Interview with Sanditon1820 (by Amanda fka Bilberry Lane)

AH
I’m pretty honoured to get the gig for interviewing you, Louise. You have been an enormous support for me, personally and as a writer. We have all absolutely adored the interviews, a wonderful archive of the Sanditon FanFiction Writers, and now it is your turn…

LH
Why, thank you! It’s been so great to get to know what drives people’s love of writing Sanditon stories, and though there’s loads of overlaps of course - mostly around the love of Colbourne’s character, which isn’t surprising, and a… let’s call it ‘distaste’ for SP - there are differences too. And I’ve loved hearing about those and getting into what makes people tick. And also hearing from so many people that Heybourne drew them back into writing after decades, and some for the first time ever.


For me it was that I hadn’t written fiction since I was in primary school - my first book was about Bob Squirrel and his woodland friends. It was illustrated and everything! All I wanted was to be a writer. Then I wrote poems as an angsty goth teenager - because obviously, it goes with the territory - and have always written professionally in various forms, but I had never gone back to fiction-writing until now.

I remember you and I chatting about how frustrated I was by Charlotte in S3 and you said “you should write it how you think it should have been…” So I loaded up a document called “The only story I'll ever write for S3 - Charlotte’s emotional journey” and started planning it.

You were a fantastic encouragement and support, really helped get my writing up to scratch, reassured me I wasn’t embarrassing myself. We wrote the ‘Ballad of Lucy and Alexander’ at that time together too, then you coached me how to publish it. Once I had five chapters written I started publishing ‘Enough!’ and it went from there.

AH
I’m so thrilled to have played a small part in your writing journey. Writing can be a really lonely pursuit and I wrote my first one on my own, I would have loved a little support network. Someone else to look at it and tell you ‘it needs work here’ or that ‘it is great here’ would have been really helpful. I would have loved a community, the ability to reach out to someone I respected for help, and I think you have been so successful in building that. I know many writers reach out to you for support. I wanted to ask you about the inspiration for the interviews, though.

LH
Why I did them? Well, when I first watched Sanditon I’d never read any fan fiction before, and when I felt this longing for more than the series I asked my twenty year old daughter where I’d find fan fiction. She’s grown up with fanfic for everything, Harry Potter was the gateway drug for her and her friends. She looked alarmed - like “who are you and what have you done with my mother?!” - and immediately texted her friends about whether to risk helping me get on AO3. They went round and round how to warn me “there’s some weird shit out there”. I barely contained my eye roll, I mean, I have been on the internet since before they were born and not only did I teach her to use a spoon, I do know something about using filters. So eventually they gave up the goods and I registered for an ao3 account (after a brief sojourn onto ffnet, which has one of the worst UI’s I’ve ever come across).

I was off sick from work, exhausted, so all I did was read for three months straight. I devoured everything that was out there. And I loved how people had given so much of themselves to sharing the love of this series, and the ways canon had evolved, the ways different versions of the characters gave new insights and perspectives.

I joined facebook for Sanditon love, and found that there wasn’t much talk about fanfic. So I wanted to have more conversations about it, and also give people the chance to get to know what goes into making it. The idea came to me that I could do interviews with writers.

In the meantime, I’d made contact with a few authors via Twitter, and you knew a few via email, so I sent out a message to people asking if they’d be up for talking about their writing? I put a few questions together to give people the idea what I’d ask them about and we went from there.

AH
So, the two of us met when I reached out to you on Twitter. It was super awkward, I was like, ‘Hey. Hi. I think you are my people.’ and you were like, ‘We’ll see.’ Hahahaha. And then it turned out we were! So, you first watched it when you were off sick? Tell me more about your love for Sanditon and how it began.

LH
To be fair to you, I’d been a big fangirl in the Ao3 comments on your story “Broken Fairy Tale” so I think you’re selling yourself a little short with that retelling, but anyway…

So weirdly I’ve discovered through these interviews how many people found Sanditon while they were off sick or feeling vulnerable. It’s like Starboarder said in her interview, it seems to get under your skin when your defences are down.

I’ve loved Pride and Prejudice since I was a teen but (confession time) I’ve not watched a single episode of Downton Abbey. So I’m really not a costume drama lover. But I was off sick and saw it when I was scrolling through a streaming service (ITVX here in the UK) and switched it on. Halfway into episode 1 I was thinking “hang on a moment” as I realised I was on S2. I switched to S1 and wasn’t entirely convinced (although for the record I do find Theo James hot) but because of the aforementioned illness I then clicked into S2 and the rest, as they say, is history.

