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Full Transcript: Alivia Fleur Samples a Song and a Snowflake

[00:00:00] Katherine Grant: Welcome to the Historical Romance Sampler Podcast. The place for you to find new historical romance books and authors to fan over. I'm award winning historical romance author Katherine Grant, and each week I'm inviting fellow authors to come on and share a little bit of their work and themselves.

They'll read a sample of one of their books, and then I'm going to ask them a bunch of questions. By the end of the episode, you'll have a sense of what they write and who they are. Hopefully, you and I both will have something new to read. So what are we waiting for? Let's get into this week's episode.

All right, well, today I am joined by Alivia Fleur from the other side of the world, which is very exciting. Alivia writes stories full of humor, history, and heart. Her steamy short story, The Portrait Sitting, is the winner of the Romance Writers of Australia Ruby for Best Novella. Alivia lives on a farm a long way from anywhere interesting with her husband, four dogs.

And a charismatic chicken named Persephone. Alivia, I'm so glad to have you on the podcast.

[00:01:15] Alivia Fleur: Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. It's lovely to speak to people because you know, I don't live in a capital city so even meeting other Australian writers is not something that I do very often. So it's, it's just nice to be part of a community.

So,

[00:01:33] Katherine Grant: yes, I feel the same even though I live in New York City where theoretically I could meet a lot of writers. I feel that it's actually very hard to do. So I'm glad we're able to talk today. So what are you reading for us?

[00:01:46] Alivia Fleur: I'm going to be reading from this one, which is it's called A Song and a Snowflake.

And I've picked this because the main male character in here is an Australian. So his name is Sinclair, he's from Melbourne and he's traveled to London because he wants to make his name as a cordial maker and to set up a tavern and step out on his own. So I wanted to sort of do something that was very much, very much me and that he's he's from Down Under as well.

So. Awesome. So in this section, he's met Charlise who lives on Honeysuckle Street and they've run into each other on the street again after an initial meeting and he's wanting to find his great grandparents who were buried in Kensal Green, which is one of the cemeteries on the edge of London, and he doesn't know how to get there.

So Charlise and her sister Elise are going to have shown him the way so that he can, he can find them.

[00:02:53] Katherine Grant: Awesome. Sounds great.

[00:02:57] Alivia Fleur: The small field of green grass and stone slabs, which had once been at the edge of the bustling expanse of London, lay tucked behind a tall white arch. Progress nibbled at its edges, but inside Kensal Green Cemetery, the congestion and noise of the city seemed to have been banished.

The black fingers of branches stretched across the grey sky, and beneath their feet the matted brown and decomposing autumn leaves muffled each step. Angels, Oak leaves, sphinxes, Grecian urns, simple columns, the sculptures of the dead judge, not because they were alien, but because they were so similar to the graves that surrounded his grandmother where she was buried at Melbourne General Cemetery.

"What name?" Elise called, her voice echoing into the crisp silence. "Brown," Sinclair replied. Elise turned, hand on hips. "What other name? A Christian name." "Mary." Sinclair tapped at the tobacco tin secreted in his coat pocket. "Same as my grandma's name. And my mother." Elise ran off again. Beside him, Charlise slowed to his pace.

Occasionally, the rhythm of their walk caused them to nudge one another, and each brush of her body against his sent a shimmer through him. If the world were a page, she was a poem imprinted. No, not a poem, a song. She moved like notes lived in her, and as he fell into step, he could feel the beat. Step, step, step.

While his heart fluttered louder, and in its own silent tune. Ba boom, ba bing, dappled shadows danced over her gown, and thin fingers of mottled grey and light snaked through her hair. "My sister was meant to be named Mary, to keep the tradition going," he said, knowing he was veering into babbling, but unable to stop.

"But my brother Richard kept calling her Scary Mary because she cried so much. When my dad went to register her birth, he stopped to celebrate on the way, and when he came home, it turned out he'd registered her by mistake." He buried his hands in his coat pockets, regretted his lack of gloves, and studied the dates on the headstones as they passed, then stole a glance, his cheeks warming, as they both slung a look at one another in the same instance, only to look away, embarrassed.

"I liked your wailing," he blurted out, then winced. "I mean, your assailing. Last night, before that daft man's horse got loose, I was mesmerised." Her lips broke into a shy smile. "No one says wassailing anymore. We're just carolers. It's my aunt's ensemble. She's very passionate about music and singing. She was in a choir with my mother.

