Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:19 — 40.1MB) | Embed
Don't miss out on the latest episodes. Subscribe now! Spotify | More
Fiona Valpy’s French romances are like a glass of wine in French sunshine – a perfect summer – and pandemic escape. But she writes more than romance.
Fiona’s best-selling World War II fiction tells stories of remarkable women, generations apart, who use adversity to their advantage and find resilience deep within.
Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and in Binge Reading this week Fiona shows why her books are the antidote for dark times, and we offer the French Escape Giveaway… three Ebook copies of her chateau romance The French For Always are going to three lucky readers.
An escapist read with the taste of summer on every page… it’s just what we need in difficult times…. Enter the draw through the Joys of Binge Reading website or the Binge Reading Facebook page. Offer closes May 9, so enter now.
Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:
- How moving to France launched a career
- The secret lives of Fiona’s neighbors
- The Nazis in Paris and their legacy
- Interweaving romance and history
- Fiona’s thing about Austen books
- Moving on from social distancing
Where to find Fiona Valpy:
Website: https://www.fionavalpy.com/
Facebook: @fionavalpybooks
Twitter: @fionavalpy
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fionavalpy/
What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.
Jenny Wheeler: Hello there Fiona, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.
Fiona Valpy: Hi Jenny. Can I just say from one binge reader to another, it’s great to be here.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful. You’re in Scotland and I’m in New Zealand. It’s a time of pandemic, so give out our listeners a picture of where are you sitting and how has social distancing been affecting you?
Lovely spot for introvert writer
Fiona Valpy: Well, I’m in the conservatory of my house, which is on the edge of a little village in Perthshire in Scotland. And I’m the last house in the village, so I get the benefit of having the community nearby. But I’m also looking out onto my garden, which is full of spring flowers at the moment, such a joy.
Then beyond that there’s some fields and trees and hills and I’ve got the River Tay just down below as well, which I can’t see because it’s down in a deep valley, but it’s always lovely knowing the river’s there.
I’m lucky where I am. I’ve got the sense of not being too trapped and too claustrophobic here. I’m also really lucky with the small community that’s around because they’re so supportive and we’ve all got together, and we do shopping for people who are in quarantine.
If anyone needs anything, we will scurry around virtually, electronically, and try and sort that.
The spirit of community rises . .
There was a lovely story the other day of an elderly lady in a care home. It was her birthday and the community group all put their heads together by a computer and managed to come up with a bagpiper who went and stood outside her window and played “Happy Birthday” to her. That gives you the kind of idea of the spirit of community that I’m in.
Jenny Wheeler: That sounds just gorgeous.
Fiona Valpy: It is, it’s lovely. From that point of view, I’m lucky. I also think that with social distancing, being a writer, we’re quite antisocial people anyway. The nature of our day job, if you like, is being quite isolated and working on our own and having that space to really focus on our writing. In fact the lockdown that we’re in here at the moment has possibly been quite a good thing from my point of view and I think my publisher would think it’s a very good thing because I no longer have any excuses for not hitting my deadlines.
How did Fiona get writing fiction?
Jenny Wheeler: That’s right. We’ll move on to the question that I do always like to start with because it’s the one people want to know the answer to. How did you first get into writing? Was there some kind of epiphany, a ‘once upon a time’ moment when it really hit you hard that you should write fiction, or was it more something there that was percolating under the surface for a long time?
Fiona Valpy: I think for me it was the latter. It was something that bubbled away for many, many years. I’d always been a really avid reader. Ever since I was tiny, I would be buried in a book and quite often I would finish a book and put it aside with that feeling of almost bereavement, you know, when you finish a book that you love, and think to myself, I wish I’d written that. I loved that so much, I wish I’d been able to express myself in the way that perhaps a particular writer had done.
Move to France the catalyst
That was always there in the background for me. But it was only when I moved to France that I had the two things that a writer really needs. One is the time to write and the second thing was, of course, the inspiration. Moving to France, I found I was lucky. I found both those things.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. That’s wonderful. And you’ve now carved out a very strong niche for yourself in French romance and in dual timeline general fiction, particularly stories about World War II, and France often features in them as well. What drew you to those two different genres – the French romance and the dual timeline historicals?
