I’m delighted to welcome
author Marilyn Pemberton onto my blog today to talk about her beautifully
written debut novel, The Jewel Garden.
Marilyn is one of my Monday
Night writing students, and it’s been my pleasure over the last few years to hear
extracts of Marilyn’s book and to follow her journey from just an idea right through
to publication.
Marilyn has always worked
in IT and is still a full-time project manager. However, at the age of 40 she
decided she wanted to exercise the right side of her brain and so commenced a
part-time BA in English literature at Warwick University. This progressed to an
MA and then to a PhD on the utopian & dystopian aspects of Victorian fairy
tales.
After giving a paper at a
conference she was approached by a publisher who suggested she gather together
some lesser known fairy tales and as a result Enchanted Ideologies: A Collection of Rediscovered
Nineteenth-Century English Moral Fairy Tales was published by The True Bill
Press in 2010.
During her research Marilyn “discovered” Mary De Morgan, a Victorian
writer of fairy tales. She became
somewhat obsessed with De Morgan and in order to share her research she wrote Out
of the Shadows: The Life and Works of Mary De Morgan, which was published
by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2012.
Despite her intensive research there were still many gaps in her
knowledge and because she just could not let De Morgan, or the act of writing,
go, she decided to write a fictional novel based on De Morgan’s life - the
result being The Jewel Garden.
Here’s the blurb for The Jewel Garden…
It
was a time when women were starting to rebel against Victorian conventions and
to strive for their independence. This is a story of Hannah Russell’s physical,
emotional and artistic journey from the back streets of the East End of London
to the noisy souks and sandy wastes of Egypt; from the labyrinthine canals of
Venice to the lonely corridors of Russell Hall in Kent. Hannah thinks she has
found love with Mary De Morgan, a writer of fairy tales and one of William
Morris’s circle of friends. But where there is devotion there can also be
deceit and where there is hope there also dwells despair.
Enjoy this extract from The Jewel Garden by Marilyn Pemberton as Hannah
sails out to Egypt from England.
The next morning I awoke early. The sun was only
just rising and had not yet warmed the air, but I decided to wrap myself up
well and to sit on the upper deck and to savour the birth of the day. There
were already a few passengers already on deck, but I managed to find a deck
chair that offered protection from the cool breeze, but provided a wonderful
view out to sea.
When I first looked out I thought that there was
nothing to see but the vast flat expanse of blue that stretched to infinity.
But the longer I looked the more I saw: the smudge of smoke from another ship
on the horizon; a flock of black cormorants skimming the surface of the ocean,
coming from goodness knows where, going to goodness knows where; a single small
white cloud marring the otherwise clear azure dome.
And the sea itself, not flat after all, but just
like blue icing on a Christmas cake that the cook had patted with a spatula and
then brushed with sugar. I imagined rather than saw the brightly coloured
shoals of fish that darted hither and thither in the dark depths. The surface
was suddenly, joyfully, broken by five shiny porpoises, arching in synchrony
through the air. I saw them for but a few seconds, then no more and I wondered
if I had imagined them.
Marilyn is a member of the Society of Women Writers & Journalists and
has just won first prize in one of their short story competitions. She is also
a member of the Historical Novel Society and The Society of Authors.
She is currently working on a new historical novel, set in 18th century Italy that tells of two young boys who are bought from their families, castrated and then trained to be singers. This was something that was actually done at the time, though this story is purely fictional. It follows the boys’ careers, one who becomes a successful singer and the other who does not.
She is currently working on a new historical novel, set in 18th century Italy that tells of two young boys who are bought from their families, castrated and then trained to be singers. This was something that was actually done at the time, though this story is purely fictional. It follows the boys’ careers, one who becomes a successful singer and the other who does not.
I would like to thank
Marilyn for being on my blog – and I can’t wait to read her next novel.
The Jewel Garden by Marilyn Pemberton, published by Williams &
Whiting.
Available
in print and as an ebook:
Discover
more about Marilyn: https://marilynpemberton.wixsite.com/author
Blog:
writingtokeepsane.wordpress.com
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/mapemberton54
