A Strong Sense of Place

Should I have chosen an exotic location in which to set my new novel?  Research can be done anywhere in the world (or at least, it could, pre-covid).  Armed with a suitcase, laptop and my writing head firmly switched on, I set forth on a magical adventure to research my new book.  But it was no luxury destination that I was heading to, it wasn’t even overseas. It was just two hours from home, to Scarborough, the British seaside town I used to holiday in as a child and a town that remains special in my heart.

Why Scarborough?  Well, our family had many happy holidays there when I was a child and it’s where I returned to be married, too. Just thinking about the place now, writing this for the Books by Women website, makes me smile. Scarborough is an old-fashioned, unpretentious, northern, cold and often rainy seaside town. But on the days when the sun shines, oh, the days when the sun shines and the cliff tops along the coast twinkle and shine… well, it’s the most magical place in the world.

And so I headed to Scarborough to carry out a week’s research for my novel The Girl with the Scarlet Ribbon which is out now in paperback from Headline. It’s my fourth novel from Headline and there are another two to come. All of my books are stand-alone and can be read in any order. They all feature a very strong heroine at their core and are set at the end of the first world war in northern England. They’re dramatic books, fast-paced, exciting and influenced by my love of TV Soaps and my experience writing TV tie-in books for ITV about the soap opera Coronation Street. I’ve already written for Books by Women on that very subject and you can read it here if you’d like to – From Soaps to Saga http://booksbywomen.org/from-soaps-to-saga-by-glenda-young/

All of my books begin in Ryhope, a northeast coalmining village by the sea where I was born and bred. In The Girl with the Scarlet Ribbon, I wanted to include a family who were outsiders to the village, who didn’t fit in with the ways of life there. I began to think about where the family would have come from and there was only place I knew I could write about with confidence and joy. Scarborough. So off I went, by public transport – buses and trains – trying to make the journey as similar as it would have been to the journey my heroine would make in my story set over 100 years ago.

Once in Scarborough, I eschewed the usual tourist trips of walks on the beach, crazy golf games on the seafront and eating salty fish and chips. Instead, I visited places I’d never been to before. I spent time researching in the library and local studies centre; I interviewed a historian and took a private tour behind the scenes at The Grand Hotel, once Europe’s largest hotel.  I soaked up the history of Scarborough as much as I could in the week I was there and it was a joy to see the place through different eyes.

However, I still needed something to tie Scarborough and Ryhope together in the book. I was fully prepared, as all novelists must be, to go ahead and make something up. And then it came to me, not once but twice, in the course of my research. Talk about a lightbulb moment! I discovered that in the 1800s the Earl of Scarborough used to holiday in Ryhope village in the very house in the village that I was fictionalising as my heroine’s home. Well, that just about knocked my socks off but there was more to come. In a maritime heritage centre in Scarborough, I found an advertisement from the early 1900s for a journey by steamship from London to Sunderland (where Ryhope is situated) and that ship, you’ve guessed it, stopped off in the summer months at Scarborough to pick up and let passengers disembark.

Armed with this exciting information that linked the two places I was writing about, I knew I had to include a steam ship journey in the book too.  What happened next meant that I had to research steam ships, not something I ever thought I’d need to do but writing leads you along all kinds of weird and wonderful paths. The steam ship finds its way into The Girl with the Scarlet Ribbon to form one of the most dramatic sections of the novel where something happens which changes the fortunes of everyone involved.  And that’s as much as I can say without giving away spoilers, I’m afraid!

If that’s whetted your appetite for more, and I do hope it has, you can find The Girl with the Scarlet Ribbon in all good bookshops, supermarkets, online and via my website at http://glendayoungbooks.com

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Glenda Young’s debut novel Belle of the Back Streets was the first of six books to be published with Headline and was involved in a three-way auction with publishers fighting for the rights. All six novels are set in a northeast coalmining village in 1919. Glenda is also a prize-winning short story writer and her short fiction has appeared in magazines including Take a Break, My Weekly and The People’s Friend.  She is author of weekly soap opera Riverside for The People’s Friend magazine – the longest running women’s magazine in the world.  A life-long fan of the soap opera Coronation Street, Glenda has written TV Tie-In Books for ITV about the show and runs two Coronation Street fan websites.

Website: http://glendayoungbooks.com
Twitter:  @flaming_nora
Blog: http://flamingnora.blogspot.com

THE GIRL WITH THE SCARLET RIBBON

‘Real sagas with female characters right at the heart’ Jane Garvey, Woman’s Hour

If you love Dilly Court and Rosie Goodwin, you’ll LOVE Glenda Young’s ‘amazing novels!’ (ITV’s This Morning presenter Sharon Marshall)

‘You deserve more than this, Jess… You deserve to know the truth about the McNallys.’

When a newborn baby girl is found abandoned with nothing but a scarlet ribbon tied to her basket, Ada Davidson, housekeeper of the wealthy McNally family’s home, the Uplands, takes her into her care. Sworn to secrecy about the baby’s true identity, Ada names her Jess and brings her up as her own, giving Jess no reason to question where she came from.

But when Ada passes away, grief-stricken Jess, now sixteen, is banished from the place she’s always called home. With the scarlet ribbon the only connection to her past, will Jess ever find out where she really belongs? And will she uncover the truth about the ruthless McNallys?

Buy HERE

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips