🍴Sunday Brunch with Jaffareadstoo ~ Eva Glyn

 

On this quiet Sunday morning why don't you put the kettle on, make your favourite breakfast and settle down for Sunday Brunch with Jaffareadstoo

I'm delighted to welcome Eva Glyn to our Sunday Brunch today

Welcome, Eva, what favourite food are you bringing to Sunday brunch?

My favourite Sunday brunch food would be based on a fabulous breakfast I had in a hotel on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. As if the view wasn’t incredible enough they made big, fresh, fluffy gluten free pancakes (scotch pancakes we’d call them over here) served with maple syrup and berries. It was absolute heaven.

 

North Rim, Grand Canyon
Author's Photograph

Would you like a pot of English breakfast tea, a strong Americano, or a glass of Bucks Fizz?

A think a strong coffee would go best with the pancakes

Where shall we eat brunch – around the kitchen table, in the formal dining room, or outside on the patio?

I love eating outside and we don’t do it enough, so on the patio please. We have a tiny garden behind our flat and we deliberately set it up as an eating area, but sometimes it never seems to happen.

Shall we have music playing in the background, and if so do you have a favourite piece of music?

As we’re sitting outside I think it would be lovely to just listen to the birdsong and the hum of the bees. I love nature and something I tried to weave between the pages of The Missing Pieces of Us is how wonderfully restorative it can be.

Which of your literary heroes (dead or alive) are joining us for Sunday Brunch today?

I would really like to meet Victoria Hislop. I’ve loved her books since The Island, but on top of that I’d like to talk to her about the pros and cons of forging a writing career that’s largely based around a single country. I heard something of her experiences during an online talk she gave, but would love to know more about her deep personal connection with Greece, because to me that’s where her best work comes from.

Which favourite book will you bring to Sunday Brunch?

As I know you like poetry I think I will bring my well-thumbed copy of the Collected Poems of Glyn Jones. Glyn was a friend of the family and I read from this collection to my mother on the morning she died. It’s were the Glyn in my penname comes from.

When you are writing do you still find time to read for pleasure? And is there a book you would like to read but haven’t had time for …yet!

I sometimes think the list is endless! I now try to read every lunchtime, but so often that is tied to my reviewing commitments for Frost magazine. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy the books, because if I’m not then I just won’t finish them.

I suppose the books burning the biggest hole in my Kindle at the moment are Jen Gilroy’s The Wishing Tree in Irish Falls (it sounds not unlike the fairy tree in The Missing Pieces of Us), and The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex. I’m embarrassed to say how long I’ve had the review copy of that one!

Picador
2021

Where do you find the inspiration for your novels?

My biography says ‘beautiful places and the secrets they hide’ and that is the absolute truth. The Missing Pieces of Us was born from the magnificent oak on the banks of the River Hamble, where children leave messages for the fairies and they reply. It was when I was wondering who wrote the letters that I came up with the idea of two people meeting years after their brief affair and discovering their memories of it were completely different.

Have you a favourite place to settle down to write and do you find it easier to write in winter or summer?

My desk. There’s nowhere quite like it and I have invested in a smart new daylight lamp so I have all the light I need whatever time of year it is.

When writing to a deadline are you easily distracted and if so how do you bring back focus on your writing?

When it comes to writing every day I am more disciplined that I am about most things, but that is because I do it first thing in the morning and I’ve been thinking about what comes next and talking to my characters about it on and off for the best part of twenty-four hours. I normally can’t wait to dive back in.

Give us four essential items that a writer needs?

Inspiration, perseverance, work ethic – and writer friends (with apologies to referring to them as items).

What can you tell us about your latest novel or your current work in progress?

On Thursday I’ll be celebrating the release of the paperback of The Missing Pieces of Us. I am unbelievably excited because it’s the first time one of my books will be widely available through bookshops. Last week someone in a bookish Facebook group I belong to told me they’d ordered it through Waterstones and I felt a very special tingle.

There are three versions of the past – hers, his, and the truth.

When Robin Vail walks back into widow Isobel O’Briain’s life decades after he abruptly left it, the dark days since her husband’s unexpected passing finally know light. Robin has fallen on hard times but Izzie and her teenage daughter Claire quickly remind him what it’s like to have family…and hope.

But Robin and Izzie are no longer those twenty-something lovers, and as they grow closer once more the missing pieces of their past weigh heavy. Now, to stop history repeating, Izzie and Robin must face facts and right wrongs…no matter how painful.

Eva, where can we follow you on social media?

Twitter: @JaneCable

Facebook page: Eva Glyn, Author

Instagram: @evaglynauthor

Website

Thank you, Eva/Jane for taking part in Sunday Brunch with Jaffareadstoo.

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