Bess Stoughton, waiting woman to the well-connected Lady Allingbourne, has discovered that her father is arranging for her to marry an elderly neighbour. Normally obedient Bess rebels and wrests from her father a year's grace to find a husband more to her liking.
Edmund Wyard, a taciturn and scarred veteran of England’s campaign in Ireland, is attempting to ignore the pressure from his family to find a suitable wife as he prepares to join the Earl of Leicester’s army in the Netherlands.
Although Bess and Edmund are drawn to each other, they are aware that they can have nothing more than friendship. Bess knows that Edmund’s wealth and family connections place him beyond her reach. And Edmund, with his well-honed sense of duty, has never considered that he could follow his own wishes.
With England on the brink of war and fear of Catholic plots extending even into Lady Allingbourne’s household, time is running out for both of them.
Love is no game for women. The price is far too high.
What inspired you to start writing?
I have always liked making up stories, particularly when we were young and I was trying to scare my sister – I usually ended up scaring myself more. I enjoyed ‘composition’ when I was at school and I suppose I did have vague dreams of being published ‘one day’, once I understood what ‘publication’ was. I was encouraged at school, particularly in Secondary School, by a teacher who ran a small writing group for Form 3s and 4s (14 and 15 year olds) on Saturday mornings. She invited me to join her group a year earlier than was usual, when I was 13. Our efforts were published in an in-house booklet each year. I think if a person gets encouragement in any field, they start to think, ‘I can do this’ and put more effort into improving. Through my twenties, I wrote bits and pieces, mainly poetry and short stories that ended up in the bin whenever I moved house. I wasn’t really serious about it because there was so much else going on in my life. I started writing in earnest when my first child was born (she is now 30). Initially, I had to write my way out of the restrictive and quite stilted patterns of academic and Public Service writing. Once the children were at secondary school, I started taking writing courses and that helped improve my writing vastly.
Forsaking All Other had no specific inspiration. It began as the result of a daily writing exercise – a scene that came out of nowhere of a woman lost in the meaner streets of Elizabethan London. There was something about the character that made me want to develop her story further. I knew the late Elizabethan period fairly well and wanted to write a story that reflected the reality of women’s lives at that time, so Bess became a reasonably ordinary woman caught up in situations that did arise in that period, resolved in ways that were probable rather than extraordinary. I created a detailed a historical timeline and wove the actions of my fictional characters into that.
What was the hardest part about writing this book?
I am tempted to say all of it as there were challenges at every step. My writing goes through many, many drafts. Each draft has its own pains and difficulties. I do prefer revision to the initial creation of a story because it is here that I find the real magic of writing occurs – unplanned but important characters spring to life fully-formed, insights into characters’ behaviour and motivation become clear, extra unplanned but necessary scenes take form.
With Forsaking All Other I found learning to cut scenes that I had spent days sweating over particularly painful. The novel initially began with a scene with Edmund at Dublin Castle. Apart from the research involved in learning the layout of the Castle, I spent two days trying to determine the route English people took when travelling from Dublin to England in the 1580s just so I could write the sentence ‘On the open road they broke into a gallop as they headed for Dalkey and the boat that would take them back to England’. That was followed by a scene at Allingbourne Hall with Bess at the virginals as the other young women stepped through a lesson with a dancing master. I researched dances and music and tried to introduce the young women’s unique characters through their interactions. But, really, these scenes didn’t progress the story at all so, in the end, I cut them away. It was painful but I am much better at this now.
Does one of the main characters hold a special place in your heart? If so, why?
While I do like both my main characters and love the way they are together, it is actually a couple of more minor characters that have a special place in my heart. One in George Raynsford. He was an unplanned character who sprang to life, fully-formed – a product of the magic that sometimes happens with writing. He is vibrant and larger than life in many ways with an already complete history, and he altered the way some later scenes developed. The other is Joyce, Bess’s sister. Her character developed as the writing progressed. She is one of those children who are said to have an old head on young shoulders. She looks at the world as it is and tries to make sense of it which can result in her asking blunt questions. She attempts to be grown up but still is a child who wants to play hide and seek with the others children and can run squealing out into the courtyard.
If your book was to be made into a movie, who are the celebrities that would star in it?
This is a difficult question for me to answer. My head is so often in the past and my children are now adults so have little contact with popular culture. The only time I hear popular songs is when I go to the hairdresser. I have treated it like an all time team of champions and selected actors who I think would suit the characters although some are now too old to play the parts and some might need bleach or hair dye or a bit of padding but, as this is fantasy, it doesn’t matter.
Edmund Wyard – a young Kenneth Branagh (as he was in Henry V)
Bess Stoughton – Carey Mulligan
Lady Wyard – Helen Mirren
Lucy Torrington – Georgie Henley (with her hair lightened and her gown padded)
George Raynsford – a much younger Brian Blessed
What do you hope your readers take away from this book?
Apart from learning something of the struggles of women, and of men, in sixteenth-century England, I hope when readers close Forsaking All Other that they will have enjoyed the journey they have taken with my characters, that they have felt their fears and disappointments, shed a tear with them and revelled in their happiness. I hope the story provides them with a break from their day to day worries and at the end they feel, even if it is only for a few moments, that the world can be a better, happier place. For me fiction is our imagining of the world, and why would you want to imagine a world where the unpleasant flourish and the kind are trodden down? If we imagine that the world can be a better place, then we can struggle towards making it so.
Catherine grew up in regional Victoria, but has lived all her adult life in Melbourne, Australia. Until recently she worked as a customer service librarian at her local library. She has a Master of Arts in history and is also an obsessive genealogist. When not writing, reading and researching, Catherine enjoys gardening, the cinema and music of all sorts from early music and classical to folk and country and western and, not least of all, taking photos of the family cat to post on Instagram.
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