Under An English Heaven
Alice K. Boatwright
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Dear Alice, What is the story of how and when you decided to write Under an English Heaven? When I was living in England, I decided to write a mystery set there, following that old axiom – write the kind of books you love to read. However, I also decided to stick with what I knew, so my protagonist/sleuth, Ellie Kent, is an American. In her case, she leaves behind her life as an English literature professor in San Francisco when she falls in love with Graham Kent and moves to the Cotswold village where he is the vicar. The challenge of adjusting to another culture – even one you are very familiar with – is one of the sub-themes of this series. What was your reaction after learning that your book was the winner of the 2016 Mystery & Mayhem Grand Prize? I was honored and delighted to receive this award for Under an English Heaven. The Grand Prize! Wow. Although I have been writing and publishing for a long time, this was my first mystery, so receiving that recognition was very special. It is also helping the book to reach new audiences. |
photo credit: Maria Aragon |
You have an MFA in writing from Columbia University. You have taught at 2 different universities. You have also lived in the UK, France, and you are now based in the Pacific Northwest. How have all these life experiences impacted your writing through the years?
The training I received at Columbia has stood me in good stead – and it was as much or more about attitudes as about skills. For example, one professor told us every writer should have four unpublished books. This was daunting and discouraging, but it helped me realize that a period of apprenticeship is as critical to becoming good writer as it is for any other art. I also learned that “writing is rewriting” – and to pursue my vision for my work with persistence and faith. I have enjoyed teaching because I always learn in the process, and it’s a pleasure to help other writers discover their voices and material. All of the places I have lived and jobs I have held – from running a newspaper in a mental hospital and designing exhibits for a children’s museum to traveling around the world writing about public health – have definitely enriched my understanding and broadened the scope of what I attempt to do in my writing.
Do you remember your first published story? Do you have any tips for emerging writers who want to break through and have their works published & reach wide audiences?
I remember the first story that was published very well because it was a breakthrough story for me, written in one of those periods of intense creativity that get you hooked on being a writer. Having it appear in print was wonderful, but the most important part was all that went before. My main tip for emerging writers is to be persistent – about doing the very best work you can do and then finding an audience for it. Don’t ever give up on a story you believe in, and take advantage of the new options for publishing today: traditional, hybrid, and indie. To reach a wide audience, you first need to write a good book and then have the willingness to work hard to market it.
The training I received at Columbia has stood me in good stead – and it was as much or more about attitudes as about skills. For example, one professor told us every writer should have four unpublished books. This was daunting and discouraging, but it helped me realize that a period of apprenticeship is as critical to becoming good writer as it is for any other art. I also learned that “writing is rewriting” – and to pursue my vision for my work with persistence and faith. I have enjoyed teaching because I always learn in the process, and it’s a pleasure to help other writers discover their voices and material. All of the places I have lived and jobs I have held – from running a newspaper in a mental hospital and designing exhibits for a children’s museum to traveling around the world writing about public health – have definitely enriched my understanding and broadened the scope of what I attempt to do in my writing.
Do you remember your first published story? Do you have any tips for emerging writers who want to break through and have their works published & reach wide audiences?
I remember the first story that was published very well because it was a breakthrough story for me, written in one of those periods of intense creativity that get you hooked on being a writer. Having it appear in print was wonderful, but the most important part was all that went before. My main tip for emerging writers is to be persistent – about doing the very best work you can do and then finding an audience for it. Don’t ever give up on a story you believe in, and take advantage of the new options for publishing today: traditional, hybrid, and indie. To reach a wide audience, you first need to write a good book and then have the willingness to work hard to market it.
* * *
Under an English Heaven (excerpt)
by Alice K. Boatwright
Sunday, October 30
1.
“No matter what I wear, I’ll never be Mrs. Vicar in Little Beecham,” said Ellie Kent, as she wriggled the skirt of her new tweed suit down onto her hips. “People here will always think of me as the young wife who snared you on that unfortunate sabbatical in California.”
