Rhys on Little Girls

RHYS BOWEN: Please raise a glass to celebrate with me. I have finished my new stand-alone, the one I am tentatively calling IN AN ABANDONED PLACE, but might end up being called THE FORGOTTEN VILLAGE, THE LOST VILLAGE, THE LOST GIRLS, THE LAST LITTLE GIRL  etc etc. Stay tuned!

Anyway, as I've mentioned in previous what we're writing weeks, the story is about little girls in various time periods...three girls who disappeared on their way to be evacuated in WWII, one little girl who has vanished in London in 1968 and a heroine who visits an abandoned village and has a flashback of memory, realizing she's been there before, which starts to unravel everything she knows about her own life.

Probably the most complicated book I've ever tried to write. Every piece of one story fills in a missing piece of another story so there was a lot of juggling about what to tell and when.

One of the vehicles I've used was to show some small random scenes from the point of view of various missing girls in the book. I never say which girl is which. I want to reader to try to guess and then put that piece into the puzzle as we learn more.

Here is one of those scenes:

A Little Girl

 The little girl was finding her suitcase too heavy and the gas mask bumped up and down across her front as she walked. It was warmed than usual and she felt hot and clammy in her good coat. But Mum had insisted she wear it. “You’ll be cold once it’s winter,” she said. “And then you’ll thank me that I made you wear it.” 

 The little girl dumped the suitcase and opened the buttons of the coat. That was better. She stood on the corner, gulping in big breaths of air that blew in from the river. She was quite excited about going to the country. She had only been out of London once, on a school outing to the seaside for the day. That had been exciting. She wondered if they’d be taken anywhere near the seaside now. Her mum didn’t know. “You’ll find out when you get there,” she had said. The little girl could see that her mum was upset she was going. That was why she didn’t want to come to the school with the other mums. She claimed she had to be at work in the factory on time but the little girl suspected it was because she knew she was going to make a fuss and cry. 

 The girl lifted her suitcase again. It weighed a ton. She reckoned her mum had packed every single thing she owned into it. On she staggered, waiting for the traffic light to turn before she crossed the busy street. 

Then she turned into a quiet backroad.Here it was peaceful after the traffic noise. Nobody else in sight. Only the sound of a radio voice giving the morning news from an upstairs window. It wasn’t far to the station now. She could see its roof, sticking up behind the rows of houses. The suitcase handle was making her hand burn. She put it down and spat on her palm. 

She wasn’t aware to begin with, of the big black car that drew up beside her. 

     “Do you need a lift somewhere?” The man inside the car had wound down his window. 

     “It’s all right. I’m only going to the station,” she said. 

     “The station? By yourself? Are you running away from home?” He asked it almost as a joke.

     “No!” She could tell the man was teasing in that annoying way grownups had. “I’ve got to meet my class an we’re getting on a train out to the country,” she said. “We’re being evacuated.” 

     “Well, I’m driving past Victoria Station, as it happens. How about I take you that far? That will save you lugging that heavy suitcase, won’t it?” 

     The little girl hesitated. She had been warned about strangers. But the man looked like someone’s uncle. What’s more he had a posh voice and he was wearing a uniform, so he must be all right. And the suitcase was jolly heavy. 

     “Thank you, sir,” she said. “It’s very kind of you.” 

     “Not at all. We all have to help each other when there’s a war on, don’t we?” He came around and opened the back door. “Put your case in there.” And then the passenger door. “Hop in. That’s right. Off we go, eh?” 

 And off they went.  

Was he a good guy or a bad guy? There are both in the book , in face one aspect of the story is the blurred lines between right and wrong. I'm really pleased with it now I've finished. My agent has seen it. She said she started reading and didn't move until she'd finished, so that's a good sign, isn't it?

I'm off to England in a few days, seeking out more hidden stories like the abandoned village. In fact I'm going to Jersey in the Channel Islands that were occupied by the Nazis during WWII so I'm hoping for juicy details from there. I'll give updates on my Facebook page.

And any brilliant title ideas?

What We're Writing: Rhys is Juggling!

 RHYS BOWEN: Why do I do this to myself? I could stick to writing fun and funny mysteries in which my sleuth solves a murder in under three hundred pages. A linear plot. A cast of characters that I know and love.