French ‘joie de vivre’ a key
Fiona Valpy: It was definitely finding a new home in France for those seven years. The inspiration for romance is just everywhere in France, it’s all around you. It’s such a beautiful country and the food, the wine, everything, the countryside, it all feeds in. There’s also the sort of joie de vivre of the people that live there, their very own French sense of humor. That was really the romance side. It was there all around me.
In terms of World War II, the location of the home that we bought, we didn’t really know it at the time, it wasn’t something I was aware of, but it was right in the area where the demarcation line was between German occupied France and Vichy France, the so-called unoccupied part of France for the first couple of years of the Second World War.
Of secrets and resilience
As I delved below the surface a little more, these extraordinary tales of resistance, of people’s wartime experiences and of the resilience that those people had to show, started to come out. Quite slowly because people are always still these days reluctant to talk about those awful years but I think being on that line of connection between occupied and unoccupied France meant that there was an increase in the resistance activity, inevitably, along that line.
As I made friends with French people locally, those stories that started to come out were quite extraordinary and I felt these stories need to be told and especially they need to be told now, because that generation is dying out. There are very few people now who actually lived through those war years. They are getting older. And so that gave me the idea of combining the two, my love of the country and the beauty that surrounded me, but just beneath the surface this dark undercurrent of the legacy of the war years.
Ask no questions, tell no lies
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. Now, your most recent book feeds into that very nicely because you’ve actually dedicated it to true life women resistance fighters haven’t you, and it relates to a story of a young contemporary woman who goes to Paris to discover more about her English grandmother’s life in Paris during the Nazi occupation. It was a case of “don’t ask questions unless you really want answers.” Did that inspiration come from what you were mentioning, the stories that you’ve heard in your home?
Fiona Valpy: Yes, that’s very much where that started. Then as I began to do more research of my own, having heard the stories of friends and people living close to me, I started digging a bit deeper. That’s where I learned a lot more about these incredible women who worked for the Resistance and many of whom lost their lives.
The sisters’ war stories
They endured the most horrendous conditions, the most frightening situations that they found themselves in, and again I felt absolutely compelled to get their story out there.
With The Dressmaker’s Gift, it’s actually the sister book, literally the sister book, to The Beekeeper’s Promise because it tells the story of Mireille, and her younger sister Eliane is the main character in The Beekeepers Promise. I had to tell the story in The Dressmaker’s Gift because Mireille’s story needed telling. That end hadn’t been tied up in The Beekeeper’s Promise.
Mireille goes to Paris and so it’s a great contrast to The Beekeeper’s Promise where Eliane is very much living in the rural part of France on that demarcation line.
Paris and the Nazi occupation
Mireille is in a different situation in Paris and working for the couture industry. As I was doing a bit more research historically, I read Anne Sebba’s brilliant book Les Parisiennes which is a great read for anyone. It’s written in English and she is a historian.
It’s a nonfiction work but it looks at what women did in Paris during World War II. Again, they were just extraordinary stories that came out of that. While I was reading about that side of things, I realized that there was this very strange, almost surreal juxtaposition of the couture industry with its elegance, you know, it’s still very expensive, very exclusive, and the actual struggle of every day French people living in Paris, particularly the seamstresses who were employed in the couture industry.
That’s really what sparked my ideas for The Dressmaker’s Gift and for telling Mireille’s story. But then some other incredibly brave characters crept in there as well. My characters tend to take on a life of their own.
Haute couture considered essential
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. It struck me to have interesting parallels with today where in New Zealand we’ve got non-essential industries at the moment in lockdown. If your work is designated essential, you’re able to keep on with it. And I saw in The Dressmaker’s Gift that the Nazis very much encouraged and fostered the couture industry because they liked to have their women dressed beautifully.
It had never occurred to me that that was actually what had happened. About the only thing I knew about that couture industry was that Coco Chanel was a collaborator.
