I am delighted to be taking part in the blog blitz for Callie Langridge’s A Time to Change today and sharing a great guest post on inspiration by the lady herself. But first here’s the all important book blurb:
A Time to Change Blurb
“I would rather love passionately for an hour than benignly for a lifetime.”
In a house full of history and secrets, the past will not stay where it belongs…
Lou has always loved Hill House, the derelict manor on the abandoned land near her home. As a child, the tragic history of its owners, the Mandevilles, inspired her dream to become a history teacher. But in her late twenties, and working in a shop to pay off student debts, life is passing her by.
That changes when a family disaster sends Lou’s life into a downward spiral and she seeks comfort in the ruined corridors of Hill House. The house transforms around her and Lou is transported back to Christmas 1913. Convinced she has been in an accident and is in a coma, Lou immerses herself in her Edwardian dream. With the Mandevilles oblivious to her true identity, Lou becomes their houseguest and befriends the eldest son, Captain Thomas Mandeville, a man she knows is destined to die in the First World War.
Lou feels more at home in the past than the present and when she realises the experience is real she sets out to do everything in her power to save her new friends.
Lou passes between 1913 and 2013, unearthing plots of murder and blackmail, which she must stop no matter the cost.
On her quest to save the Mandevilles by saving Thomas, Lou will face the hardest decision of her life. She will learn that love cannot be separated by a century.
A Flash of Inspiration by Callie Langridge
I don’t know about you, but when I read a book, I’m fascinated by where writers get their ideas. If you’re lucky and have an interesting life – maybe you’re a polar explorer, an historian with a wealth of knowledge on an era, or a world-leading expert on a particular subject – then you have a great background on which to frame your fiction. But if you’re like me, you are none of these. What interests me is being human. I’m fascinated by our feelings and emotions and intrigued by what lurks inside all of us that makes us who we are: what shared experiences join us and what has happened to each of us to distinguish us from the person who sits beside us on the bus, with their bag of shopping on their knee or flicking through the newspaper.
If you write about feelings and emotions, you run the risk of having a book full long passages of internal monologue. That might work for some great writers, but for most of us, we need a good story with characters and layers to wind our stories around and within.
At school I spent a lot of time gazing out of the classroom window, creating stories of a world infinitely more interesting than the lesson I was supposed to be participating in. I was, am, and will always be an unashamed daydreamer. I’m also an observer. Like a sponge, I soak up life that’s going on around me. I watch people, I eavesdrop on conversations, I cherry pick aspects of life to turn into stories, scenes and dialogue. I allow myself to be inspired by TV, films, books, the news, anything and everything. And then there are my amazing dreams. I’m lucky to have the most vivid dreams like scenes from movies. The idea for A TIME TO CHANGE came in a dream. I dreamt of a splendid party in a beautiful manor house with chandeliers and champagne. It was on the eve of the First World War. I knew that there was a conflict about a man. I saw the party through the eyes of an outsider who ran from the party, stumbled through the snow and then – I don’t want to give too much away here! – but something amazing happened and it was clear that the person through whose eyes I was seeing this was not of that time. I woke up and wrote it down. But that was it. Until I thought about it. The story germinated. Shoots came off. Who was this person? What was this manor house? Why was she there? Bit by bit a story began to take shape.
And those are the two most important tools in my writing box. I get my ideas by listening to my imagination – being open to the stories it finds for me – and then asking ‘What If’. What if this happened, what if that happened. What if she said this? What if he did that?
I find a springboard and then go off on a journey of discovery.
A huge thank you Callie for the wonderful guest post. I’m always curious about where authors get their ideas from and really enjoyed reading this.
Author Bio
Callie was born and brought up in Berkshire. After a brief teenage spell in the depths of Lancashire, she moved back to London.
Having left school at 16, she studied drama before embarking on a career in marketing. This saw her work in music marketing in the heady days of Britpop in the nineties. She unleashed her creativity in the design of window displays and marketing campaigns for the leading music retailer. More recently she has followed her passion for social history and currently works in marketing for a national historical institution, promoting projects and running events.
On hitting her thirtieth birthday, she decided finally to take her A levels and gained A’s in English Literature and Language, and Film Studies – not bad when working full time! – and this spurred her on to take the first of many creative writing course. A few years later and she has had a number of short stories published and plays performed at theatres and venues across London.
Callie lives in London with her long-term partner and an ever-growing collection of antique curiosities.
Twitter:
Facebook: Callie Langridge
A huge thank you to Sarah Hardy at Bombshell Books for inviting me to take part in the Blog Blitz and to Callie Langridge for taking the time to write a great guest post. A time to change is published on 24th September 2017.
