Julie
Maria Peace asked me to read and review her book, A Song in the Night, and when
I did I loved it. I was so intrigued by it, I asked her if I could hold a
contest here on The Christian Bookmobile to offer several free copies of her
book to our readers. The book is so good I wanted to help people around the
world find it and read it. She agreed and you'll find the contest entry form
here:
Please enter the contest and keep reading here to learn more about the
book and the author.
Q: It must have been difficult writing two stories,
set in different times, with different characters, all while maintaining links
from one to the other. Did you write each story separately and then weave them
together? Or, did you do them simultaneously?
Julie Maria Peace: Well, before
I even put pen to paper (or rather fingers to laptop), I absolutely immersed
myself in WW1 research. I had a pretty good idea from the beginning where I
wanted to go with the characters in the modern day storyline. The challenge was
to make the First World War characters as believable and relevant as the modern
day ones. I read, researched and mulled on things until the second storyline
began to take form in my head. By the time the dust settled, so to speak, the
two stories had started to merge into one, and I saw the whole tale almost like
a film in my head. After that, I really just wrote what I saw, scene by
scene.
Q: Sam's diary seemed so realistic I found myself wondering
if you based it on an actual one. Please tell us how you researched that part
of the story.
JMP: To be honest, no, I
didn’t base Sam’s diary on an actual one. I very loosely followed a battalion
diary, just to get some idea of where to place my soldiers and when. But even
in that I made changes and moved them around. Like I say above, I researched and
researched the Great War until it felt real enough to give me a small sense of
what it was like to be actually there in the trenches. I took the reading in
bite-size chunks at first. A lot of the accounts were so very harrowing, I
found them emotionally quite difficult to read. As time went on, I began to
notice something. Sometimes I would find myself imagining a scene or incident
in my head. No sooner would I type it up as part of my story than I would come
across a very similar event that actually did
happen. That’s when I knew I was probably beginning to think like a Tommy.
Q: I liked the way Sam's story began each time in the
format of a diary and then went into a narrative. Did you develop that style to
make the book more readable or what?
JMP: Ah, now it’s rather
interesting how that came about. In my very first draft of the book, all the
entries in Sam’s diary were simply that – diary entries. I, or rather, Sam,
talked about things in a very matter-of-fact way, with little factual
explanation and more of an emphasis on his reactions to events rather than
descriptions of them. While that is probably more in keeping with what a WW1 diary
would be like in reality, I soon realized I’d made far too many assumptions.
Because I myself was so steeped in trench life research at this point, I’d unwittingly
assumed my readers would understand everything I was talking about. Oh dear,
’twas not the case! After getting some much-needed critical feedback from a few
honest folk, I puzzled about how to resolve the problem. Then it came to me.
Why not write the diary sequences as I was seeing them in my head – as scenes
in a movie? And so I incorporated the flashback technique. I think it does make
the book more readable, and it provides information and perspective that I
couldn’t have included otherwise.
Q: Do you have a special interest in, or knowledge of,
World War I?
JMP: It so happened that around
the time of my conversion to Christ, I was studying WW1 French literature at
university. Just before my spiritual awakening took place, I found myself experiencing
a dark and suffocating sense of hopelessness that seemed to be mirrored very
graphically in the material I was studying. Somehow, the image of men living
and dying in the horror of the trenches became for me a powerful metaphor for
the human condition in its alienation from God. With our world increasingly
facing distresses beyond its control, I wanted to write a book that would
explore those eternal issues that have pertained to the heart of man since the
very beginning.
Q: Both Beth and Ciaran are musicians. What experience
do you have in music to write such a realistic story?
JMP: I was brought up in a
very artistic and musical home. Both my parents are pianists and my mum was one
of the organists at the church I grew up in. My younger brother, who can play a
variety of instruments, has grown up to become a music mentor and singer/songwriter.
Now, as for myself, I have to confess that I don’t play an instrument. (My own
fault entirely – I was shuffled off to music lessons as a child but, alas,
failed to keep up with my piano practice!) That being said, I have a real
passion for classical music. From my earliest days I remember listening to BBC
Radio Three in our home, and being fascinated by my dad’s collection of classical
78’s. I’ve used quite a number of classical music references in my book. As I was
writing the story, different pieces would pop into my head as though I was
listening to a movie soundtrack. It just seemed the most natural thing in the
world to include them as a melodic backdrop for the unfolding tale.
Q: I noticed an underlying story of a how a person may
return to earlier spiritual beliefs when faced with a crisis. Is this a theme
you are familiar with?
JMP: As a little girl, there
was never a time when I didn’t believe in God. Back then, my faith was simple,
‘inherited’ … and untested. As I grew up, life and learning played a big part
in its unravelling. By the age of twenty, I had studied enough philosophy and
been through enough traumatic experiences to find myself in complete spiritual/
philosophical meltdown. With my twenty-first birthday fast approaching, I’d
become an existential agnostic, mentally and emotionally burnt out. I could no
longer see any point in living. God is so faithful and loving though. Just when
I felt I was going down for the last time, someone introduced me to Jesus
Christ. If He hadn’t saved me when He did, I doubt I’d be here today.
Q: Tell us about the settings selected for your story.
JMP: Well, for the First
World War part of the tale, most of the action takes place around the Ypres
Salient on the Western Front. For me, that enduring image of men struggling
through the Flanders mud sums up the tragedy that was the Great War. For the modern day story, I used two very
different settings – London and North Yorkshire. As my character, Rosie, is
dealing with so many emotional issues, I tried to convey her sense of fear, loneliness,
and lack of belonging by placing her, pretty much alone, in the big, hectic
capital. I then contrasted this experience by bringing her up to a small
village in North Yorkshire. Ridderch Standen is actually a fictional setting,
but I created the place using different elements from a number of small
villages that I know. Places like
Ridderch Standen do exist! I wanted the village to represent a ‘safe place’ for
Rosie, especially as her life begins to fall apart. Even in the First World War
storyline, I used a similar technique. In the midst of all the craziness and
carnage, my soldier characters get to visit a wonderful place called Talbot
House (Toc H), just behind the front line in a town called Poperinge. Unlike
Ridderch Standen, Talbot House was a very real place. The living museum there
can still be visited today.
Q: Where can readers find you on the Internet?
JMP: You can find me on:
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