I'm a concept writer...

I’m a concept writer: I get an interesting idea stuck in my head, and start populating the crux of the story with a main character, then the important people in their lives, where they live, jobs they do, their age, background, current life situation…

I had an idea of a novel knocking around in my head from around late 2000 onwards, but it took until I did an MA in creative writing to impose enough discipline on myself to actually write it.

The concept which I couldn’t get out of my head revolved around that recently-passed huge historical moment: the millennium. The years leading up to the end of the 1990s and into a new century were rife with conspiracy theories, rumour-mongering, predictions of great drama and huge excitement – overlaid with a pretty big dose of fear. We thought we were unique in history, approaching this anomalous time boundary with a deep consciousness, and attributing meaning all over. But this was not the case: the turn of the previous century was shrouded in the same high emotion and heightened historical consciousness. The French translation of the phrase end of the century – ‘fin de siècle’ – refers to an art movement which was based on the idea of a clean break with the past, and a bold move into the future in a new century.

I had only ever written stories set in the present day, and yet here I was planning to write my first full length novel set just over a hundred years ago: a historical novel.

And here is the opening of the first chapter, in the first-person voice of protagonist Polly Eaton:

It was half past eleven, on New Year’s Eve 1899. I finally felt I could relax, as I looked around the drawing room, at my mother’s party in full swing.

In the quiet society of coastal Colmouth, all talk in the drawing rooms and tea-rooms centred, for most of the year, around the approaching end of century. Three themes dominated such discussion at the advent of the new, exciting, terrible century: fear, uncertainty – and celebration!

This occasion was the biggest, the best excuse for a party for generations. My mother and her group of friends discussed at length, even in steaming, sultry July, the panoply of dramatic festivities planned for this Significant Moment. The litany of balls, dinners and galas gave rise, eventually, to my mother’s plan, for the first time, to throw a New Years Eve party.