers influenced or inspired you?
Lots! I still adore Jane Austen, the Golden Age mystery writers, and modern ones who write historical mysteries like Rhys Bowen. Alyssa owes a lot to her Molly Murphy. For me, one of the questions was, how do you solve a crime with few clues and no modern things like finger-prints? Especially when you can’t go to the police and you struggle as a female to be taken seriously at all? The incomparable Terry Pratchett is a constant source of wonderment when it comes to stating sad truths about our society and our history while being wickedly funny.
He's much missed, isn't he? Have you hobbies that feed into your writing, or give you a break from it?,
I love movies and theatre – after all it’s stories! So going to the cinema is one of my favourite things. And I’ve taken up tap dance. We’ve spent the last months working on a fabulous routine from La-La-Land which brings me back to movies... I also love travels. There’s so much world out there to discover.
Tap dancing - I'm in awe! Well, important question: where can people find you and your books?
My books are available on all the major platforms and with luck in book stores. A Matter of Love and Death is out now as an audiobook too. Ask for it in your local library!
My website, which is very much a work in progress, is www.carmenradtke.com
If anyone wants to chat with me, find me on Twitter as @carmenradtke1
Or on Goodreads www.goodreads.com/goodreadscomcarmen_...
and Bookbub @scribbler25
Thank you very much, Carmen!
No comments:
Post a Comment