Graham Kent lay propped against the pillows on their brass bed, with one long ropy arm flung behind his head. His gingery hair was tousled, and his eyebrows were twisted into wild curlicues that suggested he had spent an active night.
“You look happy,” said Ellie, pulling up her skirt to show him a bit of nyloned thigh. “Is this how the English cleric gets off? Watching his lady put on her tweeds?”
He laughed, his unexpectedly warm hearty laugh. “It is. And you vastly underestimate your powers, Mrs. Kent. I’m sure everyone will come to love you.”
“But you’re paid to be an optimist, and I’m not,” she said, as she put on the suit jacket and studied herself in the mirror over the dressing table. The color of the tweed picked up her gray-blue eyes, but they looked back at her now, alarmed by the unfamiliar person who appeared in the glass. The Ellie they knew wore black and more black, and then to relax, jeans. In search of her former self, she ruffled up her short dark hair.
“Come here,” said Graham, reaching out for her.
“I can’t. I’m late for church.”
“No, you’re not, and no one knows better than I do how it long takes to get there.”
“All right,” she said, going to the bed. She perched herself on the edge, but Graham pulled her down beside him so their faces were close.
“Listen. I’m not denying that people will take time to adjust, but what kind of example would I be if I couldn’t show them that renewal in life is possible, as well as life after death?”
Ellie smiled. He looked so vulnerable and wise, a combination she found utterly irresistible. “Not the one I married,” she said, giving him a long kiss.
From the church next door, they could hear the first bells begin to ring: Ding, dong, ding-ity, dong, ding, dong, ding, dong, ding-ity, dong.
Ellie pulled herself out of his embrace, stood up and straightened her clothes. “You now have exactly twenty minutes to shower, dress, and get to church.”
“Watch me work a miracle,” he said, as he threw off the covers and disappeared, naked, into the bathroom.
A few minutes later, when he came down to the Vicarage’s stone-floored kitchen, his hair was damp from the shower, but he had been transformed from Ellie’s Graham into that other person, the man in Holy Orders, a black-robed priest.
“Drink this,” said Ellie, handing him a mug of sweet milky tea and a piece of toast smeared with Marmite. His favorite — and to her, uneatable — breakfast. “My reputation really will be ruined if you collapse from fatigue and hunger during the service.”
“I promise I won’t,” he said, alternately taking bites of toast and swallows of tea, as he pulled on his overcoat. “By the way, I have a present for you.” He took a red paper poppy out of his pocket and pinned it to the lapel of Ellie’s coat.
“What’s this for?” she asked, angling her head so she could see the little flower.
“Remembrance Day. It’s like your Veterans Day.”
“I thought we were celebrating saints and souls this week.”
“We are, but every proper English person wears a poppy in the run-up to Remembrance Day.”
“You think this will persuade anyone that I’m a proper English person?”
“It will help.”
“‘If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders fields’,” she intoned, quoting the famous World War I poem.
“Exactly.” He glanced at his watch. “Now we really do have to go.”
The second round of bells had begun. Ding, ding ding-ity, dong, dong, dong, dingity-dong.
He opened the back door, snapped open a large umbrella to protect them from the pelting rain, and, arm in arm, they hurried down the pebbled path from the Vicarage through the graveyard to the church.
Ellie Kent had never met a vicar’s wife in person before she moved to England, but she knew plenty of them from her years of teaching literature. This was the destiny of Eleanor, the “Sense” of Sense and Sensibility; the fate of the pragmatic spinster Charlotte in Pride and Prejudice; the doom of Charlotte Brontë, who damped her outspoken writer self to fit the needs of her curate husband and died soon thereafter.
Times had changed though, hadn’t they? Surely, they must have.
She braced herself with that thought as she said goodbye to Graham in the vestry and entered the church, where Mr. Dunn, the volunteer organist, launched into his prelude with a clumsy flourish.
