Friday 12 June 2009

Questions and Answers


I am currently putting together a Just For You section to go at the end of the paperback of The Loveday Conspiracy. This was also done for the paperback of The Loveday Revenge.
There will be the Prologue of The Loveday Vendetta (This is still the working title of the latest Loveday), Some writing tips on how I plot my novels, What books I am currently reading or have inspired me, and a general section where I answer questions I have been asked either in this blog or from your emails.
If you have a question you would like to see in print either ask it here or email me at Katetremayne.com. I will answer as many as space will permit. I have to send these to my publisher at the end of next week.
I hope you like the painting. It is a Cornish seascape I painted at a recent art course on seasscapes that I attended. I find painting seascapes, landscapes and wildlife very relaxing and a new challenge as I had no formal training.

8 comments:

Carol Townend said...

What a lovely painting! It really makes me looong to go to Cornwall! (Did it take long to do?)

kate tremayne said...

Hi Carol, Thanks for your comment. It was a Friday evening to Sunday lunch time course and the drawing and oil painting took about 8 hours with quite a few new techniques to master.
It does bring Cornwall into my study and having taken so many photos I am tempted to do a Loveday series for my own pleasure - an as I see Trevowan Cove and Penruan Harbour etc. Though its finding the time to paint. I only ever seem to do it on a course or at the weekend Club Chris and I belong to which meets once a month.

Marilyn S. from USA said...

You PAINT too? Kate, you are, indeed, a renaissance woman! The painting is terrific, and you really do live up to your Piscean nature. (I read somewhere -- in one of your Acknowledgements, I think -- that you are a Pisces.) Thank you for sharing your "other" artistic gift.

Marilyn S. said...

Kate, since you were so kind to ask, here are some questions that I'd love to have answered -- either in your upcoming JUST FOR YOU section or in this blog:
1. Did you have formal training as a writer? If so, what was it?
2. Please tell about your experience when your very *first* book was published.
3. Which Loveday character is most like you?
4. For your Loveday characters, do you draw on the nature of your friends? your family?
5. So much happens to each Loveday character. How do you keep it all straight in your mind over so many years?
6. Has your publisher ever considered a Loveday contest, of sorts, to generate more buzz about your books?
7. What will it take to have your books available in the USA? Although I am a real magpie, always endorsing and recommending and applauding your books, I am but one person. And there are so many Americans who are missing out on your wonderful series.

Marilyn S. said...

More questions (making it a "baker's dozen"):
8. What does your study look like?
9. Do you write at a computer?
10. Do you agonize before "killing off" a character? Especially because it means the end (or should I say "dead end") of a certain number of plot lines.
11. Within any given novel, do you know everything that is going to happen to your Loveday characters? Have there been surprises? If yes, tell about it.
12. Did you set out to be a writer? Did you ever have another career?
13. What has been the greatest joy of your writing career?

Anonymous said...

If you could live at any time in history, when would it be?

kate tremayne said...

Anonymous. In answer to your question I have pondered long and hard. The more I think about a time I might have liked to experience it is all too easy to find the downfalls of those days. Bad sanitation. Oppressive laws against the poor. Short life expectancy. A feudal system where serfs were treated as slaves with few rights. Religious persecution to name but a few. Unless you lived in a priviledged society life would have been hard and unrewarding. Women were regarded as chattels and heaven forfend if they like all writers had voices in their head. They would have been burned at the stake. I can feel the flames biting my toes as I type.
Yet I would like to think that during any of these difficult times whatever role I was given in life I could in some way make it easier for others.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Kate Tremayne, for your thoughtful answer. I once posed that same question to my friend whose major in college was History. Her answer, much like yours, was "Any period as long as I was among the rich."