Christmas is never far away when Sue Moorcroft releases her Christmas novel. I am excited to tell you that Let it Snow is out on 26th September. When Sue agreed to chat to me about her latest novel, it felt like an early Christmas gift. I also wanted to know how Sue manages to capture the Christmas spirit each year and tell yet another magical story.
Jessie: Let it Snow is a great title. Did you think of the title while listening to the Christmas song?
Sue: No, my editor and the sales team chose it! It’s working title had been ‘A Christmas Adventure’. There’s a singing group in the book and I made ‘Let it Snow’ their favourite song.
Jessie: How do you manage to create such vivid settings? Did you visit Switzerland to capture the sense of place for Let it Snow?
Sue: Yes! My friend and fellow author Rosemary J Kind lives between the UK and Switzerland and she said, ‘If you want to set a book there, you can come with me.’ I instantly asked my editor if she was happy with Switzerland as a setting and went back to Ros to say, ‘I want to set a book there!’ She drove us – and her Entlebucher Hound Wilma – through England and France to Switzerland. It was lovely! I’d never visited Switzerland and I was thrilled with it. The Swiss really know how to do Christmas and we went to processions, markets, brunches, choirs and all kinds of things. I try hard to include all the tiny details that capture a setting: the snow on chalets and Christmas lights on balconies.
Jessie: How do you plan the narrative for Let it Snow and did any of your characters misbehave and change events?
Sue: I met a woman in a same-sex marriage and she had just had a baby. It raised all kinds of questions in my mind and I wanted to write a heroine who had two mums. When she discovers she’s not the result of an anonymous one-night stand as she’d always thought but that her mother had a relationship with a man especially to get pregnant, she experiences a compulsion to discover what she can of her bio-family. I’m afraid my brother Kevan was ill while I was planning the book and I gave his heart failure to Tubb from the Pub. This meant I had to find a relief manager for the pub, The Three Fishes. He is my hero, Isaac O’Brien. I think of him as a reluctant hero because he’s on his way to a new life when he gets sucked into Lily’s. His ex, Hayley, played a much bigger part in the story than I expected her to. Sometimes a character can be secondary but also pivotal.
Jessie: When do you write your Christmas stories? Do you immerse yourself in Christmas, grab a notebook and begin planning next year’s story gift, or are you writing during the summer and transport yourself to the scene?
Sue: It takes a while to write a book so though I planned Let it Snow in Malta in the sunshine, I wrote the majority of the first draft through the winter. Then the editing came in lovely weather again. When I used to write short stories for magazines it was normal to write Christmas stories in June and summer stories in December so I’m used to it. I had the chance to return to Switzerland when I was almost at the end of the first draft and that would have been fantastic. Sadly, the dates clashed with a professional engagement so I had to give it a miss.
Jessie: Your romance novels have layers and always explore contemporary issues and the changing family unit. In Let it Snow, it’s that Lily has two mothers, and this adds a poignant dimension to the narrative as she searches for her father. How did you research this?
Sue: My other brother, Trevor, volunteered to take on some of my research when he retired and he’s brilliant at it. I was able to send him emails asking whether lesbian couples could have received artificial insemination in 1983 and he’d come back with a factual answer. (Lily’s sister Zinnia was conceived via artificial insemination.) For the emotional side I was able to read case studies on websites and talk to someone about twins they know who are searching out all their half-siblings and learn something of their journey. There seemed to me to be two distinct attitudes amongst the children of same-sex relationships, however they’re conceived, and so I gave Lily one attitude and Zinnia the other. I don’t want to give details because they’d also be spoilers.
Jessie: I am in awe of how you manage to vary your characters and always make them so likeable. What three tips do you have for developing characters?
Sue: Thank you! My big tip is to look at each major character through the eyes of several other characters. If we take Lily, for example, I looked not just at the facts of her life, interesting as they were, but what Zinnia thought of her, what Roma her birth mother thought of her and also, importantly, Patsie, her ‘other mother’. How was she regarded at work? What about her ex husband? In real life we behave differently with and are perceived differently by different people and I use this to build multi-faceted characters.
Jessie: The sparks always fly in the brilliant dialogue between your characters. What advice do you have for writers who wish to make their dialogue realistic? Can you give us a snapshot of some of the dialogue in your latest novel.
Sue: I think one develops a feel for dialogue. I listen to people speak, think about the syntax they use and try and make it appropriate for age, background and region. An 18-year-old girl and an 80-year-old woman could each say, ‘He’s wicked!’ and mean two entirely different things. Dialogue’s wonderful. It breathes life into characters, allows them to interact with each other and passes information to the reader. Here’s a few lines from Let it Snow, Chapter 1:
‘We’re your family!’ Zinnia declared, shoving her fingers through her chestnut hair. ‘What you’re doing could hurt Patsie and Roma.’
Lily climbed on a stool and began to feed the string of lights through hooks above the bar. ‘They understand it’s my decision. You know this, Zin. Let’s not press “repeat” on the conversation.’
Zinnia bulldozed on. ‘Aren’t we enough for you? You and I grew up sharing a bedroom! We’re sisters—’
‘And you’re the loveliest sister in the world.’ Lily hoped popping in a positive note would distract Zinnia. She jumped down, scraped her stool towards the next few hooks, gave Zinnia a hug then clambered up again. ‘How about twisting that tinsel around the ivy swags along the mantelpiece?’
Jessie: Do you give your books as Christmas gifts to family and friends?
Sue: No. I give out most of my free copies when they arrive to various members of my family who would read them and to anyone who has played a major part in research. Apart from that, people have to buy them themselves, I’m afraid.
Jessie: What is your typical Christmas like and are there any special family traditions or recipes?
Sue: I like the run up to Christmas and all the festive meetings of the various writing organisations to which I belong or Christmas meals with friends, but when Christmas itself comes around I like a quiet time with family. Between Christmas and New Year either my household or my brother’s household hosts an extended family lunch and that’s anything but quiet.
Sue wraps up her Christmas stories beautifully and her novels are perfect Christmas gifts. The Ebook is out on the 26th September. The paperback and audio book will be available on 14th November.
More about Let it Snow
This Christmas, the villagers of Middledip are off on a very Swiss adventure…
Family means everything to Lily Cortez and her sister Zinnia, and growing up in their non-conventional family unit, they and their two mums couldn’t have been closer.
So it’s a bolt out of the blue when Lily finds her father wasn’t the anonymous one-night stand she’d always believed – and is in fact the result of her mum’s reckless affair with a married man.
Confused, but determined to discover her true roots, Lily sets out to find the family she’s never known; an adventure that takes her from the frosted, thatched cottages of Middledip to the snow-capped mountains of Switzerland, via a memorable romantic encounter along the way…
The Sunday Times bestseller returns with a gloriously cosy read, perfect for fans of Katie Fforde, Trisha Ashley and Carole Matthews.
Contact details
Website: www.suemoorcroft.com
Blog: https://suemoorcroft.wordpress.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sue.moorcroft.3
Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/SueMoorcroftAuthor
Twitter @suemoorcroft
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suemoorcroft
Instagram: suemoorcroftauthor
Christmas books:
The Christmas Promise
The Little Village Christmas
A Christmas Gift
Please see all my author interviews at My Guests and my website and blog at JessieCahalin.com.
A copy of my novel is available here.
Sounds like a fabulous Christmas read – though I don’t think I’ll wait that long 🙂