Fiona Valpy: Yes. That’s just one at one of those extraordinary things. It was a fact that I unearthed during my research that food was really strictly rationed. The French people were literally starving and any surplus food tended to be diverted to the German front anyway to support their war effort.
Buttons and braid emblem of pride
So the French people were literally starving, but buttons and braid were not rationed. It’s just so bizarre because the Germans prioritize the couture industry and the French Vichy government also wanted to go along with that.
I think it became almost an emblem of the French, that France hadn’t completely been defeated. They took a pride in their couture industry. Obviously the Vichy government, that’s a whole other can of worms there, because they were put in place by the Nazi occupiers, so obviously they were going to go along with what the Germans were saying.
But it did suit the French as well to have this couture industry still open for business as a kind of world flagship. Like everything, it’s more complicated. It’s never black and white. But it was so extraordinary that the dressmakers who were working on these amazing couture creations were starving.
Links to French For love stories
Jenny Wheeler: The other thing I really love about both those books is that your central character Mireille in The Dressmaker’s Gift and Eliane in The Beekeeper’s Promise also feature in your French romance series, so it’s a lovely surprise in a way that you get to hear a whole lot more about their lives and their back stories. They’ve got very interesting roles in the romance stories, but you just get a whole other side of their lives in these historicals which is just like an extra gift really.
Fiona Valpy: I love that you’ve picked up on that. Like I said, my characters take on lives of their own. Literally. I’m sure a psychologist would be having a field day with this if they could see inside my head.
There’s this lovely world in there that’s populated by these amazing characters that I put down in my books. Mireille and Eliane both do feature in those first three novels that I wrote: The French for Love, The French for Always and The French for Christmas. They really did start out as fairly minor characters. They had important roles to play in those books but they’re not the main characters.
Characters develop own lives
But it was their stories that started to grab me and captured my imagination. So yes, my books can all be read as standalone novels but there is an interweaving of people and places throughout them that readers will begin to recognize. That’s the kind of strand that I love when I’m reading books by other authors and I very much enjoy that kind of interweaving through my books.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. The Beekeeper’s Promise was an Amazon UK eBook best seller and it was shortlisted for romantic novel awards too. So it managed to hit the two bases, the historical and the romance, and like many of your other books, it also weaves fascinating extra information about bees and nature and wine making and food. I wondered if you had to do a lot of research or whether these things very much reflected your own interests.
Of bee keeping, wine and food
Fiona Valpy: It’s a mixture but yes, a lot of it is drawn from my own life experiences. For example, when I lived in France, I did keep bees, and I learned so much from that about what incredible creatures they are.
It’s a bit like putting together a patchwork quilt, writing a book. I’m drawing from all my experiences and then inevitably I’ll come up against the limits of my knowledge and my experience and that needs further research. So it’s a little bit of both, but I think the art of the novelist is to take that kind of patchwork of your own life experiences and transform them into something else.
Jenny Wheeler: What you were saying about your characters taking over, does that indicate that you’re more of a writer who starts out not quite sure, not knowing where the story is going to go. They call them seat of the pants or a planner. Are you more heavily on one side of that divide or the other?
From ‘pantser’ to planner
Fiona Valpy: I started out as definitely a seat of the pants kind of a writer with my first book, and it was my characters and a few ideas that I had that I drew together there, but I very quickly learned the huge benefits and advantages of planning. I only wrote one book in that way and it was quite a long and painful birthing process, shall we call it?
Thereafter I did plan a lot more thoroughly and now I have to plan because now that I have an agent and a publisher, I’m having to put together proposals for the next book I’m going to write. I have to communicate to them what my ideas are before I’ll get a contract for those ideas. So you’re forced to plan a bit more, I think, as your career develops as a writer. But I definitely know the benefits of planning the hard way.
Jenny Wheeler: You are published by one of the Amazon imprints which is a definite coup in itself. It gives you a wonderful position to be published by Amazon. How did that come about?