Instead I set myself a challenge every year of writing something long and complicated. 

Which is what I'm doing right now.  

I'm writing yet another book set in two time periods with actually three story lines intertwining. One story involves an abandoned village in World War Two (remember I posted photos of it). Another involves a missing child in 1968, yet a third involves three little girls who vanished while being evacuated during the war, and... oh no, there's a fourth story line... the heroine's own personal story and what happened to her during her own childhood. And there is a love story ( of course. Have I ever been known to write a book without a touch of romance).

Each of these has to have clues that help to solve the others. We have to find out the clues in the correct order so that every revelation makes the reader go "Oooh, now I know what happened to that other child"

So it feels as if I'm juggling, constantly keeping several balls in the air, while at the same time filling in pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. This causes me to wake in the middle of the night thinking, "Wait. No we need to go to Devon and find the shop before she visits the ex girlfriend."

In spite of all this it's coming along quite well. I'm at page 265 with probably a hundred or so to go and I do know where I'm heading now.  I'm currently calling it IN AN ABANDONED PLACE. But I'm also toying with THE LOST GIRLS, THE LAST LITTLE GIRL, MISSING, FLASHBACK etc etc. Suggestions welcome.

 So here is a snippet. I've tried to decide what I can share with you that won't give too much away.

They came out through the gate and now started along the village street. In what had been cottage gardens weeds now ran rampant, brambles tumbled over walls. There was no sign that people had once lived here, no washing on a clothes line, no toy dropped when a child was called in to a meal. Nothing.

                “This is all there was of it?” Marisa looked around. ‘Hardly much of a village.”

                “There was a big house too, off to one side up there,” Dave said. “I think the village was built for the bloke who owned it. So he had his workers living on the spot. Or perhaps some of them were fishermen. There was a harbor.”

                They continued forward, stepping over the great fissures and craters that had formed.

                “They certainly gave this place a beating,” Marisa said.  She looked back at Liz.

                Liz was standing, staring down the street, frowning.

                “What’s the matter, Liz?” Marisa asked. “Have you spotted something?”

                “I’ve been here before,” she said in a puzzled voice..

“You can’t have,” Dave said, chuckling. “It’s been off limits since the war. It was taken over by the army in 1943 to prepare for the invasion. You weren’t even born, were you?”

                “I was born in 1941,” Liz said.

                “So you’d only have been two when the people were turned out,” Dave said. “You don’t remember much from when you are two, do you? I know I don’t.”

                “They say some people remember their birth,” Marisa said. “That’s why they are claustrophobic, coming down that long dark tunnel.” And she laughed.

                Liz was still frowning, looking around her. “I’m sure I was here once.”

                “Maybe another village like it. There’s plenty of them on the coast here,” Dave said. “But probably not during the war. The coast was mostly off limits for civilians. They had mines and tank traps on the beaches.  And this wouldn’t have been the sort of place you’d come on holiday. No hotels or caravan parks nearby in those days.”

                Liz shook her head. “I can’t remember anything else. It just came to me that I’d been here. I’ve no idea when.”

                “Like I said, it would have to have been before 1943 and you’d only have been a toddler.”

                They continued walking. Liz stopped, looking up at the shell of what once had been the two story building. “There was a pub called The Big Boat,” she said.

                “The Big Boat?” Dave looked amused.  He examined the building. “I suppose that could have been the pub. It’s the only big building on the street.”  He trod gingerly over to where a door had once been and peered inside. “Can’t see much in here,” he said. “just rubble where the upstairs floor has caved in.”

                “But there is a metal hook on the side,” Marisa said. “Where a pub sign might have hung once.”

                She too tiptoed forward and peered into tall grass. Then she stopped, looked up, her mouth open.  “There’s a pub sign,” she said.

                Liz and Dave went to look. The painting on it was faded and discolored but they could just make out the shape of a ship in full sail and the words THE GOLDEN HINDE.

Just one of the puzzle pieces. Hopefully all will be clear by the end, and will make sense! AND the reader will be able to follow.

So do you like complicated books like this or do you prefer the straightforward whodunit?

What We Are Writing by Rhys Bowen

 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?