Author Meet And Greet #2

Name: Hannah Fielding

"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 I grew up in 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. I met Nicholas, my husband, in London at a drinks party: it was love at first sight, just like in the romance books that were my constant companions. We settled in a Georgian house in Kent where I brought up two children, Christian and Alexandra, 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, which overlooks the sparkling Mediterranean."

"Stories and writing have always been part of my life. My father was a great raconteur and my governess used to tell the most fabulous fairy stories – I could listen to them for hours. When I was seven she and I came to an agreement: for every story she’d tell me I would invent one in return. That is how my passion for storytelling began.

At school I consistently received first prize for my essays and my teachers often read them aloud in class. As a teenager I used to write short romantic stories during lessons and circulate them in class, which made me very popular with my peers (but less so with the nuns!). In addition, since a young age I have kept some sort of a diary where I note my feelings, ideas and things that take my fancy (or not).

My grandmother was a published author of poetry and my father published a book about the history of our family, so writing runs in my veins. I guess I always knew that one day I would follow in those footsteps and forge my own path in that field – a dream which came true when my husband and grown children finally convinced me to do something with the manuscripts I had been tinkering with for so many years."

• What was your inspiration behind Burning Embers? 

" Burning Embers began as a vivid landscape in my mind. The seed of the idea was sown many years ago when, as a schoolgirl, I studied the works of Leconte de Lisle, a French Romantic poet of the 19th century (see http://www.hannahfielding.net/?cat=7). His poems are wonderfully descriptive and vivid – about wild animal, magnificent dawns and sunsets, exotic setting and colourful vistas. Then later on, I went on holiday to Kenya with my parents and I met our family friend Mr Chiumbo Wangai who often used to visit us. He was a great raconteur and told me extensively about his beautiful country, its traditions and its customs. 

It was a brightly lit cruiser gliding on the Mediterranean by my window in France one night that set my heart racing and the scene for my opening chapter of Burning Embers was conceived. Fausto Papetti’s saxophone music created the ambiance for The Golden Fish, Rafe’s nightclub; Leconte de Lisle’s wonderful descriptive poems helped me dream up the romantic sunsets and paint the animals and the breathtaking scenery of Kenya in the novel."

  

Burning Embers Synopsis:

Burning Embers is a contemporary historical romantic novel set in Kenya in 1970. 

Coral Sinclair, a young and fiery English photographer, is on her way to Kenya, the land of her birth, to take ownership of Mpingo plantation, a legacy from her recently deceased father.

Handsome and charismatic Rafe de Monfort, a mature French widower and owner of a nightclub and the Whispering Palms plantation, holds a dark secret deep in his heart.

The two meet on board the ship that is taking them both to Kenya, and Coral feels an immediate attraction towards this stranger.

Once in Kenya, Coral discovers that Rafe is her closest neighbour, but she is warned off him by her old nanny. Gossip has it that Rafe is a notorious womaniser who counts among his mistresses Morgana, the dusky night club dancer, and Cybil, Coral’s stepmother with whom it is believed he was having an affair – an affair that might have contributed to her father’s death.

Yet despite herself, Coral finds herself falling in love with this man who shows her only kindness.

What is she to think when a witch doctor tells her that Rafe killed his heiress first wife and that he is now pretending to care for her simply to get his hands on Mpingo? When beautiful Cybil says that Rafe has been her lover for over ten years and Morgana assures her that Rafe will never be hers? What is the secret in Rafe’s past that colours his every move and makes him more vulnerable than Coral could ever imagine?

In this evocative and passionate story set in 1970 against the vivid and colourful backdrop of rural Africa and its culture, the seemingly doomed lovers are sent down a destructive path wrought with betrayal, passion and greed. Will love overcome all obstacles and prevail at the end?

Published April 2012 by Omnific Publishing 

 

 

"I’ve written a sensual trilogy set in Andalucia, Spain, spanning a period from the 1950s to the present day; a touching romance novel set in Venice and Tuscany, Italy, that explores the echoes of love; and I’m now working on a trilogy set in Egypt, the land of my birth – a world of deep, ingrained customs and traditions, interesting though often cruel. No doubt you can spot the common themes in my writing: epic, deeply felt love stories set against exotic backdrops.
 

All of these books will be published in due course, and I very much enjoy the publishing process and hearing from readers of my books. But 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."

 

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