The author in my spotlight is .....Lynne Barrett-Lee

I am delighted to introduce to the blog 

Lynne Barrett-Lee

Today Lynne will be sharing her thoughts about her book Able Seacat Simon

Simon and Schuster

Hi and welcome to Jaffareadstoo, Lynne. Please tell us about yourself and how you became interested in writing.

I have wanted to be an author since I was still quite a little girl. I particularly remember reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books (the first was Little House In The Big Woods) and as well as feeling bereft at having to say goodbye to Laura’s life and world, I also recall a sense of something like agitation; something I later identified as a constant bedfellow to the ‘I so enjoyed reading that’ feeling - the ‘oh, how I wish I’d written that!’ response. It’s never really gone away. It hit me hard, recently, reading Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. 

I’ve been a committed writer since my teens, when I had a little flurry of confidence-building agent attention, but I was in my thirties, with three little ones, before the writing stars aligned for me and I was finally able to take the biggest step – to make it my priority, and give it my best shot to get published. I gave myself a year, and just sneaked in at the 11th hour, earning £90 for a piece in the Times Educational Supplement. It took me another nine months of slog to sell my next piece – a short story for The People’s Friend. For which I got £50. I was a very poor writer for a very long time… I feel very lucky to be well paid now for doing something (to loosely paraphrase Mark Twain) that I’d be doing anyway, for love.

Where did you get the first flash of inspiration for your novel, Able Seacat Simon?

I didn’t! I was approached by the publisher, with whom I’d already had a number of books published as a ghostwriter (including one about a very large dog) because they thought it might be the kind of project I’d enjoy. It came about because my editor also had a black and white cat called Simon, and her partner stumbled upon the story of the other, more famous, Simon – and duly rushed home to tell her all about it. I’d never heard of Simon, much less the story of the Yangtse Incident, but, being the owner of two RSPCA rescue cats, one of which looked just like him, it was as if the project was made for me. I said yes immediately, without really thinking about whether I could fit it in, let alone do it! But, of course, I just knew I could and would… 

What can you tell us about the story which will tempt the reader's interest?

It’s a factual piece of history, but it has everything a riveting story needs. It’s full of tension, excitement, drama, and heroism, and (if it doesn’t sound too cheesy) is also full of characters who embody both what’s finest about the human spirit and, of course, what’s finest and noblest about cats; animals which are often described as being aloof, solitary and selfish. It’s also perfect escapism. It takes the reader away to a time and place most won’t have been before; from Hong Kong, via the high seas, to the famous Yangste river. 

The story is inspired by real life events - when you were researching the story about Simon did you discover anything which surprised you?

I learned so much researching the book. I had to, in order to do the story justice – from learning the lingo of sailors, which is actually called ‘jackspeak’, to being able to describe all the parts of a ship and understand exactly what makes felines tick. In terms of surprises, no big ones, but lots of fascinating ones – such as the legend that, if crossed, cats could conjour terrible storms from magic stored in their tails. That’s why, to this day, a ship’s cat – even a stowaway like Simon – would never be thrown overboard. 

What were the challenges you faced in writing the book from a cat’s perspective?

Remarkably few, considering I'm not one! I’ve written a few short stories down the years from animals’ points of view, and always enjoyed it, which was one of the reasons I said yes to writing the book without hesitation. It’s great fun for an author to get inside the head of different characters, and ‘becoming’ Simon was no different. My first, and really only, challenge was to decide on how things would work logistically e.g. that Simon could understand every word the humans around him said, as Anna Sewell did with Black Beauty, and having him naïve initially about all the strange things humans did. For example, Christmas Crackers – why would humans rip something they’d made apart and make such horrible noises, for fun? And why would they cry when they were happy? I also had to give Simon a human-inspired personality, and, since he was orphaned so young, but had learned so much from his beloved mother, always saw him as a plucky survivor; a kind of mixture of Oliver Twist and The Artful Dodger.

What were the most rewarding aspects of bringing Simon’s story to a wider audience?

For me personally, the level of contact I’ve had from readers. I’ve had letters and postcards and emails - not to mention a couple of gifts - from people of all ages and from all walks of life. I had no idea so many people still remembered Simon’s story – a couple of people even wrote to tell me they had met him, when, in 1949, the Amethyst returned home to Plymouth after the Yangtse incident. Back then he really was something of a celebrity. And though it sounds a bit weird, I’ve been so moved to receive correspondence from retired naval men, to tell me they were physically moved to tears. For an author, that’s pretty special. So I suppose most rewarding is the knowledge that Simon’s story – and that of the heroic young men he served with – is being kept alive for another generation. 