I think something I’ve reflected on through these interviews is that although I love AC, the thing that makes me stick around in this story is Charlotte. There have only been a couple of writers who say they primarily write Charlotte (JayeReid and Starboarder) but I’ve realised I think I’m one of them. Of course S2 Charlotte, my frustration with S3 is, I believe, well known… 

I’m a huge Lizzy Bennet fan and it’s clear Charlotte isn’t her, but she does have this curiosity, loyalty and strength that I love. In my writing I just end up being drawn to her. It has been a new discovery for me, I guess, because I thought I love Colbourne. I mean, I do, but…

AH
But, I love him enough for both of us?

LH
You do! I think I’ve realised that his emotional journey is so satisfying - I love being able to enjoy him as he’s come to terms with his past, begun to fix his relationships with his kids, worked to listen and understand Charlotte and the pressures she’s under, take his place in society, restore his friendship with his brother - that what I’m drawn to put right through writing is giving Charlotte the agency and depth she deserves.

Being a bit controversial now (who, me? I know you’re shocked!) it feels like Charlotte was written by a writers' room dominated by blokes, who were woefully unimaginative about how real women behave and what women watching want to see. so although they got Colbourne spot on, Charlotte was often just a cypher to highlight his growth.

AH
You said Theo James was hot. I’m not sure there is a person alive who would disagree, but you don’t write Sidlotte. Tell me, why do you write Heybourne?

LH
You’re trying to get me into trouble now, aren’t you?! Ok I’m going there: Cos if I’m wanting to give Charlotte agency and depth, I can’t write her in a relationship with someone who barely knows her, treats her like an amusement and puts all the responsibility for his own improvement on her. Listen up, dude, she doesn’t exist to make you a better person! Do your own work… be your best self anyway! And I’m always highly skeptical about a narrative that explains a man’s poor behaviour by blaming a woman (Eliza might have treated him cruelly but it’s still his responsibility not to be a selfish, arrogant… <coughs> anyway…)

What I love about the Sid storyline is watching Charlotte fall in lust, experience what it’s like to be desired, and understand herself better. And what feels right about it is she is wildly naive and gets her heart broken, and that’s the reality for almost all of us. First love isn’t the one, usually. In fact it’s a luxury most Austen heroines don’t get. So I think it’s delicious.

And then she goes on to experience really really complicated feelings of grief. Because she’s still processing the heartbreak, but then he dies, and anyone who knows the loss of someone with whom you have a difficult relationship knows that kind of grief is completely messed up. And she grows so much: becoming attuned to loss in others, examining who she wants to be, evaluating people around her with much clearer eyes. She recognises the power men have and the ways they can abuse it. She has to work out who she can trust.

And it’s into this mix that Colbourne arrives. And the way she behaves is exactly what he needs, but not in a “you make me better” way, but in a way that she’s able to challenge him, model something different. She’s found her own power. I just love that.

And of course he breaks her trust again, and my heart just goes out to her completely. And then it’s his turn to be what she needs, despite the ludicrous love triangles that writers room believes it needed and the complete lack of them having a conversation about what he did. I’m not original in saying this, of course, but oh my god he needed to apologise!! And she needed the opportunity to say how she felt - it was the most satisfying scene to write in Enough, expanding on the cliff scene.

So I write Heybourne because that’s the only space for her to find herself and experience the love of a partner. I realised for me it’s like AC with his growth and depth is the sun, and Charlotte and the others are the planets moving around him. He’s the stillpoint, the one we’ve had revealed cos he got the character arc and we saw him transform. So the fun for me is seeing the others move and change, whilst still hopefully have him be living and real, in all his complexity..

AH
I think that’s a lovely way to think of it. And I am really glad she has her champions.

So, in the last twelve months where we have Beta’d for each other, we’ve both had really good times and really, really dark times when it comes to writing. I have loved it because at first I thought the emotional highs and lows of writing might just be me, and it was a huge relief to see it in anybody else.

LH
Yes and for me, having seen you go through it, it wasn’t such a shock! Still hard when the doubts come and when you’re blocked. But it's much easier knowing you're not the only one.

AH
I am interested in this next question for you as both as an editor and as a writer. What do you find easy about writing and what do you find difficult? And as an editor, is it easy to provide feedback?

