THE WRITER'S VIEW: ALISON STUART

This post is part of a Virtual Book Tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions.  Alison will be awarding ecopies of her two previously published books THE KING’S MAN and the award winning BY THE SWORD, which are set in the same period as this story, to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour. Click the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

The Writer's View 

Hi Judy

Thanks so much for inviting me to your blog.

I have no pretensions to be the next Virginia Woolf but that superlative writer (who wrote a long essay on the subject) said to write fiction, a woman needed money and a room of her own.

It took me a long time before I managed to claim that room of my own, a place of my own where I worked and I could make identifiably MY space. My sons had their bedrooms, my husband his shed. For a while I claimed the room in the house loosely termed "the study" but it was always a shared space and had more to do with my legal practice then it did with writing. I eventually had to turn it over to my husband who was ordered to work from home and I was left stranded on a landing.

I attempted to claim that space on the landing as my own, but nothing I could do altered the fact that it was still a thoroughfare. I mourned for my space and my writing effectively dried up, except, oddly, on those few days when I was home alone and the whole house once more became my space, but crammed into a corner and subject to the continual interruptions of sons and husband was not a good place for a writer.

There are probably those of you who say, a good writer can write anywhere, and certainly when the muse is with me, I could write in a train station in the middle of peak hour, but I need a sense of order around me to get that muse kick started and working on the landing, I never seemed to achieve that sense of physical or mental order.

When I lived in Asia, I learned quite a bit about Feng Shui - certainly enough to know that the basic precepts of not cluttering and freeing up energy lines have some considerable credence. Certainly they do for me!

When my eldest son upped stakes and left home, I had barely waved him off before I claimed his room.  I painted the room and moved all my "stuff" into it, hung my pictures on the wall and made the space mine. I am not just a writer, I also sew (quilting/ embroidery) and with all my sewing materials pushed into available spaces around the house, I had even felt myself unable to pursue that side of my creativity. Now I had it all with me and the space in my head opened up again. 

I have included two photographs of my working space… with my much battered Victorian cedar desk that I have had since I was 16 and my reference books to hand. In the second photo are my book cases and all those little knick knacks you acquire in your writing journey. To my right are the huge wardrobes on the doors of which are stuck the bits and pieces from my current work in progress and to my left are the windows and my sewing machine cabinet and a reading chair. There is only one thing lacking and that is a view… my only view is of the sky and the tower on the multi storey public housing block with the radar on top that goes around and around, but I don’t rue the lack of scenery. In fact I work best without a view to distract me.

This is my dreaming space and I am not giving it up for anyone…ever again! Now, Virginia, about money… 

                                                                                                                                                                            About the Author:  Alison Stuart is an award winning Australian writer of historicals with heart.  Whether duelling with dashing cavaliers or waywards ghosts, her books provide a reader with a meaty plot and characters who have to strive against adversity, always with the promise of happiness together. Alison is a lapsed lawyer who has worked in the military and fire service, which may explain a predisposition to soldier heroes.  She lives with her own personal hero and two needy cats and likes nothing more than a stiff gin and tonic and a walk along the sea front of her home town.  She loves to hear from her readers and can be found at her website, facebook, twitter and Goodreads.

Find Alison on the Web

Website:  http://www.alisonstuart.com

Blog:        Ms.Stuart Requests…:  http://www.alisonstuart.blogspot.com

Facebook:  Alison Stuart- Writer https://www.facebook.com/pages/Alison-Stuart-Writer/177254485659744?fref=ts

Twitter:  @AlisonStuart14

Goodreads:  http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4636079.Alison_Stuart

Can love endure across time?

When a seventeenth-century cavalier hurls himself over her garden wall, Doctor Jessica Shepherd is more angry than surprised. Although she ís no stranger to military re-enactors, there ís something different about Nathaniel Preston. If he ís to be believed, something…or someone…has sent him forward in time from the midst of a civil war to the quiet English countryside of the twentieth century.

With time working against them, Nathaniel has to convince Jessica why fate brought them together before he ís forced to return to his own era and certain death in battle.

Can the strength of love overcome all obstacles, even time itself?