The church was only sparsely filled, with people sitting in ones and twos, bundled up in heavy coats dotted with paper poppies. A damp chill pervaded the stone building, and Ellie was glad of her warm tweed suit as she slipped quickly into a pew. A moment later, Graham entered the chancel in his full vestments to open the service. Mr. Dunn played the intro to the first hymn, and everyone stood to sing in wavering voices “For all the saints, who from their labors rest.”
“Bring the body and the mind will follow,” Graham had said when he explained the rituals of the Church of England, and Ellie hoped he was right. So far she still found it tricky to remember when to sit, stand, and kneel and how to navigate the various books, especially since she imagined the eyes of the congregation’s white-haired ladies and pink-cheeked gentlemen were on her every moment, watching for mistakes. She hadn’t even begun to tackle her theological doubts.
Nevertheless she had already come to love St. Michael and All Angels — a small stone church with an imposing air and a square Norman tower dating back 800 years. Sitting quietly under its vaulted roof, she felt both timelessness and the passage of those centuries.
While the prayers and readings droned on around her, she contemplated the faint traces of medieval decorative painting, the carved angels on the stone pillars that had been beheaded during the Reformation, and the Victorian stained glass windows depicting the life of Christ.
The lone contemporary feature was a stained glass window dedicated to Henry and George Rutherford, local men who had died during World War II. In vivid colors and sharp angular shapes it depicted them clutching the Union Jack as the light of God illuminated their path to heaven. “We will never forget them” it said, and every week their sister, who still lived in the village, proved it by placing a posy of fresh flowers on the windowsill.
But the memorial that most often drew Ellie’s gaze was one that a casual visitor would not even notice. It was a small bronze plaque that read: Louise Greenhall Kent, Beloved wife of Graham and mother of Isabelle, Faithful and loved servant of this parish. In case she ever happened to forget that there had been another Mrs. Kent before her, it was always there to remind her. She found it hard to imagine that any such plaque would ever be mounted in her memory, but maybe, as Graham suggested, she underestimated her gifts.
When he stepped up to the pulpit, she turned her attention to what he had to say about the commitment and sacrifices of the Christian saints. Personally she had no interest in achieving sainthood, or anything like it, but if there were a God, she hoped he would help her find a way to be herself and succeed in her new life too.
* * *
When did you realize that writing was calling? Did you have a plan B in case writing didn’t work out?
I wanted to be an actress until I discovered that actresses only get to play the parts they’re hired to play in the plays other people want to produce. As a writer you control the story and play all parts according to your own direction. Plan A was always to write fiction and Plan B was to write anything else. As a result, I’ve had remarkably interesting jobs that have always had writing at the core; and it has been a pleasure to put my skills to use on behalf of causes that are important to me.
Will you tell us a few words about Collateral Damage? Why did you want to write about the Vietnam War?
The Vietnam War and the protest movement that grew out of it were defining experiences for my generation as the Trump protests are now defining the current generation. I think readers will relate to that. The idea of creating Collateral Damage as a triptych of stories about the long-term impact on families divided by their different positions on the war came to me after I had a chance to go to Vietnam myself. I worked very hard on this book over a number of years and grew up as a person and a writer in the process. Vietnam being a not-very-PC subject made it hard to find a publisher, so I learned a lot in that process too. My theme song in this period was Bruce Springsteen’s “No Retreat, No Surrender”! It’s exciting to see the renewed interest in this era today, as well as the resurgence of citizen activism.
How did you come up with the “Four questions every novelist should ask himself” discussed in your Blog “The Writing Life”?
I probably saw a link to that blog on Twitter. It irritated me since it reminded of the kind of “culture of no” that I experienced as a young writer. I think anyone who has the desire to write a book or story should do it. Other forces farther down the line will shape outcomes such as whether a project is finished, how wide an audience it will reach, whether it makes money – and whether the writer wishes to repeat the experience. There is no need to discourage people from the outset.
How can you summarize the art of writing nowadays?
