Author Interview: Hannah Fielding and Her Book Burning Embers

 I am excited to have author Hannah Embers here today to tell us a little bit about herself and her book Burning Embers.

 

 

 

Title: Burning Embers

Author: Hannah Fielding

Publisher: Omnific Publishing

Pub. date: April 2012

Genre: Modern Historical Romance

Blurb: 

Coral Sinclair is a beautiful but na ve twenty-five-year-old photographer who has just lost her father. She's leaving the life she's known and traveling to Kenya to take ownership of her inheritance--the plantation that was her childhood home--Mpingo. On the voyage from England, Coral meets an enigmatic stranger to whom she has a mystifying attraction. She sees him again days later on the beach near Mpingo, but Coral's childhood nanny tells her the man is not to be trusted. It is rumored that Rafe de Monfort, owner of a neighboring plantation and a nightclub, is a notorious womanizer having an affair with her stepmother, which may have contributed to her father's death. Circumstance confirms Coral's worst suspicions, but when Rafe's life is in danger she is driven to make peace. A tentative romance blossoms amidst a meddling ex-fianc, a jealous stepmother, a car accident, and the dangerous wilderness of Africa. Is Rafe just toying with a young woman's affections? Is the notorious womanizer only after Coral's inheritance? Or does Rafe's troubled past color his every move, making him more vulnerable than Coral could ever imagine? Set in 1970, this contemporary historical romance sends the seemingly doomed lovers down a destructive path wrought with greed, betrayal, revenge, passion, and love.

 

 

About The Author:

 I grew up in a rambling house overlooking the Mediterranean. My earliest memories are of listening, enchanted, to fairy stories at the knee of my half-French half-Italian governess Zula. When I was seven we came to an agreement: for each story she told me, I would invent and relate one of my own. That is how my love for story-telling began.

Later, at a convent school, while French nuns endeavoured to teach me grammar, literature and maths, I took to day-dreaming and wrote short romantic stories to satisfy the needs of a fertile imagination. Having no inhibitions, I circulated them around the class, which made me very popular among my peers and less so with the nuns.

After I graduated with a BA in French literature, my international nomadic years commenced. I lived mainly in Switzerland, France and England, where I had friends and family, and during holidays I traveled to Mediterranean countries like Italy, Greece and Spain.

I met my husband in London at a drinks party: it was love at first sight, just like in the romance books that were my constant companions. He brought me to his large Georgian rectory in Kent, surrounded by grounds and forests. After my children were born, between being a mother and running a property business, there was little time for day dreaming, let alone writing.

Then, once my children had flown the nest, I decided after so many years of yearning to write, write, write it was time to dust off the old manuscripts I’d been tinkering with for a lifetime and finish my first novel, based on my knowledge of Kenya. And thus, Burning Embers flowed onto the page.

Today, I am living the dream: I write full time, splitting my time between my homes in Kent and in the South of France, where I dream up romances overlooking breathtaking views of the Mediterranean.

 

Author Interview:

 

 

1. MGO: First, thank you for being here today Hannah!
   In 20 words or less tell us why we should read your book.

Hannah: It is an evocative, passionate love story that will transport you to vivid and colourful rural Africa and its culture.

MGO: When did you first know that you wanted to be a writer? 

Hannah: Stories and writing have always been part of my life. My father was a great raconteur and my governess used to tell the most fabulous fairy stories – I could listen to them for hours. When I was seven she and I came to an agreement: for every story she’d tell me I would invent one in return. That is how my passion for storytelling began.

At school I consistently received first prize for my essays and my teachers often read them aloud in class. As a teenager I used to write short romantic stories during lessons and circulate them in class, which made me very popular with my peers (but less so with the nuns!). In addition, since a young age I have kept some sort of a diary where I note my feelings, ideas and things that take my fancy (or not).

My grandmother was a published author of poetry and my father published a book about the history of our family, so writing runs in my veins. I guess I always knew that one day I would follow in those footsteps and forge my own path in that field – a subconscious dream which finally came true.

MGO: What made you decide to write in the genre that you choose?

Hannah: I am romantic, passionate and imaginative – I guess that says it all!

MGO: Who would you say has been the most influential person in your life?

Hannah: Without a doubt my French governess and my father have the most influenced my life. Both of them were intelligent, charismatic, and flamboyant. They encouraged me to read, to travel, and to be inquisitive and interested in everything around me, which helped nurture and stretch my imagination.

MGO: Ice cream, cookies or candy?

 

Hannah: Cookies – any cookies: ginger, shortbread, cinnamon, you name it. But I do try not to indulge too often in this weakness, this péché mignon.

MGO: Long walks on the beach, romantic picnic or sitting cuddled up on the couch watching a movie?

Hannah: I am a loner to some extent, and a dreamer, so the beach calls to me. I live part of the year in the south of France, and I love taking long walks on the beach on a sunny spring day. I gaze at the sparkling Mediterranean sea, with its ever-changing shades of blue under the smiling azure sky, and conjure up romantic stories.

MGO: Do you have anything currently in the works?

Hannah: I have written a passionate, fiery trilogy set in Andalucia, Spain, spanning three generations of a Spanish/English family, from 1950 to the present day.

I have also just finished writing a touching, deeply romantic novel that takes place in Venice and in Tuscany, Italy in 1979/1980. It opens with the Venice Carnival that has returned after a cessation of almost two centuries.

I so enjoyed researching these books (what better excuse to visit Venice), and they are in the pipeline for publication.

I am now in the process of researching my next historical romance trilogy which is set in Egypt and will take my readers from 1945 to the present day. 

MGO: Thank you again Hannah for being here and sharing a little bit more about yourself and your book with us today!

For those of you interested in Burning Embers, you can find it on Amazon Here.