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I use a new note book and jot down all the ideas streaming into my head. I make a note of the characters and their ages, then I write a little blurb about them. I also jot down several titles and once I have a premise for the story, I see which title fits it the most. I sometimes use a working title if I'm dissatisfied with my selection.
2. Do you have a favourite beverage to devour while you write?
Up until around midday, I drink copious amounts of coffee – white with two sweeteners. In the afternoon, I love milk oolong tea – black with two sweeteners. Going through a rough patch, later in the day, I have been known to quaff a Thunder Toffee vodka with Pepsi Max.
3. What kind of research did you do for Garlic & Gauloises?
I lived in the south of France for six years, so much of the environment and food was from memory. I researched information and photos of Bordeaux on the internet, as I did visit there once, but I mainly remembered the swaths of vineyards. It was there I learnt that a rose bush was planted at the end of each row as any potential disease lurking around would attack the rose bush first, alerting the grower that they needed to act before the vine perished.
I've also lived in London, so I used my memories to weave the environment for where Alice and Theo lived. I worked in Tower Hamlets, so I'm very familiar with Bethnal Green and neighbouring Hackney, where the protagonists live. In my time as a community nurse, I regularly visited a hospice, and I used that experience as a template for the one in the book.
4. Are any of the characters in your book based on people you know in real life?
Absolutely not! Snippets of personalities of people I’ve come across may slip into a character, but I adore creating characters from my imagination, so I wouldn’t choose to use anyone I know as a character. Having said that, someone has requested that he be a murder victim in one of my crime novels! I've only met him once as he works with my husband, but I'm planning on obliging him in the currently crime novel I'm writing!
I would have to say Theo Edwards, as he was fun to write. Cantankerous and jaded characters allow me to do and say things I never would in real life – and that is so releasing. I can be rude and receive no comeback.
6. What is your favourite book at the moment?
It used to be ‘Attic of the Mind’, my psychological thriller, but I have to say that ‘Garlic & Gauloises’ eclipses that now. The reason being that I believe my writing has improved over the years, and I just love this melancholic story, and I thoroughly enjoyed writing it.
7. When you're not writing, what do you do with your time?
Most Friday and/or Saturday nights, I go to a pub to listen to live rock covers bands. It’s a great release from the chores of life, and I get to sing along loudly in the crowd without being heard! We board Guide Dogs in training (one just left us this morning, sniff) so when we have one we go for lovely walks at the weekend. It goes without saying that I love reading, and I've recently become addicted to Maggie O’Farrell’s and Catherine Dunne’s novels.
8. If you had one piece of advice for aspiring authors, what would you say?
Stop comparing yourself to other authors, and feeling inferior to their work. Yes, there are well established authors we can admire – like Maggie O’Farrell - but everyone had to start somewhere, and the more you write, the better you will become.
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Summary:
Alice Calwin finds herself
without purpose in life after the death of her mother, whom she'd been caring
for following a stroke. Theo Edwards, a literary journalist, has a sour outlook
on life, bolstered by his ongoing divorce, and is feeling the pressure to
revitalise his column in the newspaper. They encounter one another at a
writers' retreat in France, but Alice's shameful past and Theo's deceptive
reasons for being there end up affecting them both in very different ways. When
someone finally acknowledges their mistakes, is it ever too late to make
amends?
Go get it From: Amazon UK
Follow: @HemmieMM
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Title: Garlic & Gauloises
Author: Hemmie Martin
Release Date: 11th December 2015
Genre: Contemporary
Publisher: Winter Goose Publishing
Pages: 208
