When I was a teenager, the wealth of stories my mother raised me on began to resonate more deeply. All of them — memories of her youth — were exciting, romantic, and drenched in settings that cried out to be immortalised by literature or cinema. By then, I was already writing humble novellas, short stories [...]
Peter Fox was my mother’s fiancé, murdered in Cyprus in 1956. His remains have rested in an unmarked grave for nearly seventy years: his bones buried deep under the hard, hot soil of the British Cemetery of Nicosia. These past seventy years, Peter has been nothing more than a missing name, a missing stone, a [...]
With the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Bierkenau nigh upon us, I find my thoughts travelling to the memory of two survivors of the death camp, and the hugely divergent paths their lives took as free men. More to the point, the hugely different ways in which each of them coped - or didn’t [...]
For any writer, the early stage of promoting their hot-off-the-press novel is a heart-in-the mouth period of purgatory. And that's exactly how I'm feeling right now, as INFINITE STRANGER prepares to be released to the public on June 19th. Yep, I'm in purgatory. Will readers like it, won't they? Will you like it, won't you? [...]
A mother’s lost love. A daughter’s forbidden desire. A tale of obsession inspired by true events. The above three sentences are from the taglines of my latest novel, INFINITE STRANGER, to be launched later this month. And it's the last line, inspired by true events , that is the key issue. As with any work [...]
Following my last post, here's the second chapter of my novel, INFINITE STRANGER, which is due out this summer. ------------------------------------------------------------ 2 North Yorkshire, February 1978 I’ll never forget the first time I saw Greystones Abbey. If ever there was a single word to describe such an impression, I’d love to know it. To phrase it [...]
Monk and schoolgirl? Hmm, that title sounds a bit naughty, now I come to think of it. Maybe I should change it. But you must believe me when I say it’s honestly not meant to be naughty. It’s just meant to convey the bitter-sweet pangs of young love, from a dewy-eyed schoolgirl’s point of view. [...]
Wendy Skorupski 