Tuesday, May 3, 2022

The Enlightenment Show Interview With Vanessa Savage

Welcome to The Enlightenment Show, Vanessa! I’m so excited to have you joining us. Congratulations on your book, THE NIGHT THEY VANISHED, that just released! It’s a thrilling and shocking ride.

 

  •            Can you give the readers a brief synopsis of what THE NIGHT THEY VANISHED is about?

                    Hanna has a good life. Estranged from her family, she’s moved on from a troubled past to a life where she has a good job and is surrounded by loyal friends. Adam is a web developer. As a sideline, he’s built The Dark Tourist, a website that explores sites of notorious crimes in the UK. One day, a new house is listed on the website. It tells the story of a terrible crime – a family murdered; the killer never found. The date of the crime is today. The family is Hanna’s. When she rushes home, the house is abandoned and her family has vanished. Adam is insistent that his site was hacked, that he never put the house on there. Hanna and Adam have never met before now, but there’s a dark connection that links the two of them, and in a race against time to save Hanna’s family, they have to find that connection before it’s too late…

  •          What was one thing that surprised you about your main character, Hanna?

                   It’s a very small thing, but I was surprised when I wrote her first scenes, to find she doesn’t drink alcohol. It wasn’t something I planned; it was just something I knew as I started writing. It was a clear marker of her determination to overcome the mistakes of her past.

  •         Hanna has quite a past of trauma and family dysfunction. Where did you draw from to write the emotional scenes tied to her pain and fear?

                  I think this is where the ‘write what you know’ advice comes from. I haven’t experienced the trauma and dysfunction that Hanna has, but like everyone, I’ve experienced fear and grief, pain and insecurity. I understand the emotions although my life experiences are quite different and I’m able to draw on my own emotions when writing from Hanna’s point of view.

  •       What inspired you to dive into creating THE NIGHT THEY VANISHED?

                My first novel, The Woman in the Dark, focuses on a family who move into a notorious ‘murder house’, and have to deal with the curiosity of strangers as they attempt to make a place of tragedy into a home. As part of my research for that novel, I became fascinated by the idea of dark tourism and it sparked a ‘what if’ question that wouldn’t go away until I began writing The Night They Vanished - what if you found your family home listed as the site of a terrible murder on a true crime website? And then you can’t get hold of your family, they’ve vanished into the night… What really happened the night they vanished? Where is the family? Who listed the house on the website? And why?

 

  •       Have you had something vanish in your life that left you asking questions? What happened?
               Many years ago, we had a pretty cat who liked to wander. She wore a collar and was very sociable. She disappeared for about three days once and came home looking very well-fed and wearing a completely different collar. We bought her another collar and a few weeks later, the same thing happened. And then it happened again. Over the next few months, we got through a lot of collars and each time, she’d come home from one of her wanderings wearing a different one. Eventually, she vanished completely and despite us putting up posters and searching and asking neighbours, she never came home. I don’t think anything happened to her – I believe she chose her second home over ours. Perhaps they moved away and took her with them. Perhaps she just preferred the food they gave her!

  •    What are three character traits that you like about Hanna? Why?

              I like her strength and determination – she went off the rails as a teenager and has really turned her life around since. She fought her demons and won and is determined not to let herself be dragged down again. I also like her sass and bolshiness! I’m far more reserved and shy away from confrontation, so I admire her confidence!

  •    I love how you mention that you realized that you wanted your characters to kill each other, not kiss each other 😊 What do you love about writing thrillers and mysteries that keeps you coming back for more?

            I started out writing women’s fiction, character driven fiction that was all about the lead up to the happy-ever-after. But the more I wrote, the more I became fascinated by the darker side of my characters. Relationships – whether romantic or familial – are at the heart of my writing and for me, a psychological thriller is the flip side of a romance novel; it’s what happens after the happy-ever-after moment, how a relationship breaks down, how a friendship can spiral into paranoia and obsession… that’s what fascinates me as a writer. In real life, I’d much prefer the happy-ever-after.

 

 

                                                INNER CHILD SEGMENT

  •      What is your favorite tea? How do you like to make it?

               I drink a lot of coffee in the mornings, but in the evening, I prefer a cup of green tea, made simply with boiling water and teabag in a favourite mug!

  •     What’s something mysterious and suspenseful that excites you, and that most wouldn’t know about you?
              In common with many crime writers, I like to think I’m a very nice person in real life, who has never committed a crime and does not live a dark and tortured life! I’ve had many people who know me in real life express surprise at some of the dark turns my fiction takes…

  •   What are a few things that you love about living by the sea in South Wales?
            Living by the sea in the summer months is wonderful – ice cream at the beach, sunbathing on the sand, the buzz, the excitement… but mostly, I love living by the sea out of season. The beaches are quieter but just as beautiful. I can walk the coastal paths with my dog for hours without meeting another person and it’s like my own private paradise. But, there can also be something eerie about a seaside town in winter, and the lonely, windswept beaches, with the mist creeping in from the sea have inspired the fictional settings for all of my books…

  •   What’s the oddest food combo that you’ve liked and tried, or just tried?