LH
So I’ll answer it first as an editor, as that’s where this journey started for me. I’ve always been really good at grammar and punctuation (although I’ve discovered that I use the New Hart’s Rules Oxford style guide - none of those em-dashes here thank you very much!) So I was reading fics and itching to correct grammar. And also I could tell instinctively where sentences weren’t flowing. I could see how to improve a paragraph in terms of rhythm, cadence etc.

So when I started beta reading for you and offered to do some line edits, it was a joy to get stuck in and find it could be helpful. It helps that our preferences are quite aligned - I’m allergic to purple prose, you hate adverbs! - and so it was a good match.

I find it harder to give feedback when the writer's style is very different to mine. Reading and writing are subjective, after all: to some extent one person's beautiful descriptive language is another’s purple prose (I mean, I think there’s a rule of thumb that too many adjectives is a no-no, but there’s definitely a spectrum). And I realise I have so much to learn about how to explain why I think something isn’t working, because I think a lot of what I’ve done up to now is more instinctual.

But I think I’m learning so much about characterisation - both as a writer and editor - the tools at a writer's disposal to build character. And that’s not just in their body language and dialogue, it’s what they don’t say, what they don’t intervene on as much as what they actually do. We see that with Charlotte: in S2 she’s brave in not shirking big difficult conversations throughout, confronting her employer despite the risk she could lose her livelihood. But then in S3 she avoids all conversations completely - she doesn’t tell her best friend that Alexander met her on the cliffs and declares his love until like a week afterwards? So the choices the writers are making in what she’s not doing undermines the character they’ve laid out for us earlier, which is what makes it so unsatisfying.

AH
And now as a writer?

LH
The easy parts are the conversations - I won’t say dialogue necessarily, which most people I’ve interviewed have said. Sometimes the dialogue is really clear and I’ve heard the characters say a line, or sometimes the entire conversation, which happened with Enough! But it’s actually the conversation I find easy to write, I can see their body language, hear their tone of voice, where they’re sitting or standing, what they’re feeling. So I enjoy writing conversations.

The hardest part, and this is where you and I are polar opposite, is writing the detail. I don’t see the clothes people are wearing, what colour the wallpaper is, I definitely don’t have a sense of the scent of someone (and that’s not just because long Covid has done for my sense of smell!!) Those details aren’t important in my mind, I’m much more focused on the characters inner thoughts and feelings. So I have to discipline myself to add them in, I make myself go back through the first draft to add details in order to bring the story to life a lot more. I’m even writing first drafts now leaving myself comments like ‘describe his clothes and body here’ or ‘description of walking through woodland’ or whatever. Cos I’ve learned that trying to make myself write that stuff interrupts the flow of getting the story down.

Up til now I’ve always struggled with the concept of first drafts and then editing it. I always edited as I went along, cos I felt I couldn’t leave it til it was right. I’m not actually a perfectionist but I am allergic to vulnerability and leaving something I knew wasn’t very good on a page made me feel horribly exposed, even though no one but me was going to see it! Ridiculous really, but there we are. Or rather, there I was, because my biggest growth as a writer has been to get comfortable writing what Ann Lammott calls “shitty first drafts”. Now I write in a slapdash way and just get it down, because it’s only in writing the story that your characters develop, the dialogue flows, and the setting comes alive. In getting down the first draft you can then play and tinker. There’s something really freeing in that and I’ve discovered I really look forward to going back to tinker with it, cos the framework of the story or the conversation is there.

I guess because I write within a quite detailed plan, I always know where I am in the story, so I find if I can get the bones of it out and on the page, then the fleshing out is really good fun.

AH
So, I’m a pantser and it blew my mind a little how many of the writers are. But you, my friend, are a planner. Can we talk about just how thoroughly you plan your stories? Please feel free to provide images of the board you made that time. I was super impressed. I mean, it gave me anxiety and it was lucky we knew each other quite well by then because it was so intense. Hahahaha.

LH
Ha, I had no idea I was freaking you out!! So you know, everyone naturally believes the way they see the world is normal, cos it’s our only frame of reference - well, until we get out there and share with others and experience the world through their eyes. (Which is why travel, reading and friendships are good for the soul.)

Well let’s just say it’s been entirely eye opening to interview so many of y’all who are pantsers! You talk about my plotting being intense, but honestly the way you all go into a story not knowing where you’ll end up literally turns my stomach with anxiety. Genuinely, like, how can you bear it?! Especially when you’re publishing it right from the start, because what if you haven’t laid it out properly early on so you can play with things later on?! I’m breaking out in a sweat over here!

