Susanna Kearsley | My Writing Room

Jan Cox Speas

I still remember every detail of the rainy afternoon when, looking through my parents’ bookcase, I first found Bride of the MacHugh and took it to my room to read it. She was an amazingly gifted writer. Her My Lord Monleigh ends with one of my favourite last lines. When I first included her here, and mentioned that I hadn’t been able to find out much about her, her daughter Cynthia Speas got in touch with details of her mother’s life and work, which I can now share with you here.

James Hilton

My father first urged me to read Random Harvest, a favourite of his, and I loved it. Add to it books like Lost Horizon and Goodbye, Mr Chips, and you’ll understand why I’m so in awe of Hilton’s writing. And on top of it all, he was born in Leigh, Lancashire, where my great-grandparents came from, and where I still have family living. Small world. You can learn more about the man in this biography.

Thomas H. Raddall

A fellow Canadian, and sadly overlooked these days, his novels had a passion and a beauty all their own. My favourite is Pride’s Fancy (I’m still awestruck whenever I read his description of launching the ship in that novel...) If you haven’t yet discovered him, do yourself a favour and start here.

Richard Halliburton

Funny and fearless and like no one else, he died young doing what he loved best – living life on the edge. The books he wrote of his adventures opened up whole worlds to me, and I will never think about the Marathon the same way after reading his own re-creation of the run... Here’s a small taste of his life and accomplishments.

Daphne du Maurier

A Grand Master of romantic suspense. I love Jamaica Inn the best, though The House on the Strand runs a very close second. There are many good web sites to visit, but here’s one to start with.

Lucilla Andrews

Her beautifully-rendered and memorable novels are snobbishly dismissed as ‘hospital romances’ by people who don’t know better, but they’re much more than that. I absolutely love her book The First Year, and am happy to see that Corgi has reissued her autobiographical No Time For Romance, the book that controversially inspired many of the scenes in Ian McEwan’s Atonement. With the film version of Atonement coming out, I thought it only fair to shine a little of the spotlight where it properly belongs. To learn more about the woman, her work, and her link to Atonement, read this article first, then this list of the similar passages, Ian McEwan’s rebuttal, and this final word on the subject.

Gregory Clark

There was a time when virtually everyone in Canada turned to the back page of Weekend Magazine to read Greg Clark’s weekly columns - gems of a few hundred words that touched the heart and funny bone with equal skill. Though I was of a later generation, I discovered these stories in my own turn in his many book-length collections, all of which are now in my own bookcase, and among my best-loved treasures, especially his May Your First Love Be Your Last. In addition to his columns, he was a reporter, feature writer and war correspondent, and in his day was considered the most widely-read writer in Canada. I couldn’t find a link that did him justice, so I made my own. Click here for my tribute.

(I’m pleased to report that, since I wrote this, a listing for ‘Greg Clark, journalist’ has appeared on Wikipedia.)

Nevil Shute

A wonderful storyteller. Read A Town Like Alice, then try to forget it. You won’t.

To find out more about the man and his books, just click here.

Erle Stanley Gardner

My bookshelves are full of old Perry Mason books because few writers, then or now, match Gardner’s skill in depicting American law and the ways an intelligent lawyer can bend it to best serve his clients. Here’s his Wikipedia page.

Catherine Gaskin

Her thriller The File on Devlin is another of my treasured reads, and one I love to pass along to others. There isn’t much about her on the internet as yet, but the site Fantastic Fiction does have a brief biography, and shows some of her books. They’re well worth hunting down.

Kurt Vonnegut

A talented, clever and principled man who was never afraid to point out that the emperor didn’t have clothes on. The ending of Player Piano is classic, and Cat’s Cradle changed my whole view of what fiction could be. Read this tribute to learn more about how he lived and what he wrote and why he’s a favourite of mine. So it goes.

Evelyn Anthony

The fact that she was one of the judges of the prize that launched my own career made the prize itself more precious to me, and the fact that I met her in person at the awards luncheon put me over the moon. Among her many thrillers, The Tamarind Seed remains my favourite, and her series that begins with The Defector, featuring Davina Graham, gave me inspiration to attempt a series of my own. Here’s an introduction to her life and work.

Agatha Christie

I think - I think - I’ve read them all, and likely own them, too. And unlike some critics, I think she had a rare gift for characterization. Her people are always very real to me, and some of her plots are beyond brilliant. I have so many favourites of her books, but The Hollow and Sleeping Murder probably lead the pack. Here’s one of many good web sites about her.

Anne Armstrong Thompson

Her Message from Absalom remains one of my all-time favourites. She also wrote The Swiss Legacy and The Romanov Ransom, wonderful thrillers with razor-sharp heroines. I’m still looking for a biography of her that I can link to, but don’t wait for that before reading her.

Mary Stewart

A true master. No one can make me get lost in a book like this woman. If you’ve never read her, try This Rough Magic or The Moonspinners for starters, and you’ll know why I’m so keen to take my characters to Greece. To learn more about the woman and her work, click here.

Write it down.

I carry a notebook with me everywhere (even in the bathtub). I’ve learned the hard way not to trust my memory when a scene idea strikes me, or I “hear” a bit of dialogue, or see or feel or catch the scent of something that I want to use in something that I’m working on. I write it down. And most times it’s that first impression, word for word, that ends up in the book.

I’m reading François de Callières: A Political Life by Laurence Pope, learning about the machinations of diplomacy and a fascinating man whose life intersected with those of my characters...

In case you’ve wondered why I’ve been doing such a terrible job of keeping the website up to date since the summertime, I can tell you it’s because I’m on a deadline, having recently signed contracts with my publishers in the U.K., the U.S.A., Canada, and Germany in which I’ve promised to deliver this new book to them in May.

So that’s what I’ve been doing: Writing, writing, writing.

I’ve also done a blog tour for The Rose Garden, and spent the most amazing weekend at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference, and managed to get out of my writing room, however briefly, for Christmas, but for the most part it’s been writing, writing, writing. Which is not so much a slog as it may sound, because I’m loving this new book (the sort-of-sequel to The Winter Sea), but if I miss a month or two of website updates between now and May, at least you’ll know the reason.