It’s not often, in fact I can’t even think when I last did – but it’s not very often that I reread my own books. Usually, by the time they get published I’ve read them through so many times as I edit them, read them forwards, read them backwards, read them out loud, read the proof copies, that I really have had enough and want to move on to something else.
I had the idea for one of my books about twenty years ago, wrote about half of it, then began to write another story. I confess, I abandoned it, but about ten years later, I gave myself a talking to and went back to it, rewrote it and finished it off. It was published in 2016 as ‘Lucky Portbraddon’. It’s about the Portbraddon family, cousins who despite various fallings out, are on the whole very close to each other. I’m very, very lucky with my cousins, and enjoy being with them and spending time with them, and we are not the least bit like the Portbraddons. Our family gave me the inkling of an idea for a story, which was coupled with the relationships which develop in bands, the closeness which grows between musicians who play together, go on the road, gig, and perform. In both those cases, family, and a band, there can be incredible closeness, but there can be spectacular betrayals and arguments.
I imagined that the Portbraddon family had a very elderly but very strong grandmother who was able to reconcile differences, help, support, build bridges between the cousins when they or their wives fell out. At the beginning of the book, grandma dies… you can imagine the result. I didn’t want the book to be just about relationships, that would be so dull, there had to be some action! There are drug dealers, dodgy holiday homes in dangerous countries, attempted murder, kidnapping, criminal gangs, punch-ups, stalking… none of which happens in my own family thank goodness, only in my fictional one!
So over the last few days I have been rereading it ‘Lucky Portbraddon’, and I was interested to see how I wrote then, the themes I had, and the way I developed characters. I must say, I found it quite engrossing, and in the closing chapters, even though I knew the story lines, I was quite gripped – if that isn’t immodest to say so. I didn’t want a happy ever after ending and there isn’t one, but I wanted there to be a definite conclusion and it not just dribble away. As usual when a story is finished, I know what happens to the characters next, but it never gets written about!
This is the blurb:
“Lucky Portbraddon… a rather rascally ancestor of my late husband, or so family legend has it, was a favourite friend of the Prince Regent, apparently, but Lucky made, not lost, his fortune…”A few days before Christmas, as the Portbraddon family gathers at their grandmother’s big house up on the moors, the last of the cousins drives through a blizzard to join them.
A near-death experience does not seem an auspicious start to their family get together, but the cousins determine to celebrate as they always do. However as the old year ends and the new begins it seems their good fortune is about to run out. An unexpected death, a descent into madness, betrayal… and as the year progresses other things befall them, a stalker, attempted murder, a patently dodgy scheme for selling holiday homes in a dangerous part of the Caucasus… Maybe the Portbraddons are not so lucky… except there is also love, a new home, reconciliation, a spiritual journey, music.. .One thing remains true, whatever difficulties arise between them, whatever happens, family is family, family first… “They’re like a big bunch of musketeers, all for one and one for all!”
It’s available in paperback and as an e-reader on Amazon: https://amzn.eu/d/6IVivET
Lois Elsden 