A bit about LIz Harris…
In the back of my mind, I’ve always known that I was going to be a writer one day, but that’s exactly where it stayed for many years.
After university, not wanting to practise Law – my degree subject – I went to California, and stayed there for several years, living first in San Francisco and later in Los Angeles. Whilst there, I met a wide variety of interesting people, most of whom will one day find their way on to the printed page, but at that time, writing was still very much in the future. As far as the present went, I was too busy having a brilliant time, going to fascinating places and doing a wide variety of jobs. And loving every minute of it.
On my return to England, I got an English degree and started teaching at a secondary school. As I listened to the voice of the teenagers in the classroom, I knew that one day I would capture those voices in a book. And I did – my first mainstream novel, CHILD ON A SWING, has among its central characters a head teacher and two teenagers. But it wasn’t written until a few years later…
I was longing to start writing my first novel, but teaching a subject that made great demands in terms of preparation and marking, two lively sons a year apart in age, a husband with a demanding job, the time in which to write was seriously short. I managed, however, to complete a novel aimed at the Mills & Boon market when the boys were quite young, but although I received a great deal of encouragement from the publisher, real life intervened – as it does for so many women faced with the demands of a career and a family – and I had to put my writing career on hold.
After a few years in Berkshire, my husband’s work took us up to Cheshire, and I taught in a school in Widnes. For six of those years, I contributed weekly to the local newspapers on educational matters. My creative writing life, however, could not take off until we returned south. We did so when boys had completed university, and I was then able to switch to supply teaching and start writing.
My first novel to be published, THE ROAD BACK, comes out in September, 2012. Much of the novel is set in Ladakh, a country north of the Himalayas and west of Tibet. It was inspired by an album of words and photos compiled by my uncle after his visit to Ladakh in the mid 1940s. I’ll never forget the bolt of excitement I felt as I read through the album and knew that this was a location in which I must set a novel.
Before September, however, my novella for People’s Friend Pocket Novels, A DANGEROUS HEART!, will be coming out in March 22nd, 2012. The story is set in Umbria, Italy, in a part of the world that I know very well – on the slopes of Montefalco, looking across a lovely plain to the ancient town of Bevagna, a beautiful small town steeped in history.
Unsurprisingly, my novels, long and short, reflect my interests. I love travel and have travelled extensively in Europe and the US. I am a theatre buff, and one of the many joys of living in South Oxfordshire is that I can reach the London theatres within an hour. The Oxford theatres are even closer, and Stratford-upon-Avon is within easy reach, too. I am also very keen on the cinema, but I prefer to see films with a clear story line – I don’t like having to guess what is going on.
And, naturally, I love reading. I’m an avid reader and always have been, having started to read Shakespeare with my ex-actress mother when I was eight, and having worked my way through the novels of Charles Dickens, Mickey Spillane and a host of other authors by the time I was in my mid teens.
I still read a wide range of literature. The thing that I look for in a book above all, and that keeps me reading, is the story. You cannot beat a good story with strong characters, and I hope that everyone who reads my novels and novellas will feel able to say at the end of each one that the story had gripped them throughout.
Finally, I am a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, a must-join for everyone who aspires to be published and for everyone who is already published. Writing is a solitary profession, and it’s wonderful to be part of such a vibrant community, meeting and supporting other writers, both online and in person.
I belong also to The Historical Novel Society, which is dedicated solely to authors and readers of historical novels, and I’m a member of the Oxford Writers’ Group, and a contributor to their fourth anthology of short stories.
Well, I think that’s about it!
This is a book the reader wallows in. Despite a few awkward structural stories’ positioning, it rings true and eats at the very heart of one’s emotions. The characters are well drawn, the language appropriate, and the feelings and motivations clear. Patricia’s mother is a predictably weak but sympathetic person; her father is a wounded tyrant. And she is caught in the middle to keep her sanity and make her life livable the only way she can.
This is a 3 hankie book!
Leave a Comment