            One Christmas, a friend persuaded me to try a slice of fruitcake with a chunk of blue cheese on top. I’m not sure it’s an experience I’ll repeat!

  •  What advice can you share with our readers about living a joyful life?

          Appreciate the little things that make every day joyful. I think living through a global pandemic taught many people this – to take the opportunity to reconnect with family and enjoy the smaller moments. Don’t spend too much time regretting mistakes you’ve made – learn and move on. Don’t spend your life constantly looking forward to the big things, or wishing you had more money, were more successful or more anything – appreciate what you have.


       Thank you so much for being with us, Vanessa. Congratulations again on the release of THE NIGHT THEY VANISHED!! It’s been an absolute pleasure getting to know you.

 

 

 

 

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Sunday, May 1, 2022

The Enlightenment Show Interview With Laura Jarratt

Welcome to The Enlightenment Show, Laura! I’m so excited to have you joining us. Your book, Two Little Girls, was an emotional, character-driven book that held me from the beginning. I couldn’t put it down!

                    ·       Can you give the readers a brief synopsis of what Two Little Girls is about?

                         Lizzie is a professional working mother in a marriage that’s beginning to feel the strain of work commitments. On the way home from a holiday with her daughters, she crashes the car into a lake and has to make a terrible decision when she can only get one daughter out of the car. The rest of the book deals with the consequences of her choice until events take a more sinister twist. And I’m in spoiler territory there so I’ll have to stop.

                  ·       Where did the idea for Two Little Girls spring from? Where were you when the first idea came in?

                         I was on a coffee break in the office kitchen at work. At that time, I was the Principal at a school for children with special needs. One of the office staff was telling us about a recurring dream she had about crashing her car into a lake and knowing she could only get one of her two girls out – and then she always woke up. It’s a classic expression of maternal anxiety and we all had some form of dream-like that so everyone was super-sympathetic, except me. I just stood there, frozen, and exclaimed ‘That’s such a great start to a book!’ It’s a good job she knew me well by that point and they all laughed. And the rest of the book came from that opening scene.

                ·       Your main character Lizzie Fulton makes a choice that haunts her throughout the book. What’s a choice that you’ve made that’s haunted you at some point in your life?

                     My mother and I were very close. She suffered from ill health for years but towards the end of her life, she deteriorated quite quickly and her kidneys began to fail. She had vascular dementia and so dialysis wasn’t appropriate as her dementia was accelerating too. In her last few days, she became really unwell and couldn’t stay in her own home with visiting care staff so I made the decision to ask for her to go into a nursing home in the village. I had to really battle to get this as they wanted to send her to a cheaper one miles away, where me and my daughter (who was three at the time) would have struggled to visit daily. My other option was to have her at home in our sitting room but we had no downstairs bathroom and also I was working full time and couldn’t afford to take extended leave. The nursing staff said she wasn’t close enough to the end of life for a hospice, although our family doctor said she wouldn’t have long. I finally got her into the nursing home in the village and we visited every day but she died less than a week later in her sleep. If I’d known she had so little time left, I would have brought her home with me. I still wish I had.

            ·       I love how you brought in the reality of how a traumatic experience causes PTSD. Have you personally gone through that? What kind of research did you do to make this aspect so relatable to connect to the readers?

                  I hadn’t experienced it myself at the time, although last year I was in a serious car crash and I did have some issues for a while after that and I got treated with EMDR because I recognized what I was experiencing. My husband was in the Army and I used to teach a Public Services preparation course so PTSD is something I was relatively familiar with when I was writing this book. I was Principal at a school with a number of children who had suffered early childhood trauma so I had read a lot about it as well as having direct professional experience. There’s one example I always quote about PTSD. I was watching a documentary on the conflict in Afghanistan to show to my class and there was a helicopter pilot talking about his PTSD. He said he’d flown 35 Med-Evac flights in close succession, bringing out casualties under heavy fire. He’d never had a problem until flight no. 36, but that one broke him. There was nothing different about it. It was just one flight too many in too short a space of time. That’s the thing with PTSD and what I wanted to convey – it can happen to anyone. Nobody is immune. In fact, PTSD can be defined as a natural response to an unnatural set of events.

 

               ·       What was one thing that surprised you about writing this story?

