Today, we have a special guest on the blog! May we have a nice warm applause fr Hannah Fielding, the author of the new book 'Indiscretion'! She was so sweet to have an interview with me.
Tell us about yourself
I was born in
Alexandria, Egypt, a city founded in the year 332 BC by order of
Alexander the Great, a Greek king of Macedonia. The rambling house in
which I grew up was built on a hill facing the Mediterranean,
commanding the most breathtaking views of the ever-changing sea, with
its glowing sunsets and romantic moonlit nights.
I
went to a convent school, and after I graduated with a BA in French
literature, my international nomadic years started. I lived mainly in
Switzerland, France and England, and holidayed in other Mediterranean
countries like Italy, Greece and Spain. After falling in love with my
husband, we settled in a Georgian house in Kent where I brought up
our two children, while looking after horses and dogs and running my
own business renovating rundown cottages.
My
children have now flown the nest, and my husband and I spend half our
time in our Georgian rectory in Kent and the rest in our home in the
South of France, where I write novels overlooking spectacular views
of the Mediterranean.
Tell
me about your new book,
Indiscretion
Indiscretion
is the story of a young woman’s journey of discovery that takes her
to a world of forbidden passion, savage beauty and danger.
The
setting is spring, 1950. Alexandra de Falla, a young half-English,
half-Spanish writer, abandons her privileged but suffocating life in
London and travels to Spain to reunite with her long-estranged
family.
Instead
of providing the sense of belonging she yearns for, the de Fallas are
riven with seething emotions, and in the grip of the wild customs and
traditions of Andalucia, all of which are alien to Alexandra.
Among
the strange characters and in the sultry heat of this country, she
meets a man who awakens emotions she hardly knew existed. But their
path is strewn with obstacles: dangerous rivals, unpredictable events
and inevitable indiscretions. What does Alexandra’s destiny hold
for her in this flamboyant land of drama and all-consuming passions,
where blood is ritually poured on to the sands of sun-drenched
bullfighting arenas, mysterious gypsies are embroiled in magic and
revenge, and beautiful dark-eyed señoritas hide their secrets
behind elegant lacy fans?
Indiscretion
is a story of love and identity, and the clash of ideals in the
pursuit of happiness. Can love survive in a world where scandal and
danger are never far away?
Who
is Alexandra de Falla?
Alexandra de Falla is a
spirited half-English, half-Spanish woman. She is intelligent,
sensitive and curious, but most of all a romantic – in fact, she
has made a career of writing romance novels. To escape the stifling
background of post-war England in the fifties, but mostly to find her
roots, she embarks on a journey to Andalucia, where she meets her
estranged Spanish family. At El PavÏŒn she comes up against the
bigotry of 1950s Spain – the hero, his family and the wider society
all adhere to ways she does not understand, and indeed condemns
because to her they belong in the dark ages. Proud and a staunch
individualist, Alexandra recklessly follows her own naïve star, and,
in view of the times and the places, almost ruins her life. Still,
she definitely has an emotional freshness which comes through
immediately, a quality that Salvador, being a conservative Spanish
male, finds highly attractive. Her unworldliness might land her in
trouble, but nevertheless, her innocence is not without charm.
Alexandra is therefore a
heroine caught in an inner battle between being ‘modern’ and
being ‘old fashioned’ in terms of how she reacts to family
responsibilities and to the men she meets.
Out
of all places in the world, why Spain?
I am an incorrigible romantic, and
Spain is a land of flamboyance and drama. Where else do men flirt
with death every afternoon for entertainment? The people are intense;
their culture, their music, their traditions personify passion and
fire. Even their national dish paella is a rainbow of vivid
colours, with a flavour to match. Life is lived to the full. The
Spanish seem to be totally in tune with James Dean’s immortal
words, ‘Live as if you’ll die today.’
For me Andalucia, in southern Spain,
where the action of Indiscretion takes place, is overflowing
with bygone charm. All year azure skies, dazzling sunshine and
sweetly fragranced gardens… colour, romance, emotion and the
flamboyant figure of a flamenco dancer or the torero in the arena,
sword and cape in hand, beneath the scorching sun.
The fiestas and ferias are charged with
music and dance, conjuring an image of open air, moonlit skies, and
all the aromas that a warm summer’s night has to offer. Women in
bright-coloured dresses and silk shawls carrying rainbow-painted fans
in brilliant designs, the ladies’ secret language of love. Courting
couples on horseback or dancing the most evocative sevillanas.