Importance of team
Fiona Valpy: That was thanks to my amazing agent. I have a lovely agent, Madeleine Milburn and she was the one who put me together with Amazon Publishing. I’m published by Lake Union which is the romance imprint. Not many people think of Amazon as a publisher but there is a whole separate entity, Amazon Publishing, which has several different imprints, including children’s books and crime novels and, as I say, romance through Lake Union.
It’s been a wonderful experience working with them. They’re so professional. They’re just like any of the other big publishers. I have a whole team supporting me, I have great editors who definitely help to make my books better, make sure they’re the best they can be. That’s been a fantastic experience for me working with them.
A perfect escapist read
Jenny Wheeler: Now, the French For series, I must say that they are absolutely recommended as a sort of summer escapist read. They’ve got lovely emotional depth, but stories for our time in terms of the slightly dark and challenging times we’re living through. I loved what one reviewer said online. She wrote “the whole atmosphere in the novel immediately made it feel like summer, even though it was raining where I was.” That was gorgeous and they do give a real sense of joy, those stories, don’t they?
Fiona Valpy: Absolutely. I think that none of us could have possibly foreseen where we’d be right now in, in terms of lockdown and isolation and some people being quarantined. But we can always travel through books. I’m a great armchair traveler and I love traveling through my reading. It broadens our horizons, but then the flip side of that is that I’ve discovered it also brings us closer.
Armchair travel in lockdown
Here you and I are on opposite sides of the world and we’ve bridged that distance completely with our love of books and our passions and we’re able to chat away thanks to modern technology, certainly. I’ve also found that with my readers.
I have lots of emails coming in from readers and lots of connections, and that’s so lovely. So in a way, books make the world a bigger place because we can travel. But then conversely, they have this flip side of bringing us all closer and closing down those distances, and for me that’s one of the great magic aspects of reading.
Jenny Wheeler: I wonder if you’ve started to give much thought as to how the pandemic may affect writing in the future, your work even over the next 18 months. I was talking to one romance writer a few days ago who’s been doing a series of romcoms set in a tourist resort on an island where all the characters have to fly in and out.
How Covid might influence romance
Suddenly she’s thinking about the book that’s got to be published next year, and whether she can have a story where people are just flying in and out of places. That’s one particular example, but have you got anything that may be affected by this in terms of what you’re working on currently?
Fiona Valpy: Not directly, but I do think that living through extraordinary times means that we will see some extraordinary stories being told. I think that for writers, yes, we may change and we may adapt and we may have these new ideas about extraordinary times, but I’m very hopeful that the kind of outpouring of compassion and community spirit that we’ve seen will keep going when all this is over. More than ever we’re going to need books that are uplifting and hopeful and also that inspire resilience.
Inspiration needed more than ever
I feel that the world has been changed by this. Our perceptions of the world have been changed by this. The world’s a lot more anxious and fearful. The virus and any future kind of pandemics are out there, always going to be out there and also there’s a legacy right now of people who might have lost their jobs, certainly people who will be grieving for loved ones that they’ve lost.
So I think more than ever, we need escapism and romance and hope and inspiration and that sense of all being in this together and learning from hopeful stories that inspire resilience in all of us.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. That’s lovely. Turning to Fiona as reader, this series is called The Joys of Binge Reading and obviously you’ve done a great deal of reading in the past. What are you enjoying reading at the moment and what would you like to recommend to listeners?
What Fiona likes to read
Fiona Valpy: Well, at the moment I have to admit, I have a sort of annual Jane Austen fest of my own and I just go back and reread Jane Austen’s wonderful books because, you know, she did it first, she did it best, kind of thing, for all of us romance writers.
So I go back and I reread a lot of her books, but actually this year there have been two great new books. For any Jane Austen fans out there, I would totally recommend them. The first is called Miss Austen, and it’s by Gill Hornby, and it tells the story of Jane’s sister, Cassandra, after Jane’s death.
She was responsible for managing Jane’s legacy and Jane’s estate and it’s a known fact that she spirited away quite a lot of the letters that were exchanged between Jane and certainly Cassandra and also other members of the family. This book starts with that premise and takes a look at why Cassandra might have done that.
