Tag: Bookouture

Another Chapter in the Writing Life of Angela Petch

Angela is following the steps of the shepherds when they left the mountains each winter.

When I was taking my very first steps to create my Books in my Handbag Blog over three years ago, I had the good fortune to meet Angela Petch online. I have always followed Angela’s wonderful writing journey as she moved from indie author to a Bookouture author. It is my pleasure to present the next chapter in her writing life. I am handing over this blog to Angela who is sending words to you from her beautiful home in Tuscany.

Three years ago, I appeared on a blog for the first time in my life. New to Twitter, my eye was caught by a handbag icon next to an unusual name: Books in my Handbag. I have a weakness for handbags. Living in Italy, that’s only natural.

As I had very recently published my second indie novel, Now and Then in Tuscany, I contacted the blogger and sent a copy, thinking that I would never hear back. I was fairly new to social media but my indie author friends were slowly introducing me to the writing community and I had to make a start.

The kind and sparkly angel who is Jessie Cahalin sent me a review some days later and it made me cry. Good tears. She liked it. She got what I was trying to put over. I was overwhelmed. I printed her words out and pinned them to my noticeboard by my desk.  I can’t describe what confidence it gave me to continue

I am now published by Bookouture, a digital publishing company that I also discovered on Twitter. And the book that Jessie helped me promote has the new title of ‘Tuscan Memory’.

A Tuscan Memory is set in Italy between the two world wars, it traces the journey of a young country boy, Giuseppe, who flees from a traumatic episode and joins the annual trek from the Tuscan Apennines down to the coast, with shepherds and cattle drovers. During this five-month period, he finds himself. The story runs concurrently with modern day, when Giuseppe’s great grandson (also experiencing difficulties at school) is looking into his family history for a school project. I have threaded in love stories, a family mystery and the history of the transhumance in our area of Tuscany where we live. It stopped in the 1950s but my elderly friends still talk about it. I walked part of the route as one part of my research (photo). The shepherds’ journey lasted ten days.

Bookouture has taken over the aspects of writing that I find so hard: the technical side of formatting the book, designing the cover, preparing the novel so that it is shipshape and ready for publication and – what I find hardest: the essential marketing. Bookouture have several editing processes and this part is vital for pulling the book together. When you are indie, it is hard to be objective and Beta reader friends are sometimes too kind, so it is wise to pay for a good editor. My second commissioned book, The Tuscan Girl, reached number 6 in the USA Kindle charts last week and has sold over 100,000 copies to date. There is no way I could have managed those sales when I was an indie author, but there are highly successful indie authors out there who manage their own marketing very well. Readers and bloggers unite all authors with their love of great stories.

This is the kitchen featured in Tuscan Memory

So, I would like to offer huge thank you to Books in my Handbag for helping me along the way and extend my gratitude to all sparkly bloggers and readers. We couldn’t do it without you.

Here is what I thought of the original version of ‘Tuscan Memory’:

‘The novel unlocked secrets of the enchanting holiday destination of Tuscany.  I have often wondered who had once walked along the ancient tracks, and who once lived in the ancient dwellings that nestle in the mountains.   As the title suggests, the reader delves into rural Tuscany as it is now and as it was back then at the beginning of last century. The reader has the privilege of meeting characters from the different generations and it is satisfying to fit the jigsaw together.  It is a cleverly crafted narrative, in which there are emotional parallels in the lives of the characters from the past and the present. This is a story of love wrapped up in an insight into rural history and customs of Tuscany.’

Angela is a wonderful writer. She has inspired me pursue my own writing journey via the Romantic Novelists’ New Writers’ Scheme. In the last two years, I have written two books and I am waiting to publish them. Alas, I no longer accept review requests, but I do enjoy interacting with authors. I can’t wait to find out how the Bookouture editor has shaped the novel that connected me to Angela Petch.

More about Angela

Angela Petch shares her year between the Tuscan Apennines and West Sussex.

Her love affair with Italy was born at the age of seven when she moved with her family to Rome. Her father worked for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and he made sure his children learned Italian and soaked up the culture. She studied Italian at the University of Kent at Canterbury and afterwards worked in Sicily where she met her husband. His Italian mother and British father met in Urbino in 1944 and married after a wartime romance.