You’ve recently published a special children’s adaptation of Able Sea Cat Simon, did preparing the book for children present any problems in terms of book content?

Simon and Schuster

Not for me, happily. The book was adapted by a professional abridger, who is experienced in creating narrative suited to a 7 years+ readership. Had it been left to me, I'm sure it would still be full of my favourite long words, and myriad (that’s one of them) complicated sentences… My role was actually rather simple. To read it through at each stage and check I was happy with the changes. And, apart from the odd tussle over a sentence or phrase I was determined to keep, I was. They did a wonderful job, I think. 

What is the main thing you want readers, young and old, to take away from your book?

Anything they want, because that’s not down to me, of course. Obviously, I hope everyone who reads it enjoys it, even if it does make them cry at the end. Though, if pushed, I suppose I’d like the young people to take away that important slice of naval history, which I hope has been delivered without sounding too much like homework… For the more mature readers, who might already know about the Amethyst and Simon, I’d like it if I gave them a few hours of escapism, back into a world they once knew. For all readers, well, that’s simple. A reminder that the relationship between humans and animals is very precious, and that we should always treat them well. ☺



More about Lynne can be found on her website by clicking here

Follow on Twitter @LynneBarrettLee

Amazon UK

Amazon UK (children's story) 7-9 yr old



My Thoughts..

I have been privileged to read Lynne's lovely story about Able Seacat Simon. At first I was drawn to the book cover as Simon looks exactly like a cat I once had called Sneeky-Peeky.

From the very first page I was completely enamoured with Simon, he's such a sweetie and oh so frightened to be left all alone on Stonecutters Island, Hong Kong. He's hungry and lost and never sure where he will be able to scavenge his next meal. So when he was picked up by Ordinary Seaman George Hickinbottom and smuggled on board HMS Amethyst and given a whole pilchard all to himself, well I just knew that this little kitten was going to have a grand adventure.

The adult version of Able Seacat Simon is certainly readable in few hours and I really enjoyed seeing how the story evolved. I must admit that I had never heard of the Yangtze Incident and Simon's story wasn't at all familiar but what's so special about this story is that it explains what happened to Simon and the crew of HMS Amethyst in an entirely readable way. I loved Simon, his voice is strong and unique, he was such a brave little fellow, full of valour and enthusiasm and I would image that he was a real joy to have on board ship especially as he had a special knack for catching rats!!

The children's version is equally enchanting it’s one of those special stories that would make perfect bedtime reading for a confident young reader.  The text is clear and concise, the font is a good size for comfortable reading and the added inclusion of a glossary at the end of the book is a really useful addition and explains words which young readers may not be familiar with

This little snippet caught my eye; it's a quote from Simon's mother to Simon when he was a kitten - a saying which, I think, will ring true for humans too.

"...Remember every day holds the capacity for adventure, kitten, but never forget that every day holds the capacity for misadventure too..."

Able Seacat Simon was awarded the Amethyst Campaign medal and is the only cat ever to be awarded the PDSA’s Dickin Medal. 

He was quite a hero - I'm sure that everyone will fall in love with Simon's story as much as I did.

Huge thanks to Lynne for spending time with us today and for sharing her wonderful story.

And also to Jade at Simon and Schuster for her help with the children's book image.

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Letters to the Lost Blog Tour 2015....

Jaffa and I am delighted to welcome

Iona Grey

Author of 

Letters to the Lost

Simon & Schuster
23 April 2015

Iona ~ welcome to Jaffareadstoo....

What can you tell us about Letters to the Lost which will pique the reader’s interest?

I’m an out and out romantic, and Letters to the Lost is very much a love story. Or two love stories, really, as it’s a dual time frame book, with two sets of characters. It’s set in the 1940s – in wartime London – and in 2011, so I really hope that anyone who has an interest in the war and a weakness for a good old fashioned romance will enjoy it. It involves some unfinished business from the past, and a quest to resolve things before it’s too late.

What came first for you – the idea, the plot, the place or the characters?

Actually, the title came before anything else! The phrase Letters from the Lost came into my head one day, when I caught a glimpse of a handwritten letter on my daughter’s desk. I really liked the sound of it and wrote it down immediately, then couldn't stop myself trying to work out what story might lie behind it. I think the piece that slotted into place next was the location – the deserted house in the present day. I knew that the letters would arrive there, so I then had to find out who had sent them and why. From there Dan and Stella’s story really wrote itself, and the characters came to life for me.

