Category: Daughters Of Spain

How I came to write SPANISH LAVENDER

9/7/2014

It was when I was interviewing women for my book Daughters of Spain that I first heard about the massacre on the road between Málaga and Almeria in February 1937, early in the Spanish Civil War. I was so astonished with what one woman had to tell me that I broke off my research and began writing my first novel,SPANISH LAVENDER. It is the story of Elizabeth, an English woman who decides, against all reason, to stay in Spain while her family flee, with the rest of the ex-pats living there at the time, to Gibraltar. She finds herself journeying with other refugees to Málaga but instead of finding safety, she finds a city abandoned by the people supposed to be protecting it, its people dying of starvation, its buildings in ruins and in imminent danger of attack. She meets a young Spaniard, who befriends her and they fall in love. Together they decide to join the exodus of men, women and children who are trying to reach the Republican zone in Almeria. On the way they are bombed by cruising battleships and Juan is injured. In the ensuing chaos Elizabeth and Juan are separated and, believing he is dead, she escapes to England. It is not until seventy years later that her granddaughter uncovers the truth of what happened to Elizabeth's lover.

Essentially a love story, SPANISH LAVENDER is available in paperback and in all ebook formats.

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INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY FAYRE

10/3/2014

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Being an ex-pat living on Spain's Costa del Sol, it's nice from time to time to get together with other ex-pats and the Costa Women's group is great for that. It's an opportunity to meet women from all walks of life and of a wide range of nationalities - Brits, Scandinavians, Finns, Germans and, of course, Spanish. Last Saturday was International Women's Day and Costa Women helped to organise a charity fair at the Tamisa Hotel in Mijas. It was to raise money for the Mijas Women's Refuge - a worthy cause. It was well attended by both visitors and participants. What a wealth of talent there is along this coast - there were women who painted, who made beautiful knitwear and others who made jewellery, beside those that baked cakes and made wonderful jams and chutneys. The cake stalls were my favourite and I couldn't resist buying a few delicious cup cakes to take home for tea - each one different and a work of art.
I had gone along to the fair as a participant, with two other local authors, Jane Harlond and Lorraine Mace, to display my books in Authors' Corner, as we nicknamed it. We had plenty of interest in our work and chatted to a lot of nice people; we got rid of quite a few bookmarks and business cards but actually made few sales. Chatting later we came up with two observations - most people like to buy ebooks these days; they find them more convenient and cheaper to buy. The other observation was more surprising - at least half the women that we spoke to did not read. Yes they read a book if they were on holiday but most had neither the time nor the inclination to pick up a book, never mind buy one. It left us both surprised and depressed. Lifelong readers of the written word, we found it hard to understand that not everyone felt the same as we did.
The first book I ever published was Daughters of Spain, a true account of what life was like for women in Spain during the Franco years. As I chatted to the women who stopped at our Authors' Corner, I felt how appropriate it was to be there on International Women's Day and how far we women had travelled since then.

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How I came to write SPANISH LAVENDER

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY FAYRE

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