The crowded little terraces underneath the orange trees that dot the
pavements and the maze of winding, narrow streets that provide shade
from the hot sun. The dazzling, quaint pueblos blancos,
white-washed villages hanging on steep cliffs, their houses huddled
around a ruined Moorish castle, piercing the deep-blue sky. The
peasants working in the fields, with their sparkling black eyes and
their faces weathered like the bark of the native olive trees in the
breathtakingly dramatic landscapes. The wide avenues lined with
spectacular purple Jacaranda trees. The splendour of the magnificent
buildings and monuments.
These are some of my sources of
inspiration which portray the vibrant world and fruitful diversity of
the culture of Spain; but they are only the tip of the iceberg.
Wherever you turn, romance is present… what else could I do but
fall in love with this magical country?
What is
one thing you want people to take away from this book?
My romance novel
Indiscretion
poses a question: Can love survive in a
world where scandal and danger are never far away?
Alexandra feels torn between her two heritages, her two
families, and two ways of life. Her attempt to reconcile these within
herself is one of the main themes of my novel.
No one falls in love
by choice, it’s by chance. So what are the ingredients for true
love? Some people say that true love is when you don’t need to
compromise. In my opinion, that is a rather simplistic answer. If
that were the case, Salvador and Alexandra would never reach their
happy ever after. Love takes work and compromise. When you
compromise, you are not diminishing yourself: it doesn’t mean
you’re wrong and the other person is right; it means that you value
your relationship more than your ego.
Salvador, this Spanish man with
unshakeable traditions and values, is mature enough to understand
that. And because his love for Alexandra is so strong and deep, he
knows when it is time to put his pride to one side and grab what life
and love are offering him. For her part, Alexandra realises she
should put things in perspective; the future might not be paved with
roses, but she loves Salvador and he loves her, and nothing else in
the world should count.
But that is not the only message I
would like Indiscretion to convey to my readers. Family is
very important to me. I
was brought up in a rambling house in Alexandria which was pretty
much like El PavÏŒn, surrounded by an equally sprawling family
clan whose lives were all intertwined with each other. For lunch my
grandmother sat at the head of a table of fifteen members of her
family, which included her children and their spouses and her
grandchildren. We were a clan. There were parameters within which
everyone had a role. If a stranger came into our midst, the clan
immediately drew together as if threatened by the outsider. A close
family life can be stifling sometimes, but it also gives you strength
and a sense of belonging.
I enjoyed imagining Alexandra’s
experience of entering this sort of environment. Similarly, this
happened to me when I married my English husband. I thought I knew
England well, but despite my very international education and my
numerous travels to England and other parts of the world, visiting
and living in a place are very different things: different weather,
different culture, and different prejudices! My English life is now
my own and I am very comfortable with it, but it is a very different
world to the one in which I grew up, and writing Indiscretion
was not only an exercise in writing a romance story set in a place
about which I love to dream, but also an interesting adventure of
exploration for me.
What are you currently working on now if you don't
mind my asking?
My next book, to be published mid-summer 2015, is
Masquerade,
the sequel to Indiscretion
and Book #2 in The Andalucian Nights Trilogy. It is set in the
second half of the seventies and is the story of Luz, Alexandra’s
daughter, living in the New Spain that has opened its borders to
outsiders and is preparing to enter the European Union.
Set in a very different era to that into which Alexandra was thrown,
but one that nevertheless has its problems, Masquerade is a
story of forbidden love, truth and trust in a world of secrets,
revenge and mystery. Are appearances always deceptive?
In 2016, my readers
can look forward to Book #3, Legacy.
Greece and Egypt, two captivating
countries with huge historical and cultural heritages, are also on
the map for settings in new Hannah Fielding romantic novels.
I still have many books in me. For me,
being a writer is not about publishing. It is simply about writing –
writing from the heart the books that I most want to read. As
the great American writer Toni Morrison said, ‘If there’s a book
you want to read and it hasn’t been written yet, then you
must write it.
Again, thanks Hannah for the interview! :)
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This challenge is organized by Geeky Blogger's Book Blog & That’s What I’m Talking About
Saturday: Nada
Sunday: 30 mins Zumba, 1 mile walk, & 60 crunches (30 regular & 30 Pilate ones)
Monday: **HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!** 2 mile walk
Tuesday: 1 mile bike, 1.5 mile walk/jog, & 5 mins weights
Wednesday: 40 crunches & 15 mins yoga
Thursday: 50 crunches (25 pilate & 25 regular)
Friday: Nada
Conclusion: Hmmmm, two not awesome weeks. Boo. Oh well.