I’m not sure the art of writing ever changes. To me, it’s always about using the best possible words to communicate a place, a character, an experience, an idea. The publishing and book businesses have certainly changed drastically though. Today anyone who writes a book can carry it through to publication if they wish, and I think that’s fine.
Any comment on the impact of social media and the existence of e-books and how they affect people’s reading and writing habits?
I’m not up on the data about the impact of social media. What I have found is that I read/write fewer letters now, but I receive/send a lot more messages and photos to more people. My world is larger as a result, and I like that. I think e-books are extremely useful. They save trees and paper, you can read them in the dark, and you can carry a whole library in your purse. They do make clear that the experience of reading a book is abstract. . . “the book” takes place in your imagination, not on the page. That said the ebook reader doesn’t have much soul. I love to read a real book that smells of ink and paper, and I miss being able to glance around a bus or plane and see what other people are reading too.
Are you currently working on any new books?
My main goal at the moment is to finish the second Ellie Kent mystery, but I also like to change focus and work on stories, children’s books, and other projects. One of my bucket list items is to write and illustrate a children’s picture book some day.
Links to my books:
Under an English Heaven
Collateral Damage
alicekboatwright.com
I wanted to be an actress until I discovered that actresses only get to play the parts they’re hired to play in the plays other people want to produce. As a writer you control the story and play all parts according to your own direction. Plan A was always to write fiction and Plan B was to write anything else. As a result, I’ve had remarkably interesting jobs that have always had writing at the core; and it has been a pleasure to put my skills to use on behalf of causes that are important to me.
Will you tell us a few words about Collateral Damage? Why did you want to write about the Vietnam War?
The Vietnam War and the protest movement that grew out of it were defining experiences for my generation as the Trump protests are now defining the current generation. I think readers will relate to that. The idea of creating Collateral Damage as a triptych of stories about the long-term impact on families divided by their different positions on the war came to me after I had a chance to go to Vietnam myself. I worked very hard on this book over a number of years and grew up as a person and a writer in the process. Vietnam being a not-very-PC subject made it hard to find a publisher, so I learned a lot in that process too. My theme song in this period was Bruce Springsteen’s “No Retreat, No Surrender”! It’s exciting to see the renewed interest in this era today, as well as the resurgence of citizen activism.
How did you come up with the “Four questions every novelist should ask himself” discussed in your Blog “The Writing Life”?
I probably saw a link to that blog on Twitter. It irritated me since it reminded of the kind of “culture of no” that I experienced as a young writer. I think anyone who has the desire to write a book or story should do it. Other forces farther down the line will shape outcomes such as whether a project is finished, how wide an audience it will reach, whether it makes money – and whether the writer wishes to repeat the experience. There is no need to discourage people from the outset.
How can you summarize the art of writing nowadays?
I’m not sure the art of writing ever changes. To me, it’s always about using the best possible words to communicate a place, a character, an experience, an idea. The publishing and book businesses have certainly changed drastically though. Today anyone who writes a book can carry it through to publication if they wish, and I think that’s fine.
Any comment on the impact of social media and the existence of e-books and how they affect people’s reading and writing habits?
I’m not up on the data about the impact of social media. What I have found is that I read/write fewer letters now, but I receive/send a lot more messages and photos to more people. My world is larger as a result, and I like that. I think e-books are extremely useful. They save trees and paper, you can read them in the dark, and you can carry a whole library in your purse. They do make clear that the experience of reading a book is abstract. . . “the book” takes place in your imagination, not on the page. That said the ebook reader doesn’t have much soul. I love to read a real book that smells of ink and paper, and I miss being able to glance around a bus or plane and see what other people are reading too.
Are you currently working on any new books?
My main goal at the moment is to finish the second Ellie Kent mystery, but I also like to change focus and work on stories, children’s books, and other projects. One of my bucket list items is to write and illustrate a children’s picture book some day.
Links to my books:
Under an English Heaven
Collateral Damage
alicekboatwright.com