If you can’t get a ticket for my book launch next week, you do have a chance to hear me talking about Paper Lanterns, thanks to Radio Wildfire. “The Loop” is always worth listening to in its own right, and not just because it’ll let you hear me talking about the real-life letters that partly inspired Paper Lanterns. It’s a nonstop transmission between their live monthly broadcasts - two hours of lively interviews with writers , musicians and generally creative types from around the West Midlands region.

The whole ‘menu’ is there for you to read, so you can see what’ll be coming up next. You can’t predict which part you’ll land on, but you’ll be able to see whether or not I’m next on the list. If you’ve worked out that you’ve just missed me, and my turn won’t come round again for ages , you can decide to go out for a walk or dig the garden and then come back to listen to me. (There are lots of other interesting things though, so you might prefer to listen to everything else (instead, or as well!)
All you need to do is click on this link then click ‘Listen’

So what about those letters? Briefly, the story behind the novel relates to some original love letters that were written in China in 1920 by a married English woman to a young colleague of her husband. There were five letters that related to her, and the final of these had been written by a female friend of this woman, informing the young man why he had not heard from her friend. It turned out that the husband had discovered that ‘something’ was going on, so the errant wife had given up her would-be lover for the sake of her children.

Reading these letters, I felt like an intruder even though the writer herself must have been dead by the time I came across this material. I was intensely moved by this glimpse into the private life of a woman from a different era, but then, when I then found that there were the two short letters in broken English, written in 1916, I was almost in tears for the young Chinese girl as she struggled to express her grief at his absence.

There were a few other accompanying documents in the same package, and when I turned to these I realised that both sets of letters had been addressed to the same young man. In spite of my feelings of sympathy towards both these women, the writer in me was already dreaming up ways in which the stories of those two women could be woven into fiction.

I’ll be writing more about these letters soon, but meanwhile, in case you were wondering why I’ve included pictures of a peacock and pink magnolia, it’s because these were taken on a gloriously sunny day in Kew Gardens, while we were visiting our daughter and her fiance in Chiswick for the weekend.

Getting back to recommending other websites to visit, you might like to follow this link I’ve already mentioned Nicola Morgan (aka ‘crabbit old bat’) in a previous post, and the new link is to her new novel, with lord knows how many exciting competitions etc. What a wildfire of energy the woman is!

1. LindyLouMac Says:
   April 19th, 2010 at 6:59 pm

   I might try and see if Wildfire will work for me as i would love to hear you talking about Paper Lanterns.
   I have left a message on Fb for you asking if you would mind if I add a link to this site on My Lamma Island post for my Blog. If it is Ok which post would you like me to link to?

2. admin Says:
   April 19th, 2010 at 10:41 pm

   Hi Linda
   Wildfire is great, but it’s a bit of a lottery as to where you will land in The Loop. But there is a lot of good stuff there to listen to, even if you find there are several other interviews/performances before you get to mine.
   I’d particularly recommend listening to Chris Hoskins and her monologues.

   If you are kind enough to make a link to my site from yours, I guess this post would be as good a place to start with as any. Just put http://www.christinecoleman.net , and maybe explain for the benefit of your readers who don’t know much about blogs, that they can scroll down past lots of other posts - or click on the different ‘categories’ list on the right.

3. LindyLouMac Says:
   April 20th, 2010 at 7:40 pm

   Thanks Christine, I will do that and let you know when it has been posted. I have at last posted all my photos of the trip to Flickr so hope to get this done soon!

4. A dream venue for my book launch and now this! | ChristineColeman.net Says:
   April 29th, 2010 at 11:44 pm

   [...] laughed in the right places and I was amazed and delighted at their reactions to my readings of two of the original letters that partly inspired the novel. I’ll be writing more about this event (including book sales and Novel Press in future posts,) [...]

5. On friendship, love-letters and New Ways of Publishing | ChristineColeman.net Says:
   May 4th, 2010 at 10:51 pm

   [...] We talked about other events in my writing career, and the ups and downs of my attempts to get published, and then I explained the ideas, inspirations and themes that produced Paper Lanterns. This included the story of how I discovered the original letters from 1920 [...]

6. Question 4 and Potatoes as poetry | ChristineColeman.net Says:
   June 25th, 2010 at 10:27 am

   [...] made a significant contribution to the content of Paper Lanterns, my latest novel, as you can see here and [...]