Delving into the Austen legacy
It’s beautifully written and I think Jane Austen would be very happy if she was reading it herself. She would say that Gill Hornby has absolutely captured the style and the period feel of it.
The second Jane Austen related book, because I’ve just started and it’s a very satisfying, great big doorstop of a book so for anyone who’s in lockdown, this is going to keep us going for a while. It’s called The Other Bennet Sister and it’s by a writer called Janice Hadlow. It picks up the story of Mary Bennet, who’s the least known, most background, if you like, character in Pride and Prejudice of the five Bennet sisters. I’m really looking forward to immersing myself in that as well. Those are my Jane Austen tips.
Transported to Naples
The other books I’ve been reading recently in terms of a great binge read – I can recommend Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet, which again will keep us all going for ages. I think it took me about a year to read the four books because they’re all hefty ones in their own right. Talking about armchair travel as we’ve been doing, that transports you to Naples during a particular era. And they’re so evocative, those books.
My other probably all-time favorite authors who I would always recommend to people are two American writers: Anita Shreve who very sadly died about a year ago, but I love all her books. They’re not necessarily a series of books but she delves into relationships and that sense of place as well, which I think inspired a lot of my writing. And finally, Barbara Kingsolver, who is a great writer.
Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet…
Returning to some early classics
Two of her earlier books I would hugely recommend to anyone who needs a good, uplifting read about struggle in dark times, but filled with hope are The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven. She wrote them years ago but they’re just wonderful books and well worth a read and always relevant to our times.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s great. It’s always amazes me how there are books and authors out there that you could’ve been reading your whole life and you still haven’t heard of them, and I hadn’t heard of the Neapolitan Quartet, so that’s one I’ll certainly be looking up. I do a bit of book reviewing for a New Zealand magazine here and I read The Other Bennett Sister to review it and I loved it.
Fiona Valpy: Good. That’s great. I’ve only just started that. I think I’m on about chapter three or something, but I’m already drawn in, I’m already gripped, so that’s good to know that you enjoyed it.
Doing it all over again . . .
Jenny Wheeler: It was really fun. And once again it was a story of a very patient, quiet, humble, modest person who triumphs in the end. It’s got a nice resilience about it as well.
But we’re starting to come to the end of our time together so circling around and looking back over your writing career, is there anything that you would change if you were doing it all again?
Fiona Valpy: That’s a good question. Do you know, I don’t know that there is anything I’d change because everything I’ve done has got me to where I am now. It’s difficult to say. I mean, there were struggles, there were definitely times when I thought I’d give up, like all writers. But again, it’s that perseverance, that kind of keeping going, that I think would be my advice to any other writers out there who are maybe starting out in their career.
Crystal ball gazing
I think what probably what I would have changed is, it would have been nice to have had a crystal ball and to know that my books would be loved by people all around the world because when you start writing you are very much writing in isolation and you have that hope, you have to keep the faith that other people will want to read what you’re writing.
But you’re doing it in a bit of a vacuum to begin with, so if somebody could have said to me, keep going because you’ll get there, that would have really helped in those darker, more solitary moments. That’s my message to any other budding writers out there. Just keep going. Keep the faith.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s lovely. How long did it take you to so-called breakthrough or to feel that you were gaining some traction?
The secret of persisting
Fiona Valpy: I think that writing my first book, which, for any writers starting out, you’re doing that without an agent, probably, without a publisher, almost certainly. You’re writing on spec. That’s the really difficult time, getting that done. To write my first book, The French for Love, which is not one of my longest books by any means, took me certainly two or three years from the beginning to the end, to being picked up by a publisher and getting it published.
Life definitely then got easier. It’s great having a team behind me with a very supportive agent and once the publisher picks you up, then you have a wonderful support system out there.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. That’s great. That’s lovely. So looking ahead, Fiona, what is on the agenda for you for the next 12 months, your 2020 plans?
