50th party blog guest - Pamela Hartshorne

I first met Pamela Hartshorne at an M&B lunch a few years ago, when she was wearing this incredibly glamorous red dress and amazing shoes, and… well. She's scarily glamorous and I am a total scruff, so I was feeling pretty intimidated. And then we got talking and discovered a shared love of history and dogs (and we have the same first name), and the next thing I knew we’d become friends :o) I love the warmth and freshness of her Jessica Hart books, and I absolutely loved her timeslip novel (which I had on pre-order for months and - if my editor is reading this, look away now - I skived off and spent the day reading it when it arrived). Oh, yes, and I could mention a mutual interest in nail varnish…

Anyway, over to Pamela:

photograph copyright Kippa Matthews

It’s a huge pleasure to be here on Kate’s blog and help her celebrate the publication of her 50th romance. Few authors I know are as prolific as Kate, and I can only look on, slack-jawed with admiration, at what she has achieved. For, not content with writing 50 romances in a remarkably short space of time, Kate also writes local history books.

An interest in history, and the consequent pleasures and problems of a split identity, is something Kate and I share. In fact, it was history that sent me stumbling into writing in the first place, over 20 years ago, when I was looking for a way to fund a PhD (not a strategy I would recommend, but that’s another story!) and I’ve spent the years since juggling my Jessica Hart romance writing hat with the hat I wear when I’m researching Elizabethan rubbish disposal, blocked sewers and nuisance neighbours (all of which is a lot more interesting than it sounds, I promise).

York rooftops copyright Kippa Matthews

It just so happened that I hit my own 50 book mark in the same year that I turned 50, and it felt like the right moment to take stock. I didn’t want to stop being Jessica Hart, as writing romance is fun (or, let’s be honest, it is when I’m just talking about it, not actually doing it) but I was ready to try something new too. I decided it was time to see if I could put everything I knew about the history of Elizabethan York together with everything I’d learnt about writing stories. The result is Time’s Echo, published by Pan Macmillan on 30th August.

I’m fascinated by the past, by how familiar it is, and yet how strange and different at the same time. Have you ever wandered around an old city like York, where I live, and wished you could travel back in time to see what it was really like? That you could taste the bread and feel the weight of the cloth and hear the sounds of the street as vividly as we experience life in our own time?

The historian in me says that would never be possible, but the writer disagrees. Time’s Echo is a ‘time slip’ in the tradition of Barbara Erskine, playing with the idea of what it would be like if you could go back, if you did know exactly what that would be like. And how that would make you feel …

So here’s a brief blurb:

Ever restless as she tries to outrun her memories of the Boxing Day tsunami, Grace Trewe comes to York to sort out her dead godmother’s affairs. Her stay is meant to be a brief one, but in York she discovers that time can twist and turn in ways she never imagined. Increasingly drawn back into the life of Hawise Aske, whose own life in the Tudor city has uncanny parallels to her own, Grace learns just how powerful – and dangerous – the past can be.

You can find out more about Time’s Echo and read an excerpt on my website www.pamelahartshorne.com. I am slowly building up a Pamela Hartshorne blog http://pamelahartshorne.blogspot.co.uk/ and Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pamela-Hartshorne-Author/220530941392774 and I’d be really happy to see anyone there if you’d care to stop by!

As my contribution to Kate’s blog party, I’ve brought along a copy of Time’s Echo to give away. I love that quote at the beginning of The Go-Between, about the past being a foreign country, so here’s my question:

If you could choose to go back in time, which historical figure would you like to meet?

I’ll pick a winner from any answers in the comments below, using my cutting edge eeny-meeny-miny-mo system. In the meantime, congratulations to Kate, and here’s to 50 more books, whenever they’re set!