Write Scared, Live Brave
And no, I'm not going to put you in my book...
Yikes…I Have A New Book Out
I have a new book out in a few days: If I Can Save One Child. That makes five in less than two years…
How do I do it?
Simple – I love to write.
If I don’t write, I go a bit stir crazy. Just ask my dog. We end up tramping the hills and dales while I mutter to myself, working through new plot ideas.
Sometimes I catch a farmer or a hiker staring at me and I smile and wave. Then I insert them into the new story.
Yes, we authors really do use the people we meet as characters, however much we pretend otherwise.
Although if someone sidles up to me at a party and says, ‘ooh, I’m not talking to you…you’ll put me in a book,’ you can absolutely guarantee that I won’t.
But random farmers in the distance and the people at the next table in a coffee shop – fair game. Both appear in the book I’m writing at the moment, a psychological thriller. And that’s the other thing…
By the time a new book comes out, I’m already well into writing the next one. It gets confusing when I’m already creating new characters but still love the old ones. Especially Elisabeth, the heroine of If I Can Save One Child.
As with all my other WW2 thrillers, she’s based on a couple of real people. I always try to amalgamate the men and women who actually did the extraordinary things I write about out of respect for them and their families, in the same way that I never use their real names.
I am, after all, making up a lot of stuff – what they said, love affairs, friendships…things I could never know but can only imagine.
In Elisabeth’s case, I used two astonishing women as role models: Eliane Plewman, who stood barely five foot tall and was parachuted into France where she engaged in sabotage and acted as a courier, one of the most dangerous jobs of all, until she was captured by the Germans in 1944 after her network was infiltrated.
The other was Andree de Jongh, again small in stature but with a huge heart, who led the Comet escape line from Belgium and escorted more than a hundred people, including downed airmen, over the Pyrenees to safety in Spain.
It wasn’t just these brave women and men, aided by MI9 and SOE along with the Resistance, who helped so many escape.
Ordinary people risked their lives to shelter, feed and escort escapers and evaders through France and over the mountains or across the sea. After the war, the organisers of the escape lines reckoned they’d lost one person for each one they’d saved. That’s quite a toll.
All of that brings my own life into perspective, as I’m sure it does yours. I’m always genuinely humbled by the bravery I come across in my research.
I also love the way people lived hard in spite of the danger all around. They fell in love fast and never missed an opportunity to enjoy the day, knowing they might not see another.
I try to bring that bravery to my writing too. If you scare yourself with what you’re putting down on the page, you’re probably doing it right.
On that note, fingers crossed that you love If I Can Save One Child (there’s nothing scarier than waiting for the reaction to a new book) and be brave. It’s the only way to live.
Amanda x
