Writer and friend, Melinda Hammond...

...is visiting my blog today. Hello Melinda and thank you very much for making time to be be here.  Over to you...

MH  Writing.  A lonely profession, stuck at a desk for hours at a time writing, researching, thinking.  Getting those words down, then rearranging them, editing. So why do we do it?  For the joy – the hope – of creating something beautiful, of course.  I love every single book I have ever written.  They may not be to everyone’s taste, or huge bestsellers, some of them have not even found a publisher (yet) but they are my creations and I wrote them with blood, sweat and tears.  With love.

I love the new things I learn with each one, little snippets of history, of the world, I love the way the characters and the stories never cease to surprise me.  One of my earlier books, Lucasta, started life when I read a poem by Richard Lovelace, To Lucasta, Going to the Wars.  Lucasta – a wonderful name for a heroine.  It did not take long to create an adventure set in Georgian England, involving a cross dressing heroine with a very practical nature, a heroic viscount, a dastardly villain and even a cheese shop!

One of the biggest surprises has been Miss Moonshine, a character created “by committee”, as it were.  You see, there were nine of us, all authors, meeting for lunch in the beautiful Pennine town of Hebden Bridge and we decided we would write a book of short stories (why not?  After all, we all had busy writing lives, why not add extra work!).  But we needed a common thread.  Deciding to base our stories in a fictionalised town based on Hebden Bridge was easy, but from somewhere a character appeared, a rather other-worldly creature who would appear in each of our stories.

Some of us are historical novelists and wanted to write stories based in the past. That wouldn’t be a problem.  Miss Moonshine is ageless, it seems.  In Miss Moonshine’s Emporium of Happy Endings we see her first in my own story, set just after the battle of Waterloo.  Then she appears again in the Edwardian era, and on into the present day.  Logic tells us she can’t be the same woman.  Can she?  Ask any of the authors involved and we will all just shrug.  I don’t think any of us knows quite where Miss Moonshine came from.  That’s the magic of creation.
AW   I couldn't agree more!

Dunstanburgh and shorline

MH  My current novel is set in Northumberland and involved more “loneliness” than just the writing of it: a huge expanse of deserted beach in Northumberland, and castle ruins, visited out of season and therefore empty, but what was born from that journey was a tale full of life and action.  When I first visited Dunstanburgh Castle I thought I would write something set in the middle ages, but what my somewhat fevered imagination conjured up was very different.  A story set in 1745, a young sword maker who finds himself caught up in a desperate battle to save his family’s honour, and the woman he loves.  It has all the things I most love in a book, action, romance and history!
AW  I've walked along that beach many times and I've even got the same shot!  Last time I was there everything was covered in snow.

MH  So, thank you for allowing me to leave my desk for a short time, but I really must get back to it.  Words are calling…..

about the book... Blurb: 1745: John Steel takes a consignment of swords to Warenford Keep on the wild Northumberland coast. He suspects that the swords are destined for the rebel army of Charles Edward Stuart, but matters are complicated by his growing attraction to Katherine Ellingham, daughter of a known Jacobite and betrothed to the powerful Lord Warenford.

With Carlisle in the hands of the Jacobites, and government troops patrolling Northumberland, John makes a desperate bid to retrieve the swords from the Keep before his family is implicated in the uprising, but can he succeed, and protect Katherine and her family at the same time?

about the author... Melinda Hammond is an award-winning author of historical adventures and romances. She also writes historical romance for Halrequin Mills & Boon as Sarah Mallory.  Until recently Melinda  lived on the Pennines, drawing inspiration from the glorious scenery, but recently she ran away to Scotland, to embark on a whole new adventure!


You can follow Melinda on her Website Facebook and on Twitter 

You can get her books from Amazon

Thank you Melinda, and another fellow Author on the Edge will be visiting the blog next month, so watch this space...

You can read previous posts from Authors on the Edge 

Kate Field