Getting to Know You - Christina Courtenay

I’ve never really found anywhere I truly belong – I grew up in Sweden with a Swedish mother and an English father, which meant I was a bit of a ‘mixed-up kid’.  But one place (if you can call it that) I’ve always felt an affinity with is the past.  I still remember my very first history lesson, learning about the Stone Age, and being taken on an outing to see a Stone Age boat carved out of a tree trunk.  I was amazed and fascinated and completely hooked on history from then on.  While others in my class groaned about having to learn the names of kings and queens, and the dates of battles and other important events, I lapped it all up – I couldn’t get enough!

Like most other authors, I was a voracious reader as a child and quickly outgrew the children’s section at the local library.  My dad had noticed my love of history and pointed me in the direction of books like The Odyssey and the Norse Sagas, as well as factual books about Tutankhamun and so on.  When he told me to read The Three Musketeers, however, I had found my favourite genre – historical romance.

It has to be said that there isn’t an awful lot of romance in that book (and what there is doesn’t end very happily, which frustrated me enormously!), but it showed me that such books existed and made me go looking for more.  I discovered writers like Victoria Holt and Madeleine Brent, but in my high school library I finally found the best thing ever – Georgette Heyer.  As a teenager I had a one hour long journey to school by train, when I was supposed to be revising or studying, but I’m afraid to say a lot of those journeys were spent in Regency England instead!  If you ask me, it was time well spent though as I learned a lot about the Regency period and my English (both grammar, vocabulary and spelling) improved no end.

These days I’m lucky enough to both read and write historical romance as much as I like!  I also spend time doing genealogy, a very addictive hobby which feeds my love of all things past.  There’s nothing more exciting than discovering an ancestor who has been eluding you for years.  I once found one after looking for him for ten years - talk about a Eureka moment!  And I almost missed him because the person entering his name in the baptismal register had smeared the J at the beginning of his name so it read <inkblob>oseph.  Thankfully the smudge couldn’t be any other letter so I knew I’d found ‘my’ Joseph.

So far my genealogy research hasn’t given me any ideas for a novel, but I’m hoping that one day soon I’ll come across the perfect hero or heroine among my ancestors.  Until then, I’ll just make them up!

Christina x

The Jade Lioness – historical romance and adventure set in 17^th century Japan, published by Choc Lit, out now as an ebook, coming in paperback October 2015

Hard Times

Sometimes it’s tempting to have a little moan about how much we have to do, isn’t it?  Whether it’s writing, editing, housework or the day job – we all feel tired from time to time and need to let off steam.  But do we really have the right to complain?  Just think how much less we have to do than our ancestors!

I am in awe of two of my great-grandmothers – Elmina and Martha, and I think they are great examples of just how ordinary women lived even a hundred years ago and how hard they had to work every day.

Me as a baby with Gt-grandma Elmina

Elmina (usually called Mina) was my great-grandmother on my mother’s side and lived in Sweden.  She was the wife of a baker and he got up at some unearthly hour of the morning to make bread that had to be ready to sell by the time their shop opened each day.  It was Mina’s job to man the shop, but before it opened, she also had to deliver bread to customers who had ordered theirs to be brought to their house.  On top of that, Mina had six children (my grandmother was the oldest and had to help in the shop from a very early age).  She had to cook for the whole family, plus at least three apprentice bakers, every day.  Somehow she also found the time to make clothes for the entire family, not to mention doing the washing and cleaning.  I have no idea how she did it.

Martha was the mother of fourteen children – fourteen! - twelve of whom survived to adulthood.  She was my great-grandmother on my father’s side and lived in Holborn, near Red Lion Square.  Before she’d even turned forty, her husband died and she was left to bring up the children on her own.  Even though a few of them were old enough to help out by then by going out to work and bringing home their salaries, it must have been a struggle.  Again, I have no idea how she managed to feed and clothe so many!  But somehow she did.  Sadly she was killed by a bomb during the war – she and her eldest daughter had gone to shelter in the crypt of their local church, which took a direct hit.  It’s ironic that had she stayed in her house, she would have been safe.

I know that when we read and write historicals, we mostly prefer to focus on the upper class people, the ones who never had to toil in this way.  But when I do genealogy, it’s the ordinary people who fascinate me the most – the ones who never really made a mark on the world, but without whom we wouldn’t be here.  I have hundreds of them on my family tree (I’ve been researching my family for quite a long time) and they each have their own story to tell.  One day, I’m going to put them all in a book.

How about you – do you have any interesting ancestors or someone you particularly admire?

Christina Courtenay

www.christinacourtenay.com