When I get the idea for a story - it can be a concept, like having Heyrick Park requisitioned during WW2, or maybe it’s a ‘What if’ question like ‘what if Charlotte met Alexander making sandcastles with the kids?’ - then I turn it over in my mind, like a pebble from the beach, over and over. I start seeing the characters who need to be involved, the setting, the dynamics, and the acts of the story arc come into focus. I guess as I’m saying that it sounds like a play, and maybe that’s how it is in my mind: I was involved in lots of drama productions in my youth, on both the production and direction side as well as acting.

So yes, I see the acts come into focus, and I start to think about it through the lense of point of view: “so that character is going to do that with them, but the character who’s PoV I’m telling won’t see that. So how am I going to get them to know about it? What conversation needs to happen with whom?” That starts this complex web of characters, and usually then means working backwards a bit to ensure the characters are in the right place in time, and have the existing relationships.

So the board you mention is from my WIP Esther fic - I adore her, and want to explore her more, so I started playing with a ‘what if‘ question which takes her life in a different direction. I have this really clear idea of who she is, how she’d be with different characters, what she’d go after in her life. She becomes very vivid in my mind, and her story arc comes quickly into focus. That requires plotting (obviously!) so that the other characters involved in her story are in the right places at the right time. So now it’s a timeline of the events of her story and the other characters weaving around her. That’s the first part. But this is also a Heybourne story (because of course I want to write them) so now I start to play with the way Charlotte will be different because of the way Esther is now, how this person will influence her emotional growth. Now I have to weave Charlotte around the original plot, but also weave Esther around Charlotte’s plot, because now I can see the Heybourne dynamics developing alongside Esther’s romance etc. And of course there’s Alexander, where is he at in his emotional growth in it all? I won’t go on, but it’s like this 3D model starts appearing in my brain.

And the challenge with 3D models is how do you get them down on a flat writing surface?! So in that case, it turned into a massive grid of post-it notes on the wall!!



The story I’m currently focused on (because sometimes you’re working on a story and another idea comes muscling in and grabs you by the neck! So I haven’t abandoned Esther but The Requisition demanded I write it first, well, until the Christmas one elbowed its way to the front - basically these stories are like badly mannered children…) - the one I’m currently writing is the WW2 one, and I’m writing from Charlotte and Alexander’s pov’s, but there’s a whole story with Edward Denham that’s both essential but also never the main focus. So how I’m dealing with it is plotting out the Denham story completely - there’s a load of detail in my mind - but then I’m not telling it at all, but the consequences of it are felt by the other characters, and so I’m carefully working out when they need to be noticing what, and what they do about it. Even for me it feels complicated!! But my aim is that the story the audience actually reads isn’t complicated - think Agatha Christie! If it works it should be intriguing and elegant. Ha! If it works…

So I realise that basically everyone is now looking at me like I have tusks and a tail, but it’s all really obvious in my mind… hahahaha

AH

It does look super organised, or like a plan for world domination. Hahahah. I can imagine the relief of the plan. Although I am a ‘weird’ pantser, I like everything I write to have a point, too.

LH

Oh yes, whether you’re a weird pantser or a sensible plotter, I think the same thing applies: everything you write needs to have a point. It has to either move the plot along, give the characters an opportunity to grow and change, bring life and depth for the relationships to develop or at the barest minimum enrich the reader's experience with a sense of the environment etc. As I’ve said this last bit is something I’ve had to become more disciplined about including, and it’s important, but I still think it needs to be nestled among stuff that actually moves the plot along. When I am reviewing and redrafting I’ve started asking myself the question ‘so what?’ It’s the same question my dissertation supervisor asked me to ask myself after every paragraph - have you moved the argument along with this point? Although this is fiction I think it’s fundamentally the same thing, everything needs to have a point, even if that is just to be a beautifully written phrase. But after too many of those I’m very much thinking, let’s move things along now! To be fair, your preference for the pacing of a story is subjective too. I just prefer things to be moving steadily I guess.

AH

Oh my god, same! I hate the middle of the book, or the plot stagnating. Tell me about how the characters form. Do you hear them? Do they appear in your dreams?

LH
Honestly the first time it happened I was a little freaked out, hearing Xander and Sam bickering in my head! The worst is Samuel Colbourne for me, he is a massive chatterbox. On one occasion I had to tell him to pipe down and let Xander speak!

