As a StoryTerrace writer, Carole interviews customers and turns their life stories into books. Get to know her better by reading her autobiographical anecdote below
My parents both loved books, my father read crime, thrillers and espionage stories while my mother read historical fiction and romance so I grew up with a passion for reading most genres, something that is reflected in my novels which are a mixture of all these. But the reason I started writing was because of my father in law, Ted Taylor.
Ted was conscripted into the Rifle Brigade in September 1939, fought in the Defence of Calais in May 1940 then spent five years as a POW. But he never really spoke about it. Then, in 2008, Ted suffered a crippling stroke and ended up in a nursing home. To cheer him up I suggested writing up his war experiences in a book.
This was quite daunting as I had no background in military history. I began the long process of reading everything I could about the Defence of Calais, which wasn’t much. The battle was totally eclipsed by the evacuation from Dunkirk and was rarely mentioned, even on the most recent documentaries. I knew even less about the treatment of the ordinary POW at the hands of their captors or their lives, having grown up on a diet of sanitised POW camp films and even one comedy set in a Stalag, none of which bore any reality to the truth.
I was now hooked on writing military history, but I also wanted to write fiction because I couldn’t find anything I wanted to read. I have always been a voracious reader. I’d spend hours in the library as a child spending all my pocket money on books, progressing quickly from Enid Blyton to Agatha Christie amongst others. I’d rush home with my latest books, disappear up into my bedroom and not come down again until they were finished. My Dad used to say they were a waste of money because I could get through two or three books in a weekend but they weren’t. They were my escape from reality and the more I read the more it fuelled my imagination. As I grew older I read anything I could get my hands on, crime, thrillers, historical fiction, occasionally romance and science fiction and of course chic lit! I liked big books I could lose myself in, probably to escape my disastrous relationships.
Having finally extradited myself from the last bad relationship I spent two years on my own finding myself again and then I met David. I no longer needed to escape my reality so I stopped reading. I found books by authors I’d always loved no longer held my attention so I decided to write something I wanted to read and I had the perfect idea.
Whist writing Ted’s story I learnt that Brenda, my mother in law, had been a nurse throughout the London Blitz, and she and Ted were engaged when he went to war. Five long years later he came home and they were married. Their story fascinated me. They did not have the benefit of hindsight. Brenda waited even though she had no idea how long it would be or even if Ted would ever come home. Ted had somehow held onto the belief that he would come home even though he had no idea how long that might be. I decided to write up Ted and Brenda’s story including an element of fiction to cover something Ted did in France after he was captured and Lives Apart. A WW2 Chronicle was born.
