Santa, your latest book, Secrets of the Starlit Sea, has recently been published. By our calculations that makes it your 32nd book since Meet Me Under the Ombu Tree back in 2001. Do you have a favourite?
It’s very hard to choose a favourite because at the time of writing, I am totally immersed in the story and full of passion and enthusiasm for the subject. I can’t spend six months writing a book if I’m not in love with it. So, to choose one that I’ve loved over the others is a bit like choosing one child over another. I love them all, but perhaps in different ways. Some have been harder to write, required more research, or maybe the plot was more challenging, and others have flowed more easily, but I have adored all the characters and the settings of every single one of them. I would say, out of all my books, that the present Timeslider series has been the most challenging to write, because of the mystery Pixie has to solve. Usually, in a detective novel, you start with the body and then work your way forward, investigating what happened in the past. With my series, I start a couple weeks before the drama – in Shadows in the Moonlight, it’s a child who vanishes in the middle of the night, and, in Secrets of the Starlit Sea, it’s working its way towards something dark that takes place in a mansion in New York – and Pixie Tate, my psychic detective heroine, has to investigate by observing the people around her, why it happens. It’s not enough for her to know who did it, because she can be present at the moment it happens and observe, because, coming from the future as she does, she knows when and where it’s going to take place. She has a different objective. What is it that happened to the mother of the child in the first book, and Lester Ravenglass in this recent one, that caused their souls to be stuck in limbo between life and death and prevents them from moving into spirit. Why are they haunting the buildings in the present day and how can Pixie encourage them to leave? So, the plot has to be clearly worked out, and I don’t usually do that. I usually have a vague idea and see where it goes. With this series, I had to carefully plan every relationship, and all the red herrings, twist and turns. Not to mention the time travel aspect, which made my head spin!
As you say Secrets of the Starlit Sea follows Shadows in the Moonlight, and is the middle book in the intended trilogy. What is the concept behind the Timeslider books, where did that idea come from and why is time-travelling such an appealing theme on which to base this latest series?
Orion commissioned me to write a new series of three books and my editor wanted something different, but not too different so as to alienate my core readership. I already had the idea of a psychic detective whose job it is to rid haunted houses of ghosts, but at that stage I hadn’t thought of time travel. Then I was reading a book that talked about time and how, if there is eternity, there is no past, present or future, in fact, there is no time at all. It’s an illusion. Everything is actually happening all at once. That triggered the idea that Pixie can slip through the illusion and go back to any time she wants. I met a wonderful young woman with pink hair, called Pinkie, who is a psychic medium and a healer, and she inspired the name Pixie, and the pink hair. Many of my books flip back and forth from present to past, so time travel just gave me a new way of doing that. In the first book, she slides back to 1895 Cornwall, in the second it is to the high sea and New York in 1912, and in the third it will be to a theatre in Cornwall in 1923. What complicated things was the love story. Because Pixie falls in love in the past in Secrets of the Starlit Sea, and meets her lover again in Shadows in the Moonlight, I realised I had to wrap up the series in three books, because the love story is unsustainable for more than that. The Pixie psychic detective series was intended to go on and on into many books, and many mysteries, but in order to satisfy my reader, and myself, there’s a big love story at the heart of the series, and because of the limits that imposed on me, I realised I couldn’t take Pixie any further. If you read the books, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s hard to describe without spoiling the story!
Shadows in the Moonlight took readers back to Victorian Cornwall and Secrets of the Starlit Sea takes place in Gilded Age New York. How do you set about envisioning these backdrops in terms of your reading or research, and have those processes changed over your career?
I choose my location and era to suit what entertains me at the time. If I’ve written a book based in Ireland, with those cold, misty hills and gothic, mythical tones, I might decide to base my next one in Italy, with the warm, balmy coast, pine trees, crickets and bougainvillea! I write to entertain myself. There are certain eras I love, like Victorian and Edwardian England, for example, or the Gilded Aged America of Edith Wharton, but I’m always on the lookout for inspiration so that I can expand into other eras. It’s also about confidence. I need to know that I can pull it off! I read a lot around a subject, watch movies and surf the internet. I immerse myself in the time and place. Then I choose a playlist of music to suit the tone of the book I’m writing. For the Timeslider Series I chose Federico Jusid’s soundtrack to the brilliant and very noir film, The English. I listen to nothing else but that as I write, because it immediately transports me into the narrative.
As a female writer, how do you think the publishing world has changed since you began more than twenty years ago?
Certainly, people’s tastes change. Fashions come and go and it’s the same with books. But women have been the largest part of the market for a long time. Right now the rage is romantacy. Thrillers are having a moment as well. I think people are more open to the paranormal, and sex has always sold well, but seems to be more in demand now than ever. I write for myself, because I love it, and don’t think about what’s popular and what isn’t. I won’t ever follow fashion. I’ll always be authentically myself.
If one of your books or series were to be made into a film, which actors, and director, would you like?
Various titles are in development, but there’s no knowing if any of them will come off. The movie world is very touch and go. I’d love The Deverill Chronicles to be made into a TV series with Paul Mescal as Jack O’Leary.
Is it love or the past that are most important to your stories?
Love, definitely. Not all my novels are historical, but they are all about love.
Which author, and you’re not allowed to include Sebag, has been most influential to your writing?
Haha! Edith Wharton, Daphne du Maurier, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende and Sarah Waters have probably had the most influence on my writing. In terms of the spiritual threads, I would also include Eckhart Tolle. He’s had the most influence on my life!
Do you have a favourite historical fiction novel?
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. I also loved Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor.
If you were to host a dinner party, which writers (throughout history) would you like to invite?
Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Daphne du Maurier, Gabriel García Márquez, A. A. Milne, Kenneth Grahame, Hans Christian Andersen, Oscar Wilde, Alison Uttley, Jane Austen, Beatrix Potter and Charles Dickens. Those leapt out. A good mix, I think!
Santa Montefiore is a bestselling novelist and the author of Secrets of the Starlit Sea, the latest in the Timeslider series.
Oliver Webb-Carter is the Editor and Co-Founder of Aspects of History.