Her first book, Tuscan Roots was written in 2012, for her Italian mother-in-law, Giuseppina, and also to make readers aware of the courage shown by families of her Italian neighbours during WW2. Signed by Bookouture in 2018, this book was republished as The Tuscan Secret in June 2019. The Tuscan Girl followed in February 2020.

Now and Then in Tuscany, was self-published in April 2017 and features the same family. The background is the transhumance, a practice that started in Etruscan times and continued until the 1950s. Bookouture has since acquired the rights, and under a new title, A Tuscan Memory was be released on September 7th 2020. Research for her Tuscan novels is greatly helped by her knowledge of Italian and conversations with locals.

Although Italy is a passion, her stories are not always set in this country. Mavis and Dot, published at the end of 2018 and sold in aid of research into a cure for cancer, tells the story of two fun-loving ladies who retire to the Sussex seaside. They forge an unlikely friendship and fall into a variety of adventures. Ingenu/e Magazine describes it as: “Absolutely Fabulous meets Last of the Summer Wine… a gently hilarious feel-good book that will enchant and delight…”.

A prize-winning, Amazon bestselling author and member of the RNA, she also loves to travel and recently returned to Tanzania, where she lived at the start of her marriage. A keen tennis player and walker, she enjoys spending time with her five grandchildren and inventing stories for their entertainment.

Her short stories are published by PRIMA and the People’s Friend.

Links
Blog: https://angelapetchsblogsite.wordpress.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AngelaJaneClarePetch
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Angela_Petch

Please see all my guests’ posts at Mail from the Creative Community and also my website and blog at JessieCahalin.com.

A copy of my novel is available here.

Inspiration for a Tuscan Girl

I am honoured that Angela wrote a letter to explain the inspiration behind Tuscan Girl. Sit back and enjoy a writer’s tour of Italy.

Bestselling author, Angela Petch, released ‘Tuscan Girl’ last week.  I started to read the novel on a stormy Saturday night and awoke at dawn to finish the book.  Lost stories of war, hidden treasure and buried memories gripped me. As a writer, I wanted to learn how this talented author manages to weave such captivating stories. I am honoured Angela wrote a letter to explain the inspiration behind Tuscan Girl.  Sit back and enjoy a writer’s tour of Italy.

In the Tuscan Apennines, where I spend six months of every year, I can step out of our front door straight into wild countryside. Our area is less populated after post war exodus, when people left for work abroad and in big cities and so I come across many ruined houses along the mule tracks that crisscross our hills and valleys.

Each abandoned dwelling holds a potential story and my imagination goes into overdrive, trying to guess what might have gone on within these walls, now strangled with weeds.

Many of the old houses are being eaten up by old man’s beard

When I was seven years old, my father accepted a job in Rome as deputy head of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. They were formative years and I picked up Italian like a little sponge. I’ve wheedled out stories behind these houses by chatting to elderly friends and through my research. We are lucky to have the national archive of diaries in nearby Pieve Santo Stefano and I’ve spent hours poring over handwritten resources.

Bruno sitting outside the house owned by his son, who had just returned from collecting wild mushrooms.

One of my friends is Bruno Vergni, one hundred years old last January 13th. I met him seven years ago on one of my hikes. I stopped to chat as he pruned an apple tree and, to my huge surprise, he responded in English. He explained that he had been a POW in Nottingham, having been captured in Libya early in the war.

I researched more about Bruno’s war and he is now one of the main characters in “The Tuscan Girl” (albeit tweaked with my own ideas). He now lives with his son, but in my story I have placed him in one of the semi-deserted hamlets called Tramarecchia.

Pieve Santo Stefano holds Italy’s collection of diaries – a wonderful resource

A favourite walk is up to the beautiful Alp of the Moon, (1,400 metres). We stopped to picnic by a pile of stones and read a sign posted by the local partisan association.  Up here, in the summer of 1944, a group of young men planned their resistance missions. After researching and meeting a local historian, Alvaro Tacchini, more ideas for my book were gleaned.

An abandoned chapel, two houses on the outskirts of the village, empty because of a brothers’ squabble, the outline of a Medici fortress… all ruins waiting to be written about in future books.

Angela’s explanation connected me to Alba who treks around the remote Tuscan villages and rebuilds the ruins in her paintings.  She discovers ‘The paths…like arteries leading to the heart of new stories.’  I enjoyed treading these paths with Alba and look forward to more stories.