If I hadn’t been friends with you by then I think I’d have worried for my sanity, but I knew the same thing happened to you so I was like, ‘ok, I’ll roll with this.”

Charlotte really wanted her say on the cliff top, it really felt like she was standing over my shoulder, stabbing her finger on the desk next to my laptop, saying “and another thing…”

In my latest fics it’s been a little less insistent, and sometimes it’s more like I’m an observer on a private conversation. I hear and see the scene playing out, like I’m a fly on the wall.

In my Christmas fic Charlotte is in a really confusing space and over the course of the story she gets the clarity over what she wants and needs. And writing it was so confusing - all I could feel was this swirl of emotions, and it was hard to work out what were hers and what were mine. But by getting it down on the page and having you, and then lushnessJackson, comment on it, it started to make sense. As you know I found myself quite low at times on that journey, and I think all that emotion was taking its toll.

Ok I definitely think everyone is now looking at me like I’ve tusks and a tail!!

AH

Not at all! I think that the emotional journey we go on as writers is probably something we have not really touched on, other than to say highs and lows, but it is significantly more than that. And I guess, that is part of delivering the emotion… is feeling it.

Now, onto research. Can you tell us about how much research you do for your stories?

LH
With ‘Enough!’ and other regency stuff I’ve relied on the fact I’ve read a ton of pride and prejudice variations over the past year, as well as fics in this fandom, so I’ve absorbed enough detail to get by. As I’ve already said I’m less interested in fabrics and ornaments than I am body language and the characters’ inner world, so I don’t do much research tbh. (I also sometimes ask ChatGPT to describe a ball gown or whatever, and then I can imagine it better and I might use a couple of the phrases in my writing. Details, schmeetails…)

For this ww2 one it’s been a lot more research-heavy, but it’s also something that I have at least some connection with. Growing up in the 80s in Britain the war wasn’t far away from conversations with parents and grandparents, or watching tv. Plus we studied it a lot at school. So I’ve done an awful lot of googling about personnel ranks, women’s experiences, and how the Y-Service ran. But I have enough of a sense of what life was like in England during the war to not be starting from scratch.

AH 

WW2 has kind of left its mark hasn’t it? All over the world, even here, but none more so than in Europe. It was something I noticed when we lived in London. I’m really excited for people to read this variation when the time comes.

Back to the show though, do you have a particular scene from the show you watch over and over?

LH

There are some amazingly memorable moments in S3 but I barely rewatch because of the whole ‘perfectly imperfect’ thing, to coin GatHeart’s phrase. I get too frustrated with Charlotte’s lack of fire.

In S2 I do love the garden party, mostly because I think there’s so much going on through so few words, but it’s also where you see them connect as equals for the first time. I love the interactions between the female leads, the way you see Colbourne exercising his impressive self-control (until he can’t anymore, of course), Augusta’s vulnerability being shown for the first time, and of course Lennox being vile. You get clues to the backstory that are delicious. All with everyone in a beautiful garden in fancy clothes - except Augusta, what were she and Charlotte thinking with that hideous bonnet?!

AH

Ha! Agreed. Although, I wonder if part of her is clinging to something of her childhood. You are so right, she is so vulnerable at this party.

LH
You could well be right. But one of the things that’s hard to tell in our perfectly imperfect show is what is deliberate and beautiful non-verbal storytelling and what is just them being slapdash - is Leo 8 or 9? How long was Charlotte a governess? Why make Lucy and Augusta’s mother twins rather than just sisters and cause all sorts of continuity issues? All the usual things our writers WhatsApp chat gets irritated by. I appreciate there were constraints but sometimes it’s frustrating. But then again, if it was too perfect there’d be no need for fanfic!

AH

Our writers WhatsApp group is 90% us ranting about these inconsistencies and 10% us taking screen shots of our algorithm’s google results.

LH
Yes it turns out that researching dairy farming and making Excel Spreadsheet jokes confuses google…

AH

Hahaha… Okay, back to actual writing, what are you most proud of having written?

LH
Ok so I’m really a baby writer in amongst all you others who’ve written so much more, so my imposter syndrome is kicking in here, but I’d have to say the cliff scene in Enough. It even has a tribute to Nora Ephron in it! It was burning in me to put it right that Charlotte never gets to say how she felt. And I think I did an ok job of it.

AH

You did a brilliant job of it! I think imposter syndrome comes with being an artist of any variety, so I don’t think you are alone there either. I also think you have grown so much as a writer. And I know how diligently you work at it.
Confession time: do you write in other fandoms? If so, what are they and why are you drawn to them?