What was the most difficult aspect of writing the story? How did you overcome it?

I wrote the whole of Dan and Stella’s story first, without stopping until I reached the end, and it really was lovely! I used to get in the shower in the morning and start thinking about the scenes I was going to write that day, and couldn't wait to get up to my office in the attic to get stuck in. I reached the end of their bit at about the same time as my daughters broke up for the summer holidays, and so I stopped writing altogether for the next month or so, and mulled over the present day story in my head. It felt like starting an entirely different book, so was fairly daunting, but once I reached the part when Jess finds the letters and the two stories started to merge I felt much happier. That was the most difficult bit – weaving the two strands together (in fact, I often wonder what masochistic instinct makes me write dual time frame books!) but I overcame it by planning everything out on a whiteboard (and then mostly ignoring it and writing whatever felt right at the time – but the planning made me feel better!)

What is your definition of writing Heaven? And writing Hell?

Oooh – lovely question! I think my definition of writing Heaven is time and space to Think. Of course (standard disclaimer) I adore my family, but the necessity of feeding them (three times a day!) and shopping for the food is the ultimate enemy of creativity. (I have a slight concern that on occasion I have wandered around the aisles of Sainsburys with an empty trolley actually muttering to myself). So, Heaven would be someone to plan, shop for and cook decent healthy food for us all 5 days a week. Actually, when I was writing Letters to the Lost, I had a week of writing heaven in Ironbridge in Shropshire. My middle daughter had a work experience placement at lovely Blist’s Hill and we’d rather underestimated the journey time from home, so the two of us stayed in a beautiful Landmark Trust house right beside the famous bridge. I dropped her off in the morning, then went back to the house for a whole day of writing, uninterrupted by laundry, cleaning or cooking, as we happily existed on ready meals and pub food. (It’s probably relevant to mention that there was no television or wifi there, either...)

Writing Hell for me is time pressure. Sometimes it’s not a linear process, and it’s really important to have the luxury of time to go back and change something, or slash whole swathes of words. It’s never an easy decision to make, but having the deadline clock ticking loudly in your ear makes it infinitely harder to make that call. I also think that books grow organically, and at certain stages of their development they just need time to... settle. At those times there’s no sense at all in rushing on and trying to beat a wordcount goal. Far better to put the kettle on, open a packet of biscuits and stare out of the window... (*EXCUSE KLAXON*)

Which writer do you admire most and why?

There are so many writers that I love and admire, and am inspired by. One of my all-time favourite writers, and my earliest influence was Jilly Cooper. I picked up my stepmother’s copy of one of her shorter novels (Imogen) while on holiday in France at the age of 10, and I absolutely devoured it. It was a total revelation. Up until then I’d only read children’s books, with overwhelmingly virtuous heroines, but here was a book about real people: funny and awkward and sexy and vivid. It was like getting a glimpse into a grown up world I longed to be part of. I still pre-order everything she writes.

Other writers I admire include Kate Atkinson for her effortless prose, which often seems to make me laugh while I’m still reaching for the tissues to mop up the tears, and Rosamunde Pilcher for her amazing skill at telling a story that totally transports you to a different world. I’m in awe of that power. (And having her provide a cover quote for Letters to the Lost was one of the most exciting and moving and amazing things ever. Totally incredible.)

What books are you reading at the moment?

I often have two books on the go – one for research, and one for pleasure. At the moment my research book is Up West, by Pip Granger, which is about life in Soho in the post-war years and is wonderfully absorbing as well as being informative. For bedtime reading, I’m deeply enthralled by Vanessa Lafaye’s brilliant Summertime which is utterly breathtaking, (sometimes quite literally, as the tension keeps building) and keeps me reading long after I should have switched out the light.

Can you tell us if you have another novel planned?

I do! I’m deep into writing book 2, which is set in the early 1950s (hence the research!). The war is over and the King has just died. It’s only a decade after the era I wrote about in Letters to the Lost, but it feels like an entirely different world; in many ways a more drab and depressed one than in wartime. And of course, it’s a love story!

My review of Letters to the Lost can be found here.

Huge thanks to Iona for sharing her thoughts so eloquently and to Hayley at Simon and Schuster  for her invitation to be part of this exciting book tour.

