| This week, I'm delighted to welcome Tracy Baines to my blog. Tracy is the author of The Variety Girls and its sequel, Christmas with the Variety Girls. |  |
The Variety Girls has its book-birthday on February 20th, so Tracy is here to celebrate by sharing her love of the book's cover with us.
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I can’t tell you how happy I felt when I first saw the cover of The Variety Girls. Not just because the designers did such a fantastic job but because it brought back home. They say write what you know but I prefer to write where my heart is. My heart is in Cleethorpes and that’s mostly where The Variety Girls is set.
While I was writing the book I had saved images of Cleethorpes Pier and the Empire Theatre as they would have been in 1939. I had them as a screen saver along with photos of actors who I thought gave an essence of my characters. As they flicked across my screen, much as a film flickers to life, it kept them all firmly in my mind.
I handed in my manuscript and when my editor asked if I had any images for inspiration the photo of the pier and the Empire were the ones I sent to her – not thinking for one minute that they would be used on the cover.
The joy and happiness I felt when I first saw the designs was off the scale. I was so thrilled to see the pier in the background, for that pier has been such an important part of my life.
For five years the pier was one of the first things I saw every day. My parents took over the management of the Pier Hotel on the promenade which was directly opposite the pier. We had free seats for any performance we cared to attend. I think that was when I fell in love with variety entertainment because if there’s one thing you can guarantee on a pier, it’s variety! It was heaven. I still remember the first time I walked along it, peering through the wooden slats to see the beach and sea below. I used a memory of that feeling in the book.
Jessie Delaney leaves her home and gets a job as a dancer in a summer show in a small seaside theatre. She has left Harry, her boyfriend, behind in Norfolk but he comes to visit:
He put his arm about her and they walked down towards the pier, along the planks, looking at the sea wash below them, the gentle hush as it rushed along the sand.
‘Sometimes it feels like we’re at the end of the world, standing here. When it’s dark and you can’t see the other side of land.’
‘Maybe we are.’ Harry said.
When I was 16 I got a job backstage at the theatre on the pier, working on summer shows, pantomimes, straight plays, touring productions and children’s shows. Two years later I met the man who became my husband. He was a variety entertainer, so I got to look at the life from his point of view as well as my own – all very useful when it came to writing the book. I used his flamboyance and exuberance, paired it with my own reticence and flipped it to represent Harry and Jessie.
Jessie and Harry are walking along the pier when they hear the orchestra rehearsing in the concert hall. Music drifts out from the open doors and Jessie pulls Harry into a dance:
‘Suddenly, he didn’t care what ‘people’ thought, he only wanted Jessie to be happy. The waves were beneath them, the clouds above and she didn’t take her eyes off him. He held her gaze, wanting the whole world to melt away and there to be but the two of them. The music ended and she gently pulled away from him, and curtseyed. A smattering of people had stopped their promenade down the pier to watch them and burst into applause. The smile on Jessie’s face was everything he could have hoped for.’
In real life I couldn’t bear being the centre of attention, of standing out from the crowd but it’s fun to inhabit other characters’ dreams and personalities and try to imagine what they would think, do and feel.
The two girls on the cover, Jessie and Frances show their feel-good faces to the world. It’s that ‘Keep Smiling Through’ attitude so reminiscent of Vera Lynn and I think it perfectly represents what the book’s about.
Blurb:
Even with the country at war the show must go on …
After the tragic death of her father, aspiring singer Jessie Delaney has been forced to live with her bullying aunt and dreams of getting the break of a lifetime to escape.
When she's cast as one of the Variety Girls in a new show at the Empire Theatre, Jessie hopes this is the new beginning she's been longing for. But following her dreams on stage will mean being separated from sweetheart Harry.
As she starts her new job, it's not long before she forms a close-knit friendship with Frances and Dolly, although the girls soon find that life in the theatre isn't always glamorous. And with the country on the brink of war, everyone is facing an uncertain future. Can friendship help Jessie through the challenges ahead?
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Tracy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tracyfbaines
Tracy's author page on Amazon
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