His Fic Saturday~ Author~ Jean Fullerton

On Hist Fic Saturday I am delighted to welcome back to the blog

Best selling author, Jean Fullerton

A very warm welcome, Jean. Thanks for coming back to see us and for sharing why you love writing historical fiction...

Threads through History.

One of the joys of writing for me is building worlds in which my characters and my imagination can play around in. It also means you can, for your own amusement run themes through successive books. 

However, even the most attentive reader can be forgiven for not picking up all the threads that run through my East London Victorian, East London Nurse and now my WW2 series but let me give you a clue. 

It started with my lovely Ellen in No Cure for Love who fell in love with Dr Munroe. The house where she and her daughter lived in Anthony Street is the self-same house Millie Sullivan's mum, in Call Nurse Millie moves into. The link between No Cure for Love and Call Nurse Millie continues as Millie works for the nursing association which is based in Munroe House, founded by Robina Munroe, Robert's daughter, a hundred years before. 

The hero of my second Victorian novel, A Glimpse at Happiness, is Patrick Nolan is the other man in my life and was in all four Victorian books but I loved him so much I couldn't let him go. When I moved forward some 100 years for the 1940s nurse series I reincarnated him as Alex Nolan Nurse Millie's love. Although he didn't know it Alex was Patrick's great, grandson. 

The link continues as the McGuire coal wagons and later lorries mentioned in all my novels are from the same coal yard Patrick's sister Mattie struggles so hard to build up in Perhaps Tomorrow and is later the scrap metal yard where the O'Toole family lived in All Change for Nurse Millie. It’s one of Maguire’s horses that Billy let loose from it’s shafts in A Pocketful of Dreams and that Jerimiah is hoping to hire in A Ration Book Christmas.

In addition, Kate’s Kitchen, the eating house which Mattie and Patrick's sister Kate ran and was situated on the Highway, made it through to the 20th century and featured in all of Nurse Millie and Nurse Connie books but was updated and called Kate's Cafe. I've also used it again in my previous book Pocketful of Dreams and the current one, A Ration Book Christmas. 

I've reused some of the less salubrious locations too. In A Glimpse at Happiness the villainess Ma Tugman operated her brutal waterside empire from the Boatman public house, the self-same public house where Nurse Millie Meets Jim Smith in All Change for Nurse Millie. It’s also one of the pubs Queenie frequents in the Brogan series. 

I've also reincarnated Mooney's doss house in Spitalfields where Aggie Wilcox, the prostitute Kate's estranged husband Freddie takes up with in Hold on to Hope, becomes Fry House. This is now the clinic where Connie, in Wedding Bells for Nurse Connie, works. 

Of course, there are lots of other smaller links through the various series Glasson & Glasson the unscrupulous solicitors who aided Amos Stebbins fraudulent financial dealing are the same solicitors who evicted Millie’s mother Doris from her home and there are many others. 

Of course, I'm not the only author to do this but for me, all my characters and their offspring continue to live and thrive which is how I’m able to convince you they do, too even when the story on the page is finished. 

Ration Book Christmas. In the darkest days of the Blitz, Christmas is more important than ever.

With Christmas 1940 approaching, the Brogan family of London's East End are braving the horrors of the Blitz. With the men away fighting for King and Country and the ever-present dangers of the German Luftwaffe's nightly reign of death and destruction, the family must do all they can to keep a stiff upper lip.

For Jo, the youngest of the Brogan sisters, the perils of war also offer a new-found freedom. Jo falls in love with Tommy, a man known for his dangerous reputation as much as his charm. But as the falling bombs devastate their neighbourhood and rationing begins to bite, will the Brogans manage to pull together a traditional family Christmas? And will Jo find the love and security she seeks in a time of such grave peril?

Read my review of A Ration Book Christmas by clicking here

About The Author

Jean Fullerton is the author of eleven novels all set in East London where she was born. She worked as a district nurse in East London for over twenty-five years and is now a full-time author. 

She is a qualified District and Queen's nurse who has spent most of her working life in the East End of London, first as a Sister in charge of a team, and then as a District Nurse tutor.

She has won multiple awards and all her books are set in her native East London. Her latest book, A RATION BOOK CHRISTMAS, is the second in her East London WW2 Ration Book series featuring sisters Mattie, Jo and Cathy Brogan and their family. 

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Huge thanks to Jean for being my Hist Fic Autho
r today and for sharing the amazing threads that bind all of her lovely stories together.