The Story Behind the Story with Author Kathy Shuker of Great Britain.

 

This week we're catching up with Kathy who has been a welcome guest before. 

 

She is kindly sharing the SBTS of her newest novel.

We are pleased to have her back and if you missed her first visit, take a peek Here.

Read on my friends.

 

  

Meet Kathy.

I trained as a physiotherapist but a back injury soon forced me to change career. After studying design I worked as a freelance artist, supplying galleries and teaching. I began writing several years ago and published my first novel, Deep Water, Thin Ice, in 2014. Writing novels quickly became a passion, satisfying my creative itch even more than my painting did. I love to get into the heads of my characters and see where they take me. The journey is always intriguing, sometimes poignant, occasionally even funny. I have since published six more novels – multi-layered character-driven mysteries with a strong sense of place. The most recent book is the third in a series of stand-alone stories, the Dechansay Bright Mysteries, all linked by the central characters and set in the world of art and art restoration.

When not writing, I am a keen amateur singer and musician, playing acoustic guitar, fiddle and piano, and I enjoy learning foreign languages and read widely. I’m lucky enough to live in a beautiful area near the sea in southwest England.

 

Title: The Angel Downstairs

 

Synopsis: Some people never tell the truth. They daren’t.

Eric Dechansay is a successful artist with a popular studio in Paris, the life and soul of every party. Then the threatening letters start. Eric’s past - and someone he thought was dead - have come back to haunt him.

Hannah Dechansay knows nothing of her father’s past but a phone call from her half-sister has her leaving Oxford and on a plane to Paris. She won’t be welcome. Eric’s carefully constructed life is crashing around his ears and Hannah’s determination to find out why will only make things worse. Her father’s clearly frightened and he’s lying. And then there’s the piano player. Who is he anyway?

As the stakes rise inexorably higher, who can Hannah trust?

 

The Story Behind the Story: I started the Dechansay Bright Mystery series in the first lockdown of the Covid pandemic. They were difficult times for everyone with bad news all around us and nerve-racking uncertainty. I had an idea that two itinerant art restorers, working for a firm which specialized in on-site conservation, offered the possibility of interesting mysteries to be solved. It gave scope for a different setting each time as well as the potential to delve into the sometimes dubious dealings in the dark corners of the art market. Above all I wanted to make the series entertaining as well as mysterious, an antidote to the news reports. Since the two restorers, Hannah and Nathan, don’t get on but are often obliged to work together, there was immediately scope for light-hearted antagonism. I set the first book of the series back in 1990, partly to clear my head of the pandemic and partly to write in a world which hadn’t yet become dependent on technology.

The first book, A Crack in the Varnish, is set in Provence in an idyllic location but with all sorts of buried secrets. The second, By a Hand Unknown, is set in the east of England in a beautiful watery region called the Norfolk Broads. Since Hannah is half French and her semi-estranged artist father lives in Paris, I always planned to set a story there and The Angel Downstairs is that story. I have been lucky to visit Paris many times and it always charms me. I wanted to communicate that charm, especially to anyone who has never had the opportunity to go there.

How the story developed from there, I would struggle to explain. Once I finish a story it almost feels as if someone else has written it. The creative process is a strange beast and perhaps it is unwise to try to analyse it too far. But my novels, for all the mystery and intrigue, are always about the people – how they react, how they cope, how they get hold of their lives and try to do something with them. Some of the nicest compliments I’ve had on my writing have been from people who’ve said that the characters felt real, that they, the reader, felt like they were following the characters round, living their lives vicariously. That pleases me. Although each book is a standalone story, since the same two main characters appear in each novel, there is an arc in the development of their relationship and their behaviour as the series progresses.

 

 

Website – Please go HERE.  

   

 

A question before you go, Kathy:

Scribbler: What is the ideal spot for you when you write your stories? Music in the background or quiet. Coffee or tequila? Messy or neat?

 Quiet if possible. I live in a small village where usually all I can hear are tractors passing and birdsong. That’s perfect: I can disappear into my own world. I punctuate the day with several mugs of tea and coffee and I live by notebooks. Every novel had its own large notebook with research notes and plans etc, plus there’ll be a small, jot-down-ideas notebook for carrying around so my work area has these plus maps and a calendar for the setting and anything else that might either jog my creativity or provide valuable information. It’s not tidy. I do write on a laptop though. It makes it so much easier to delete and rewrite!!

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to tell you about my latest work.

You are most welcome, Kathy.
The Angel Downstairs sounds delightful and entertaining.
Thanks to you for being our guest. We wish you continued success with your stories.

 A special thanks to all our visitors and readers.