I am delighted to have Liz for a guest post today ~ thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources for organizing.
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Genre: Women’s Fiction (with a dash of romance)
Publication Date: October 2024
Estimated Page Count: 340
Standalone Second Book in a three book series
Author Content Warnings: Drowning (not depicted, but talked about). Bereavement.
Inspirational places
A sense of place is one of my main inspirations when I start writing a novel, and the setting for this novel wasn’t difficult to imagine. If Elderthwaite Dale was real, you’d find it somewhere between Derwentwater and Brothers’ Water, and the village of Elderthwaite with its spinning galleries and the beck running through the middle is not entirely unlike Hartsop. One place is more important than all the others in Winter Snowfall at Elder Fell Farm and it has a history of its own and a presence in the narrative just as much as any of the characters. It’s the cottage where Amy and Matt go to stay for Christmas, Elder Fell Farm Cottage.
When I was young my parents and I used to holiday in the Lake District . We regularly stayed in National Trust holiday cottages, one of which, Low Yewdale Farm Cottage, near Coniston Water inspired my fictional cottage. I can’t find it on the National Trust website now – I hope because somebody is living in it and it’s no longer available for hire, rather than because it’s fallen into disrepair. It felt like stepping back in time, going to stay there. It wasn’t luxurious, even by the standards of the 1980s. There was no central heating for a start! The dingy, damp, downstairs bathroom was far from inviting and at least one of the upstairs bedrooms still had a washstand with a basin and ewer – which we used! There was no shower (just an ancient metal bath), no television, no radio, no freezer. I think there was a small electric cooker, but that was about as luxurious as it got in the kitchen. No towels or bedding were provided – I think there might have been some blankets, but we always brought our own – I can still remember those journeys across the A66 surrounded by pillows!
Even getting there felt like driving away from the 20th century. We followed a stony track just like Amy and Matt do. The cottage was the last in a small group of whitewashed farm buildings, opposite an ancient orchard – you’ll find the orchard also makes an appearance in Winter Snowfall. From the front door you could walk over the green fields to Coniston, crossing the beck using an ancient slate bridge. Behind the cottage, the fells rose up steeply so that if you looked out of the skylight all you could see was grey craggy rock. This wasn’t always an entirely comfortable view – as a younger child, I used to be scared that the mountains might fall down on the cottage – and I’ve tried to echo this sense of the towering, gloomy fells to add some darker atmosphere to Elder Fell Farm Cottage too.
Once inside, the cottage was slightly smaller than the one I describe in Winter Snowfall at Elder Fell Farm. I gave Matt and Amy an extra upstairs room and a larger dining room than Low Yewdale had. But some other features remained the same – the bare floors with worn rugs, as well as the blazing fire in the living room with the ancient oak spice cupboard set in the wall beside it. When Amy thinks about her childhood holidays she fondly remembers the old harmonium which was wheezy and slightly out of tune, but it was still possible to play music on it – this was taken directly from my own memories of Low Yewdale.
As it’s no longer a holiday cottage, I guess I won’t be revisiting Low Yewdale any time soon – but through Amy’s visit to Elder Fell Farm I can visit in my imagination.
Image by Pete from Pixabay – a long, stony track through frosty fields with mountains in the distance.
This is a photograph of Low Yewdale Cottage is from my parents’ collection. It’s rather faded – but it’s at least forty years old.
Image by Anke Arnold from Pixabay – an old harmonium keyboard.
Book blurb:
A simple Christmas just got complicated …
Amy’s in love. She’s looking forward to spending her first Christmas together, as a blended family, with Matt and their two sons, Harry and Oliver. What could be more perfect than a romantic escape to the remote and beautiful Lake District farm where Matt and Amy met?
However, an unexpected and difficult guest threatens to disrupt the festivities, and undermine her relationship with Matt. With Harry and Oliver around to create mayhem, and a snowstorm closing in, it seems that nothing is going to be romantic about Christmas at Elder Fell Farm.
Can their relationship weather the storm?
Purchase Links – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Winter-Snowfall-Elder-Fell-Farm-ebook/dp/B0DCKFMPHY
Author Bio –
Liz has always surrounded herself with books.
As a child, she was always to be found with her head in one and she treasures a bookcase full of her childhood favourites to this day. She went on to work in a library, cataloguing early printed books – but as most of the books turned out to be volumes of sermons, she wasn’t tempted to read them all. She now works as an administrator for her local parish church and is a little more attentive when it comes to sermons.
Her childhood dream of being an author came true with her first published novel The Little Church by the Sea (there are several others in a shoebox under the bed.) It’s the story of a lonely vicar whose vicarage falls off a cliff. Liz hastens to point out that this was written before she was employed by the church! Winter Snowfall at Elder Fell Farm is the second of a trilogy of novels set in the Lake District. After that, she’s thinking it might be time to write another book about a vicar – featuring a hard-working and incredibly efficient parish administrator, of course.
In what remains of her free time Liz is an avid reader, a keen theatre goer, and is also half of the team behind 376 miles, a slightly quirky blog about travelling Britain and watching football. You’ll find it at https://376miles.substack.com and it’s free.
Social Media Links –
https://www.facebook.com/TaylorsonLiz (Facebook)
http://www.liztaylorson.com (Website)
My Threads name is @taylorsonl
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