An Italian Island Secret by Victoria Springfield is an atmospheric and escapist novel about a long-held family secret on the island of Ischia. 🌞🇮🇹✨

Hollywood, Bollywood, Cannes and…Ischia. The island off the coast of Naples where An Italian Island Secret is set isn’t the first place most people would associate with the film business, but Ischia has hosted some of the world’s greatest movie stars. Think Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Cleopatra. And it is no exaggeration to say that the arrival of the film industry played as big a part in the history of the island as any of its armed conquerors.

During the first half of the 20^th century Ischia was poor and undeveloped lacking in proper roads and good sanitation, its population dependent upon agriculture. But after the Second World War the island’s rugged, unspoilt beauty began to attract artists and writers such as Breakfast at Tiffany’s author Truman Capote who stayed for several months in simple lodgings. This in turn led to the coming of the cinematographers and a rash of films were made in the 1950s starring such icons as Burt Lancaster and Gina Lollobrigida. Filming wasn’t always an easy task. Due to the lack of modern transport, the great Italian director Vittorio De Sica commuted to his film set on horseback as late as the 1960s.

The influx of film crews changed the face of the island and the fortunes of its inhabitants forever. People left the fields to work as extras earning more in a week than they usually did in two months. Boat owners ferried goods and people around the island charging many times their usual rates.

The glamour of the movies made Ischia fashionable. Five-star hotels opened attracting celebrities like Audrey Hepburn which fuelled the tourist boom. Today tourism is still the island’s major source of employment though inexplicably it is now largely other Italians who visit Ischia whilst the rest of the world flocks to nearby Capri.

In my new book, An Italian Island Secret, Alessia and her grandmother Ornella return to Ischia where Ornella once worked on the set of the fictional 1950s movie Castello D’Amore. Ornella and her ill-fated younger sister Maria fell under the spell of damaged starlet Sonia and her heartthrob husband Maurilio, changing their lives in ways they could never imagine. Meeting film journalist, Roberto, in the present day, Alessia begins to unravel her grandmother’s secrets.

When I was in my late thirties, I had two young children and a demanding job as a cross-curriculum manager at a large further education college. Balancing work and motherhood meant I sometimes had to make sacrifices, and I spent a lot of time feeling guilty about missing out on special assemblies, or picking my children up from school. In the week before my daughter’s ninth birthday, I worked more than double my contracted hours to prepare for an Ofsted inspection. The area I was responsible for was rated very highly and the children seemed happy, but I constantly felt pulled in two directions. As for my long-held dream of writing a novel, there was no time to even think about it.

Then, on my daughter’s ninth birthday, everything changed. I’d been for an ultrasound and follow up CT-scan to investigate some troubling symptoms. I had a house full of nine-year-old girls, having a build-a-bear party, and my five-year-old son also had some friends over, when I received a call from the hospital. Hearing that I had kidney cancer is something I’ll never forget. I wanted to break down and cry, but I had to put on a brave face for my children, and so did my husband. In truth, we were both terrified and had no idea of the repercussions on our lives. The thing that terrified me most was the thought of dying and leaving my children behind without their mum. They were far too young and they needed me to be there for them.

I went through the longest two weeks of my life waiting for the operation to remove my kidney and the tumour within it. Although my brilliant consultant reassured me the cancer was at an early stage and that I had every chance of a complete recovery, nothing was certain until I’d had the operation and the follow up tests needed to confirm the prognosis. There was some unforeseen drama during the operation, when my lungs collapsed, and my poor husband was beside himself waiting hours longer than expected for news. I felt incredibly lucky when my next scan confirmed I was cancer free, and the experience changed my life in many ways. I resigned from my job and became a part-time university lecturer, giving me more time with my children, as well as the opportunity to finally pursue my dream of writing a book.

I’ve often thought about the agony of not knowing whether I’d live long enough to see my children grow up, but for a long time I didn’t feel ready to delve into those emotions and write about them. Tragically, in recent years, I’ve lost some friends to cancer. It’s made me think about how I might have reacted if things had been different and I’d had to face the reality of leaving my children behind. I couldn’t imagine not knowing who my husband might meet in the future, and having no say in who would become a mother figure to my son and daughter as a result. A woman who would be there for both their biggest moments, and all the routine aspects of their lives. It’s that thought which inspired A Mother’s Last Wish. Writing it was painful at times, but it reminded me once again just how lucky I am. The novel is dedicated to three wonderful women who had to leave their beloved children behind, and to my beautiful children who are now both adults. I’ll never forget how blessed I’ve been to see them grow up.