The Skylark’s Secret
Fiona Valpy: Right. I have another book coming out, The Skylarks Secret, which will be published on the 29th of September so we’re in the final stages of editing that at the moment. It’s a bit of a move away from France, this one. I’ve set it in Scotland. It’s set against the backdrop of a beautiful sea loch up in the remote Highlands which became a muster point for the Arctic convoys during World War II.
I loved that idea of this remote, peaceful, quiet place, suddenly being turned upside down by the war. Originally for all the crofters that lived on the shores of that loch, the war would have seemed very far away, but suddenly it arrived on their doorstep literally, and everything changed. That book shares some of the themes of my previous books, looking at World War II, looking at resilience and people surviving dark times and learning quite a lot about themselves along the way. It’s a change of setting for me, so I’m excited about that one.
Where to find Fiona online
Jenny Wheeler: Fantastic. Do you enjoy interacting with your readers and how can they find you online?
Fiona Valpy: I love interacting with my readers and it’s such a joy getting messages from them and emails from them and people relate to the books and then share that with me. That is one of the best things about being a writer.
If people want to get in touch you can find a lot more information about me and my books via my website, which is fionavalpy.com and there’s a function there to sign up for updates. You can email me and the email address is on the website. I’m also on all the social media platforms. Fiona Valpy Books on Facebook, or you can find me on Twitter and Instagram.
A sense of adventure
Jenny Wheeler: Fantastic. Just wonderful. Tell us finally, because I am curious, what took you to France originally? I think you spent seven years there, didn’t you?
Fiona Valpy: Yes. It was an adventure, really. My then husband and I, because I’ve since got divorced, but my husband and I at the time had done our time of bringing up our two sons and the boys were at the stage where they were finishing school and going off to university.
We’d both been working very much full time and decided that this was a moment when we could perhaps go and try something else once the boys were safely off and starting to live their own lives. We’d been living in Edinburgh for 14 years so hadn’t seen much sun and the thought of French sunshine and lovely French wine and going off and having a big adventure was what took us there.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s lovely, because I was sitting here thinking Scotland, you wouldn’t be seeing as nearly as much sun in Scotland as you did in France.
What’s next on the agenda?
Fiona Valpy: No, we don’t although we are enjoying a really lovely spring, thank the Lord, because, being in lockdown, it would be awful if this was the middle of winter. We have been enjoying a lovely spring, but yes, I live in Scotland but I love traveling still and going in search of the sun, whether it’s to France or last year I spent a little bit of time in Italy, which was so beautiful.
Probably like everyone else, I’m sitting here thinking, well, when lockdown ends, where will I go? And you start, oh, let’s think big, let’s think worldwide. There are so many places out there. I’d love to come to New Zealand and enjoy drinking some of your lovely Sauvignon Blanc down there.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s lovely. Yes. I thought that in the book, was it The French For Love, I just can’t remember which one it was, but Gina with her Masters of Wine, I suspected at one point that you might have even studied for a Masters of Wine as well, because you certainly knew how to write about wine.
Time to celebrate
Fiona Valpy: I’m sorry to say that I never did anything as academic as a Masters of Wine. I just was a very enthusiastic researcher when it came to wine.
Jenny Wheeler: Well that’s lovely. Here’s hoping that you get to taste some of those Otago wines sometime. Thank you so much for your time. It’s been beautiful talking to you and your books are a delight so all the very best. It was quite tantalizing because you’ve got the cover of The Skylark’s Secret on your website, but absolutely no description at the moment, or on my website it doesn’t come up with anything, so it’s a big mystery.
Fiona Valpy: They’re working on it. It should be up there quite soon. Everybody’s chomping at the bit to get the wording up there. That’s something that comes out from the publishers, so it’ll be appearing very soon.
Jenny Wheeler: Okay. That’s wonderful. Thank you so much for your time.
Fiona Valpy: Thanks for having me, Jenny. Great to chat with you.
If you enjoyed Fiona’s World War II mysteries you may also enjoy Soraya Lane’s World War II spy mysteries or C. F. Yetmen’s Stolen Nazi Art Mysteries.
Thanks To Our Technical Support:
The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at dcaudioservices@gmail.com or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with.
Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at abe@pointandshoot.co.nz