Tell us a bit about your latest book, and what inspired you to write such a story.
The Tapestry of Love is set in rural France. It tells the story of Englishwoman Catherine Parkstone, who sells up her house in England and moves to a remote hamlet in the Cévennes mountains, to set up in business as a seamstress an tapestry-maker. The novel traces the gradual process by which she weaves herself into the fabric of the local community. There is also romance for Catherine along the way.
The inspiration for the book, at least in terms of setting, was a family holiday I had in the Cévennes. It was only a two-week break, and more than twenty years ago now, but the mountains were so profoundly beautiful that they somehow lodged themselves in my imagination. My family have also all done what Catherine did and emigrated to France: my parents moved when they retired to an old stone farmhouse in the Loire Atlantique and my brother lives in the Rhône-Alpes region, where he runs a small business. I have borrowed shamelessly from the experiences of both.
What are you working on now? Anything you want to tell us about?
I have one more novel completed, and am thinking about ideas for the next, but I’m not currently writing anything.
If one of your books were to be made into a movie, which book would you choose and who do you see playing your characters and why?
The male lead in my first novel, More Than Love Letters, is called Richard because when I was writing the book I was in a phase of mild obsession with British actor Richard Armitage, after watching him play smouldering mill owner, John Thornton, in a BBC adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South. The shape and theme of More Than Love Letters, indeed, owes a lot to Gaskell’s novel. My dream would be to see that book filmed with Richard Armitage in the leading role.
What are your favorite pizza toppings?
Anything vegetarian, really, and lashings of it: spinach, artichoke hearts, roasted peppers, mushrooms, asparagus, olives, capers…
Which do you prefer: Mac or PC?
I’m a Mac user – both desktop iMac at work and laptop MacBook at home. I love them!
What’s the first thing you did when you received word you’d sold a book?
I was at work when my agent phoned me, with a colleague sitting at the next desk, and he couldn’t help overhearing that I’d had good news. (My whooping and dancing a small jig may have given it away.) As soon as I’d told him about it, I rang my partner and then my mum.
What do you read and why, especially if it's different from what you write?
I must admit that my tastes as a reader tend to be rather more towards the literary end of the spectrum than the more commercial fiction I write. Most of my favourite authors are women, whether it’s the classics (Austen, Eliot, Gaskell), period fiction (Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabeth Bowen, Penelope Fitzgerald) or contemporary (Barbara Trapido, AS Byatt, Margaret Atwood, Anne Tyler, Kate Atkinson, E Annie Proulx, Margaret Forster, Jane Smiley, Salley Vickers, Hilary Mantel...). I do enjoy a bit of light, breezy chick lit from time to time (Phillipa Ashley is a favourite) and the occasional crime novel (I love Donna Leon).
Which of your covers is your favorite?
I just adore the cover for The Tapestry of Love: I look at it and want to be in the French countryside, with the morning sun on my face and the whole day before me.
How do you world build?
I’m not one of those authors who sits down in advance and works out detailed character templates, settings and timelines. I tend to start with a vague picture in my head – sketchy outlines of a couple of main characters and an initial situation to put them in. Then I just begin to write.
I used to be apologetic about my lack of planning, until one day I heard the wonderful Ali Smith describing herself in a radio interview as ‘a very intuitive writer’. That sounds so much better, doesn’t it, than ‘I muddle along and hope for the best’?
Tell me about some of your heroes and heroines:
Are we talking about real life heroes and heroines? Or fictional – from my own work or other people’s?
In real life it would tend to be people who have worked tirelessly to improve the lives of others, usually in political life - from Nelson Mandela to Mo Mowlam. My literary heroes tend to be feisty females: Harriet Vane from the Lord Peter Wimsey novels of Dorothy L Sayers, Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter books, and CJ Cregg from The West Wing!
Do you use a pen name? If so, how did you come up with it?
No, Rosy Thornton is my real name. Well, actually, my name is Rosamund (my father was reading a novel about the mistress of Henry II of England when I was born) but I rapidly abandoned that in favour of Rosy at the age of about nine. Mind you, if I ever write a historical novel, I might revert to Rosamund!
Where can readers find you on the ‘net for more information on you, your books and other fun stuff?
I have a website here, where readers can find out more about me and the background to my writing:
I am also to be found on Facebook, and would love to meet people there for a chat:
Sneak Peek into The Tapestry of Love
A rural idyll: that's what Catherine Parkstone is seeking when she sells her house in England and moves to a tiny hamlet in the Cévennes mountains. Divorced and with her children grown, she is free to make a new start, and set up in business as a seamstress. But this is a harsh and lonely place when you're no longer just on holiday, and Catherine finds herself with unexpected battles to fight. French bureaucracy, the mountain weather, the reserve of her neighbours - and most unsettling of all, her own fascination with the intriguing Patrick Castagnol.
Excerpt:
Never in her life had Catherine Parkstone imagined so many sheep.
Applying the handbrake, she sat back and watched the passing tide. They were streaming down the unfenced hillside to the right, above the road, a bobbing phalanx maybe twenty or thirty animals wide, before slowing and spreading wider as they reached the brief plateau of tarmac, the way water pools below a flight of rapids. A few stragglers circled off on to the grass verges and began to graze. But the central current continued its course and began to pick up momentum again as it narrowed to siphon through a gateway gap in the drystone wall on the left.
Aground in the centre of the flood, Catherine’s car split the sheep the way the rocks used to split fklowing river water. For a dizzying moment she entertained the illusion that the car might dislodge and be swept downstream with the sheep.
Caffeine, she thought, and closed her eyes. She had had none since the last of the coffee from her thermos when she’d stopped to picnicat an aire near Montluçon. What she did have, wedged in the glove compartment, was a chocolate bar from the terminal at Le Shuttle. Dairy Milk: family size.
Catherine smiled at the name. When Tom was at home, he and his family size friends would descend on the kitchen cupboard and bear off a bar this big, exulting like seagulls over a crust. Lexie was different; she would peck at it guiltily when nobody was looking, just one square gone at a time, chipped from a corner and the foil tucked back.
Catherine opened the car window. The first thing to assail her was the scent: unexpectedly sharp and clean, somehow, the heated tang of herbs and lanolin and manure. Then the sound struck her. The register was high, a sort of hectoring monotone – a bit like Prime Minister’s questions in the House of Commons.
Would she be able to get Radio Four at La Grelaudière, she wondered? Yesterday in Parliament. Reception had been difficult up here when they were kids. Her mother would twiddle at the knobs on the old Phillips portable they brought with them; she’d think she had it and it would waver to a whistle and be driven out by French voices or the sound of marching bands. But these days it would be different, wouldn’t it? Things were digital now.
Still immobilized in the flow of animals, Catherine cut the engine. She glanced at her watch – the habit of an organized lifetime – before reminding herself that there was no longer any reason to hurry. The removal van wouldn’t be there until tomorrow morning at the earliest, and more likely the afternoon. She had all the essentials here with her in the car – including her old sleeping bag and the carpet bag with her tapestry silks – and no one to please but herself.
Link to buy the book:
(Note: The novel is not yet released on Amazon.com, but this UK site offers free delivery worldwide).
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