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Review ~ Letters to the Lost by Iona Grey

Simon & Schuster
April  2015

Escaping from an abusive relationship, Jess takes refuge in a seemingly deserted London mews cottage. She knows it’s wrong to be there, but in desperation she seeks oblivion from her own messy problems and attempts to makes sense of a life she knows is going nowhere. When she discovers a letter, ostensibly sent to the owner of the house, she again, knows it's wrong to pry into someone else's business, but the letter sounds so heartfelt and the sender is so very desperate to find the woman he left behind at the end of the Second World War.  Before long Jess's life is intertwined with that of Dan Rosinski, a Second World War fighter pilot, who, amidst the terror and sorrow of wartime, loved and lost his darling girl and now, nearly seventy years later, time for Dan is running out and so much left unsaid, now needs to be spoken.

What then follows is a beautifully written dual time love story which enthrals from the very beginning. From the start, Jess and her story is realistic to the point of harshness as so much about her needs cherishing. However, step by step, she gets drawn into a story of forbidden love, and as she appreciates the memories of others, so her own life starts to take on more meaning.  The wartime love affair between Dan Rosinski and his married lover Stella Thorne is so beautifully handled that the magic of stolen attraction is counterbalanced against the soberness of a loveless marriage, and yet, it is in the thrill of stolen moments and the delicious delight of soft kisses where the book really starts to tug at the heartstrings.

All too often with dual time narratives one time frame can outshine the other. However, that is not the case with Letters to the Lost as the transition between past and present is seamless. Such is the sense of time and place that whilst reading I truly lost sense of where I was and escaped into the past and lived through a story of love, loss and despair. I really started to care about Jess and wanted to be there to look after her and hoped that everything would turn out right for her. Equally, I fell a little in love with Dan, the gallant war hero whose time as a fighter pilot was made all the more poignant because he couldn’t be with the woman he loved.

Often books which are labelled as page turners turn out to be a damp squib. However, Letters to the Lost is a real page tuner in the true sense, as over five hundred pages flash by in the blink of an eye.  It is one of those rare books that I really couldn't put down, and yet, perversely, at the same time I also didn't want the story to end and could have easily spent another five hundred pages in the company of Dan, Stella and the lovely Jess.

I had a feeling deep in my reviewers bones that this book was going to be special ..and believe me it lived up to my expectations. This is is a commendable debut novel and I can only hope that the author already has another book in the pipeline as I for one cannot wait to see what Iona Grey does next.

My thanks to Emma Harrow at Simon and Schuster for the chance to read this lovely novel in advance of its April Publication.

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Jaffareadstoo's Guest Review...

Simon and Schuster
2014

Jaffa and I were delighted to be given the opportunity to be a guest reviewer on Lindsay's excellent blog 

at

 The Little Reader Library

Do pop across and read what we thought about

The Silversmith's Wife by Sophia Tobin 

In the winter of 1792, Pierre Renard, the eponymous silversmith, is found dead in London’s Berkeley Square. With his throat cut and his pocket watch stolen, his murder could have been the work of an opportunist pickpocket, but as the story progresses it becomes obvious that, whilst on the surface, Pierre Renard was a man of means and self importance, he had more than enough enemies who wished him dead. At the heart of the story is Mary, the silversmith’s wife, who is completely overshadowed by her erstwhile husband, and yet by necessity, must play a pivotal role in the evolution of events. It’s a time of great uncertainty, not just for Mary as she copes in the aftermath of her husband’s murder but also for the continuation of Mary’s silversmith business, when a woman alone and defenceless was seen as the ultimate weakness.

From the beginning, I was drawn into the dark and dismal world of Georgian London where the patrolling night watchmen sink their sorrow into the bottom of an ale cup and where the great and the good of the city divide their time between squandering their wealth and interfering in other people’s lives. The Silversmith’s Wife takes the reader on a journey into the complicated world of Georgian melodrama and into the hub of the silversmith trade in the very heart of Bond Street, a place where petty jealousies run rife, and where thwarted passions and long buried hostilities threaten to overshadow everything.

There is no doubt that the author has a real skill for storytelling and in The Silversmith’s Wife, she conveys an introspective story, which whilst keeping at its heart the mystery surrounding Renard’s untimely death, also looks at the minutiae of daily life and the sadness which pervades Mary’s role as the unhappy wife. Reminiscent at times of Michel Faber’s, The Crimson Petal and the White, this story oozes quiet elegance and a decadent charm, which lingers in the way the story, evolves at its own pace. I found much to enjoy in the story, the plot kept me guessing, and I was so sympathetically drawn to Mary’s character, that by the end of the novel I only wished for her a long and happy life.

I would definitely recommend The Silversmith’s Wife to those readers who enjoy well written historical fiction.

Thanks to Lindsay and Simon and Schuster for the chance to read this book.

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