My ten top blog posts
My ten top blog posts
My ten top blog posts
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Hannah
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This week I’m celebrating four years since I became a published author (see my Monday post, ‘Win my novel Burning Embers’).
It is in fact four and a half years since I started blogging, and in that time I have written hundreds of posts on all kinds of subjects, from art to architecture, history to folklore, cuisine to fashion – and of course plenty of articles on my inspirations and writing process, and the background to my novels.
Today, I’m sharing with you ten of my favourite posts over the years. I hope you enjoy revisiting them.
In which I explore how I write not in black and white but in colour, as shown in my novel The Echoes of Love.
‘Burning Embers, the movie: My ideal leads’
An interviewer asked me: If Burning Embers was optioned for a TV drama/movie, who would you like to play Coral and Rafe? I had a lot of fun considering my answer, and especially in casting the male lead…
‘Epic romance: Redefining a classic term’
The Sun newspaper described The Echoes of Love as ‘an epic love story that is beautifully told’. In this article I consider how the term ‘epic’ has been redefined, and how this has influenced my writing.
‘Written in the stars: The power of fortune telling’
Fortune-telling is a common theme in my novels. Here I explore how it helps me build on three key aspects of my stories – mystery, control and the taboo – and I share a poem by Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani that beautifully conveys the emotion of the fortune teller.
‘My heroine Luz: a fusion of Lord Byron’s poetry’
In which I explain how one of my favourite poets of English literature, Lord Byron, inspired me as I crafted my heroine Luz for Masquerade.
A look at the Andalucían legends that I touch on in my novel Indiscretion, from the tale of Lover’s Leap, to the story of Pedro the Cruel and María de Padilla at the Alcázar, to the promise that those who wear matching sultan and sultana costumes are destined to fall in love.
On my passion for dance, and how it breaks down barriers between my heroes and heroines, so that illusions fall away, leaving the beautiful, sensual truth.
‘Swoon-worthy or too good to be true? Striking the balance with romance heroes’
How I endeavour to each hero so that he is not only so attractive that readers will wish him to life, but also realistic, believable, true to life. For how can the heroine, a flawed human as we all are, have a hope of building a future with a god?
‘Travel as a means of challenging my heroines’
In which I explain why in my novels I challenge my heroines, by taking them out of the comfortable, safe – a little staid – life they have always known, and plunging them into a brand-new culture, one that is colourful and vibrant and exhilaratingly exotic, but also, by its nature of being foreign, somewhat overwhelming.
Remember the comic strip series ‘Love is…’ by cartoonist Kim Casali? Love is so much, but if there is one single definitive ‘Love is’, I think it is this: ‘Love is… discovery’. Here I explain how, in my new book Legacy, this theme is at the core of Luna and Ruy’s love story.