LH
Not yet! I read so much Lizzy and Darcy that it wouldn’t surprise me at all if I did get a P&P story pop into my brain eventually, but so far it’s only Sanditon folk that appear demanding to be written!

AH
I’d be so interested to read it when it does happen! I’ve never read P&P fanfic as you know.

Do you have a favourite scene by another writer (fanfic, screenwriter, or any writer actually!) Are there any you are jealous of and wish you’d written?

LH
Well, we’ve already mentioned Nora Ephron. There are so many scenes in When Harry Met Sally that I think are basically perfect. And I share Janice’s love of Aaron Sorkin’s writing, especially in the West Wing, although the episode “The Crackpots and These Women” shows that even amazing writers have their off days!!

In fanfic there are a few P&P writers that I love and that barely put a foot wrong: Cat Andrews’ moderns are delicious (check out An Unexpected Harvest for a gender reversal which works brilliantly), Linda Beutler does regency steam so well (I recommend Longbourne to London), Heather Moll is super creative and a really skilful (I’ve liked all of hers.) On AO3 I’d recommend the ‘Family of Fortune’ series by SorrySOAB, ‘Pride and Sensibility’ by AvonleaBrigadoon, ‘A World in Lilac Hues’ by profdanglais and ‘The Living at Kympton’ by honey_and_smoke. There are others but I won’t go on!

So many people have already mentioned the amazing work in our own fandom, so I won’t go over it again, but there really are some terrific writers here. I do really love a variation - where people really push out in creative ways, exploring ‘what ifs’, so I generally prefer those.

AH
I really think it is important to highlight the work you have done in the community to highlight fanfiction and promote it. That has been happening since before I met you, but now it has extended to being a point of contact for numerous writers. You do a lot of beta reading and editing now. And because you see so much of it, what is the essence of good writing, for you? What do you always hope people experience in yours?


LH

Thank you! I like being useful and hopefully giving people a bit of support when they’re writing, which as we’ve said can be a really emotionally taxing thing.

So I have a lot to learn, but I’d say that writing is going to sweep me up and transport me if it is fundamentally ‘show don’t tell’ - if I’m seeing the scene unfold and the writer respects me enough to work out the emotions and inner thoughts of the character in the most part by just how they’re behaving. Dialogue needs to be realistic and messy, have the right pauses and rhythms (even if it’s Regency and has its own conventions). And I think in regency writing there’s a temptation to go for formal or old-fashioned language throughout, whereas as a reader I really only want it in their speech in order to have it be consistent with the era. Humans are humans, and as a modern reader I don’t want a character to “accept the dinner invitation with much gratification”, I want her to “smile and accept the dinner invitation.” Just as an example!

Also, description needs to be like salt and pepper, not a thick salad dressing - sprinkled throughout so you don’t notice it but it brings the piece to life.

And with fan fiction the absolute golden rule is that the characters have to be true to what we know of them from the show, even if you’re amplifying some elements of their personality more than other elements because of the variation you’re exploring. So if we take your Charlotte in Maid of Honour, a modern AU you wrote, you pushed her basically as far as anyone could without losing her essence, because she was so closed off from her emotions. So you took S3 Charlotte and ramped it up, but in essence she was still our girl because she was creative and a great friend and committed to her community and sharp. So you had her embedded enough to be able to amplify some things out of the range of what we normally read, and it made it fresh and vital, whilst giving us some new insights into her character.

But a writer can take that too far, like when people write Elizabeth Bennet as cruel and acerbic, rather than playful. Or Darcy as someone who is completely rigid. It’s an art, I guess.

I guess I’m hoping that in my writing people are entertained - readers are giving me their attention and energy for half an hour a week, I want them to feel I’ve respected that time. So they’ll get to do the work of experiencing the characters and the setting, and I will try not to lay it on too thick or give it to them in indigestible chunks. I hope they keep thinking about the characters after they’ve finished reading, feeling satisfied that even if that’s not exactly how they envisage them, they believe in my version enough to be curious how they’re going to react to the next bit of the plot.

As I say, I’m a newbie at this. But that’s what I’m aiming for!

AH
Louise, thanks so much for chatting with me, all things Heybourne. This felt very much like one of our usual convo’s! And thank you for documenting these stories, they have been beautiful to read.

LH
Its been my absolute pleasure!