                    Dan, Lizzie’s husband, surprised me as a character. I thought he’d be far less sympathetic than he is after she makes her choice but he simply refused to be as judgmental as I believed he would be when I actually came to write the story. He took the first part of the book down a quite different track to my vague idea of where it would go.

              ·       What are some of your current fears that you’d like to examine and explore?

I’ve been doing that a little in my next book, where two of my characters are facing the impact of menopause and old age. It’s an uncomfortable place to be when you realize you’re past the halfway mark of life. While I think there’s so much about women’s lives post-menopause that is great and should be celebrated, there are moments when my breath catches at the thought that one day I won’t be here anymore. My daughter is still under ten so I think it hits me harder because of that. I want to be around as long as possible for her. I was 44 when my mother died and it was too soon – it’s always too soon when you’ve had that close mother/daughter relationship.

              ·       What’s one thing you loved about your two main characters, Lizzie and Dan?

                    I love how their roots are so entwined with each other that despite everything, how they’ve drifted, how damaged they are by their daughter’s death, and the fallout from that, they find their way back to each other. All marriages go through rough patches but some couples keep finding their way back to each other through the hard times. There’s tremendous hope in that and I love it.

 

                                                   INNER CHILD SEGMENT


·       As a teenager, what was your favorite thing to do? Eat? Wear?

                   I was quite a moody teen. Very hormonal! I liked hanging out in my bedroom in the dark listening to music as a younger teen. But in my late teens, I blossomed into a much more feisty and outgoing character. I was shy as a child but that vanished. I was into the alternative music scene so was usually found in second-hand combat boots, stripey tights, and cut-off shorts with my hair in cotton hair wraps with beads or twisted up into two matching top knots. My favorite meal would have been, as it still is, a Sunday roast with the family. And I’ve just remembered, I used to collect quotes as a teenager! I had diaries full of them. I’ve always loved words. I’ve still got those diaries in a box somewhere. I might need to dig them out and read them again.

              ·       What’s something mysterious and suspenseful that excites you, and that most wouldn’t know about you?

                     I’m laughing as I write this because I’m absolutely the worst person around mystery and suspense. I always cheat and look at the back of the book because I can’t wait to find out. I’m much happier with predictability and I like being comfortable, physically and emotionally. That doesn’t reflect my writing in any way, except I do like endings with some positivity to them.

I am scared of werewolves though if that counts, and that’s something most people don’t know about me. Yes, logically I know they don’t exist and it’s utter nonsense but put me in a strange rural location at night with odd noises and I’ll remember every werewolf film I’ve ever seen and frighten myself silly. We were once staying in a gite in France and I made my husband get up at 2am to close the skylights because I’d convinced myself a werewolf could get in when I woke in the night to a strange noise. My mother used to say I have a very vivid imagination, but I guess that goes with the territory of being a writer. My husband is the exact opposite and he just rolls his eyes and laughs.

            ·       If you could take a theatre workshop for any play, what would it be and why?

                  I absolutely love theatre and I used to go all the time before my daughter was born. I’m hoping she’ll come with me when she’s older. She’s just starting to show signs she might love it too. I’ve got no interest in acting myself though, so I think I’d have to be a director or do lighting and take a workshop around that. And I adore Shakespeare so it would have to be Twelfth Night because it’s my favorite. The use of language in that play is just so clever.

           ·       What’s the oddest food combo that you’ve liked and tried, or just tried?

     Mint sauce on toast. I used to love it as a kid. I invented it as a combo. I haven’t had it for years but I might just try it again now.

          ·       What advice can you share with our readers about living a joyful life?

           I can find a quote or a story for most things and this is no exception. ‘If you choose not to find joy in the snow, you will have less joy in your life but still the same amount of snow.’And one that I think of when the fear of aging edges into my mind is ‘Do not regret growing old. It is a privilege denied to many.’ It re-grounds me. Fighting aging is a battle we will lose. The secret is to embrace it and find joy in it. Some cultures are much better at this than Western society and we can learn from them.

   ·       Where can the readers connect with you? Where can they find your book? 

               My book is available in all the usual locations and you can find me on Twitter. I don’t tweet a lot but I’m always happy to connect with readers. I generally dislike social media now. Not in principle – it’s a great idea, but too many people behave badly in that environment. It would be better called Antisocial Media. Working with teens, I’ve seen how unhealthy it can be and how it promotes insecurity. I’ve got acquaintances who try to pitch this perfect image of their life on Instagram when their reality is nothing like that and I wonder why they feel the need to pretend, and why people use filters. I just don’t get it personally. Love who you are and what is real – it’s a choice we can all make.


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            Thank you so much for being with us, Laura. Congratulations on the release of Two Little Girls!! It’s been an absolute pleasure getting to know you.

 

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