Welcome to a new series called Why, why, why, in which I ask an author three 'why?' questions. Jane Cable, aka Eva Glyn, is here to answer the first set of questions.
| As Eva Glyn, she is the author of |  |
I love the three questions Susanna has asked me, because the answers throw a spotlight on the relationship between author and editor and how important it is to the publishing process. My editor is Charlotte Ledger at One More Chapter, and having met her at the Romantic Novelists’ Association conference in 2019, she signed me with a completely different book a year later.
WHY EVA GLYN?
My real name is Jane Cable and under that name I self published my first two novels and now have a deal with Sapere Books, for whom I write romance with one foot in the past and a ghostly twist. The ghostly twist is important, because it was the one thing Charlotte did not want from me. So when I suggested I use a pseudonym for my OMC books, it’s fair to say she was enthusiastic, although she also made it clear the choice was entirely mine.
I had always thought I would take one of my grandmothers’ names. The gran I knew and loved was known a Hettie, although the name on her birth certificate was Esther. However my father’s mother, who died before I was born, was Eva, and that resonated with me.
h
The surname was a harder decision. I thought about using my mum’s maiden name, or a family name of my dad’s, but while I was pondering I had a revelation. In fact, it was almost as though my parents were nudging me. Both had been close friends with Welsh novelist and poet Glyn Jones – in fact, on the morning my mum died we’d spent some time reading his poems. Suddenly it seemed the obvious choice.
WHY CROATIA?
Initially this was driven by my second book for OMC, The Olive Grove. In 2019 I went on holiday to Croatia and our tour director, Darko Barisic, told us about growing up in Bosnia during the Balkan war in the 1990s. His story was one of the most moving I had ever heard and afterwards I asked him if he would mind me putting it into a book. But I knew it had to be the right book, for the right publisher. Luckily Charlotte loved the idea too.
My first deal with OMC was for two books and when it came to discussing a new contract I presented Charlotte with three ideas, one of which was set in Croatia. It was a dual timeline looking back to a single shocking incident during the Second World War and she loved it. This was published as An Island of Secrets (Charlotte titles my books, by the way – I’m useless at it) and there is a third Croatian tale on the way for the summer of 2023.
So there are two main reasons for staying in Croatia. From my point of view it’s a country with so many stories to be told and is constantly inspiring. I also have Darko to help make sure my Croatian characters and their lives are authentic. But the second reason is author brand. It sounds cold and hard, put like that, but it’s actually about readers knowing what to expect when they pick up an Eva Glyn, which I hope is an emotionally gripping story that will whisk them away to a beautiful Mediterranean location.
WHY CHANGE FROM THE PRESENT TENSE?
When I first started to work with Charlotte I asked her what her editing process was and she told me it was however I wanted to play it. Given The Olive Grove was the first book I had written for her I decided to submit a partial manuscript of around 30,000 words, in the main to check if I was actually writing the book she thought she’d acquired. The structure was the same as I my first OMC book, The Missing Pieces of Us, with two first person narrators, one in the present tense, but Charlotte didn’t think it was working and very politely suggested I might like to think about going into the third person past tense instead.
Now when an editor suggests something like that, you do it. And Charlotte was right; it changed the feel of the book and seemed to somehow allow me a different sort of depth. It’s really hard to explain but it seems to be working.
* * * *
Eva Glyn's links:
Her author page on Amazon
Her author page on Facebook
Her Twitter page
Make A Comment
Comments (0)