The Ideas Patchwork

It takes more than a single lightbulb moment to create a book. One idea can sustain a short story, but a novel of 80,000 words or more needs layers, sub plots and a breadth of characters and moments of action. The Man She Married inched its way into my mind when the opening scene came to me while driving. I wanted to slam my foot onto the break to stop immediately,but first checked the rearview mirror, to see a lorry close behind so obviously I didn’t. But my brain asked-what if I hadn’t checked?

What if, why, who, how, where-are all questions that I use to tease the story out of my subconscious. In this case-who was driving, why did they feel the need to stop, where were they coming from, where were they going to, where were they at the moment and why were they so distracted that they didn’t check the mirror? And then-what happened next and how were they going to deal with that?

Psychological thrillers require high stakes and moments of drama and so my next stage was to see just how much hot water I coul put my characters and see how they react and then create why/how for that, in order to give a well rounded character and back story. People’s behaviour and motivation are both what make them interested and keep a reader engaged and so even if I don’t keep everything about them in the final version, I can usually always answer why they did something or reacted in a certain way. In theatre, I used to “hotseat” a character in order to know what toothpaste they use, what side of the bed they sleep on, what their favourite flavour of ice cream is, so that you can know them inside and out and really know why they do what they do.

With The Man She Married, I started with the accident. Which then brought in the amnesia.This then led to the relationship with Beth’s husband being difficult for reasons we want to find out. Another why, another layer. I then added circumstances that brought the characters to this moment in time and let the drama play out.

This is how I tend to put together a story-and I hope that you enjoy answering the questions I ask, as you read The Man She Married.

Pick up your copy of Alison’s brand new book The Man She Married here: https://mybook.to/themanshemarried

Hello, I’m so excited to tell you about the Tudor characters in my new book, The House of Echoes.

My Tudor protagonist is Anne Brandon, the daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk and stepdaughter of Princess Mary Tudor, the youngest sister of Henry VIII and the Dowager Queen of France.

In my books, I like to surround my heroines with friends. Part of my research involved searching the shadows of other people’s tales to discover who had a connection to Anne Brandon that might lead to a friendship. One of the most prominent possibilities was Anne Boleyn.

The two girls met in 1514 at Mechelen, the court of Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy in the Netherlands. Anne Brandon was seven years old and Anne Boleyn was approximately twelve. They were there to be educated as courtiers and it seems possible they became friends. After two years, Anne Brandon was summoned home but Anne Boleyn remained until December 1521.

I have a scene where the young women are reunited at the Christmas court of 1521. A period of calm before the storm of Henry falling in love with Anne Boleyn and all the upheaval and difficulties this would cause.

Whether the two Annes did know each other and were friends, I will never know but I hope they approve of me using their shared younger years as an inspiration for their possible friendship when life became difficult for them both.

The Real Life Inspiration Behind A Love Like No Other

A Love Like No Other is a personal story and one close to my heart, but it is by no means autobiographical. The book follows the fictional characters of Pippa, Georgie, Sienna and Connie as they navigate the complexities and challenges of love, marriage, commitment, infertility, motherhood and society’s pressure to get married and start a family. Each woman has their own struggles and desires that are often polar opposite of what the other longs for. The shared experience of fertility treatment unites Pippa and Connie in hope and heartbreak, while Pippa’s younger sister Georgie struggles with motherhood and marriage. For Pippa’s best friend, a family and getting hitched is the last thing independent and career-minded Sienna wants.

I started writing this book in 2014 as a way to come to terms with an emotionally intense couple of years of my own going through fertility treatment. We undertook four cycles of ICSI at the Bristol Centre of Reproductive Medicine and although we were one of the lucky ones, the experience took its toll on us physically, mentally, emotionally and financially.

A lot of the book was written with my laptop perched on my knees while our much-longed for son slept in my arm, and as the ideas formed I knew the story would benefit from a balance of perspectives. Until my thirties, I was never someone who was desperate to have children. In my early twenties I remember desperately hoping I wasn’t pregnant, and yet a decade later I experienced the heartache of months then years of negative pregnancy tests when my husband and I were trying for a baby before we embarked on fertility treatment. Because of that I understood both sides and created characters who desired different things.

Much like Pippa writing The Hopeful Years blog, I found it cathartic to weave my own experiences into the book, so although the characters are fictional, the experience of IVF/ICSI is true to life and the emotions come from a real place – the uncertainty and despair, the heartache of miscarriage, the bittersweet news of friends and family announcing their pregnancies, along with the stress of holding onto hope only for it to be dashed in the cruellest way.

At its heart, A Love Like No Other is a poignant story of hope that explores the themes of motherhood, relationships, family drama and identity while shining a light on the often difficult and emotionally fraught journey of infertility a subject which isn’t talked about openly enough. In a small way, I hope A Love Like No Other can help change that.

Read Kate’s latest novel here: https://mybook.to/alovelikenoother