Ask the Author: Ann Lee
Answered Questions (6)
Ann Lee
The publishing business is so weird that I hesitate to give any advice at all. Perhaps just don’t set your expectations too high because the business side of publishing is arbitrary and not designed for success. Write if you can’t stop yourself.
Ann Lee
I love it when anything I’ve written gives someone else pleasure. But the best is when a reader really gets what I was trying to convey—that means they’ve inhabited the world I’m creating.
Ann Lee
I sleep on it. Often my subconscious has the solution to a block that isn’t apparent to my conscious mind. If that doesn’t work, I read.
Ann Lee
Inspiration is a mysterious process. I hear about a person or a scene or a dilemma, and somehow it hooks onto something in my head and won’t let go. It keeps reminding me about itself until I give it attention. Often I don’t even know why it resonates with me; I have to start putting it on paper before its purpose comes clear. I’ve had a few books where the reason for writing them isn’t clear till I’m more than 100 pages in! That requires a lot of patience and faith.
Ann Lee
Jane Austen’s unfinished novel The Watsons begins with the words, “The first winter assembly in the Town of D. in Surry was to be held on Tuesday October ye 13th . . .” The town of D. is Dorking, Surrey, and I went there trying to find traces of Austen’s presence. I struck out, but in the local library’s archives were stories of others who lived there in her day who led fascinating lives.
Truth be told, I feel that every life is fascinating if examined closely enough, so I set out to recount some of those lives in detail. The Darking Hundred series (the change in spelling of the name reflects the way “Dorking” was pronounced in the early 19th century) burrows into the vagaries of everyday life in 1800, deepening our understanding of what is particular to a time and place and what is universal to the human experience.
Truth be told, I feel that every life is fascinating if examined closely enough, so I set out to recount some of those lives in detail. The Darking Hundred series (the change in spelling of the name reflects the way “Dorking” was pronounced in the early 19th century) burrows into the vagaries of everyday life in 1800, deepening our understanding of what is particular to a time and place and what is universal to the human experience.
Ann Lee
I am embarking on the second book in the Darking Hundred series. Its working title is The Year of Susan, and it is about a very painful year in the life of novelist Fanny Burney, when she loses her most beloved sister, has her career ambitions frustrated by her domineering father, and nearly loses her husband to his native land, France, which is at war with England.
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