RHYS BOWEN: Writing is usually a solitary business. We sit at our computers and think and muse and eventually we write. When it's a linear story that normally goes well. Our sleuth finds a body, he or she does some detecting and at the end of the book he solves it. Simple, right?
However in recent years I have set myself rather more of a challenge. I have written several books in more than one time period. I have jumped back and forward between times, telling several characters' stories. The story in the past has to be just as real and compelling as the one in the present. And they have to mirror each other, if possible, and tie in neatly together.
So I've just started my next stand-alone novel. It's going to be set in WWII (are we surprised) and in 1968. The story is about a missing child, taken from a public garden in 1968 and perhaps linked to several small girls who vanished during the chaos of WWII. And my protagonist is somehow linked to both stories. I can't say more about that because I want the reading to be full of AHA moments.
But at the center of the story is one of the abandoned villages on the coast of England. When the D Day invasion was planned sites were needed for troops to practice invasion drills. And so people were turned out of their homes at short notice so that the army could practice landings and the shelling of targets. The village of Tyneham in Dorset was evacuated for that purpose. The inhabitants were promised they could return after the war but that never happened.
So I have modeled my village on Tyneham. It can now be visited by the public on weekends. Here is how the book opens (at the moment. I may move chapters around)
There had been no advance warning, apart from an army vehicle that had appeared one blustery afternoon three weeks earlier. This in itself was strange as there was no proper road to the village, only a lane that got rather muddy after rain. And it didn’t go anywhere, apart from down to the tiny harbour where there were currently no fishing boats, the war having made fishing too dangerous in these waters. The jeep had driven down the one street, past the church, the schoolhouse, the pub and the row of cottages, to where the village ended in the overgrown track, steps down to the harbor and the English Channel beyond. An officer, wearing a smart peaked army cap, had got out, looked around, and was heard by Mary Dobson, getting in her washing before it rained , to say,” It will have to do. Luckily there’s nothing of historic value here.”
She never bothered to pass along this statement or the inhabitants might have been better prepared when the post office van came sloshing through puddles to deposit the post at the village post office cum village shop..
Mrs. Jenkins, the post mistress/shop owner had looked at the pile of letters bearing no stamp.
“More rubbish from the government,” she had said to Fred Hammond, the driver. “I wonder what it will be this time?”
“Probably cutting our sugar ration again,” he said. “Or the meat ration. But I bet that don’t affect you so much out here with your chickens and pigs.”
“We do all right, I suppose,” she said, “Although the rats keep getting at our eggs, bloody nuisances.”
“He don’t have to worry too much, do he?” The post office driver nodded up the street. “Him at the big house. Don’t he still have cows?”
“No, they’re long gone,” she said. “Government took them. Now he don’t have that much more than we do. A couple of pigs and chickens. But a fine lot of fruit and veggies and I must say he’s good enough to share with us.”
“Well, he should, seeing as you’re his tenants, right? You pay him every month to live here, don’t you?”
“We do, I suppose.” Mrs Jenkins smoothed down her apron. “Now I better get that lazy bones Ned to take these around.”
It turned out that the letters were not about the sugar ration. Instead they said:
To the inhabitants of Tydeham. This is to inform you that His Majesty’s armed forces have need of your village to further the war effort. It has been requisitioned for invasion drills, starting October 8th, 1943. You have two weeks to remove your belongings and vacate the village.
So that's how the book starts. But there are several main characters whose lives intersect and several intervowen plots. I'm not sure why I always set myself this type of book but it's what I enjoy reading. But trying to come up with motive and back story for so many characters is challenging. This is a good reason to have daughters, folks. Yesterday Clare and I went to for a walk and talked through one important aspect of plot. And came up with the absolutely perfect, apt solution for one story line. Yeah. Although it won't come up for many pages it was blocking the flow of creativity, knowing I'd need to know something in the future. And now I do. Thank you, Clare. I'm so happy to have a brilliant fellow writer now. Our next book together comes out on March 14. ALL THAT IS HIDDEN. And we just got a fabulous Kirkus review that said "Bowen and Broyles never disappoint." (We're thinking of having buttons made with that saying!)
So, dear readers, do you like books that feature multiple story lines and take you between time periods?