It's how her and my father met." "Love at first lyric," he asked, his skin tingling at the thought. "Not quite," she quipped back, "but in time, yes, he adored her." I could adore you, Sinclair thought, his gaze trailing the naked grace of her mate, inching to the tickle of fur at her coat collar, at least twice a night.

He coughed and rubbed his knuckles over his forehead. The more he tried to act like a well mannered gent, the bigger of an oaf he seemed intent on becoming. "Over here," Elise called from a few rows over, and Sinclair followed her voice. "Mary Brown, 1835. Philip Brown, 1837. Parents of Mary. Gone but not forgotten."

"Is it them?" "Does it really say that," he asked. "Come see," Elise replied, gone but not forgotten. His mother had chosen the same line for his grandmother, complete with an English rose carved into the top of the headstone, almost identical to the design that stared back at him in this freezing English yard so very far from home.

"My grandmother was a convict." The words scratched out of him, as harsh as their history. "She couldn't write, so she had the priest help her send letters home. But the only reply she ever got back was from the vicar, telling her they'd died and been buried here." She thought they'd forsaken her. But maybe, reading that stone, they didn't.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the tobacco tin, then pushed his nose against the tin lip and, fingers tensing, cracked the little container open. What beautiful hands he had, not soft or lithe from doing nothing more vexatious than holding a pen or a hand of cards, but firm hands built from work.

Thin veins snaked over their back, A hard worn nail flush against a slightly rough thumb, and while every inch of them spoke of effort and might, he held the tin like a child might raise up a favorite toy or a comforting blanket. Charlise couldn't help but lean closer, desperate to learn a little more of this man who was three parts hard as macadam and one part soft as flannel.

"My grandma's last words to me," he said, his voice in ache, "before she slipped away. She made me promise I would one day bring a piece of her home." Nestled in the tin lay a delicate silver hook of grey hair, tied with a thin blue ribbon. His finger grazed, barely touching it, his face distorting into a mix of pain spliced with love.

"It was the last thing she ever said." He squatted at the base of the grave and scratched at the ground, carving out a little cavity in the dark soil, his movements mechanical. Dirt caught along the sides of his fingers and beneath his nails. Charlise stripped her gloves. knelt beside him and clawed at the earth with him.

Cold, almost frozen and rough with grit. The soil rubbed hard, refreshing in its rawness. How many holes had they dug to plant roses as children? How many weeds had they pulled from the garden? How much distance had been placed between her and the beauty of the ground since her mother's loss? Charlise scooped out one last handful of tumbling soil, then heaped it into a little pile.

Sinclair placed the lock in the depression, then kissed his fingers and raised them to the sky. "In the next life, Mary Brown," he whispered, and with a firm shove heaped the dirt over. He remained still, sitting back on his heels, head bowed. The wind whispered through the few remaining leaves and ruffled his hair.

Charlise let the coldness infiltrate her, and the frostiness made her fingers tingle. If she stayed here, would she turn to ice? Perhaps she would become a statue amongst the angels, bowing her head in repentance, praying for the redemption that would only come at the end of a church aisle. A cheerful trill broke the silence.

Above them, a robin chirped as it hopped between branches and little plumes of mist escaped from its beak. Another bird called back in reply, and the pair of red breasts bounced between the naked branches before taking wing to the other side of the path. "I think she's happy," Elise said, following the flight of the birds across the cemetery.

A smile in her voice, even though it carried a weight beyond her years. "Do you think that's your grandfather flying with her?" Sinclair huffed a laugh as he stood and brushed the dirt from his palms. "I doubt it. She uh, she didn't know him that well. Actually, I'm not sure she knew him at all." "How could she not?"

"We really should leave Mr. McIntyre to his mourning," charlise interrupted her sister, trying to send her a message to hold her tongue. Realization lit Elise's expression. Sinclair shoved his hands into his pocket. "It doesn't bother me. My grandmother's story, and my mother not having a father. Well, not one that gave her a name."

"You..." Charlise's cheeks burned hot as she tried to find the right etiquette to cover a blunder like the one she had just made. How many books had she poured over? How many lessons from father to ensure she didn't stand out in a parlor once she entered society? Nothing she had learned covered what to do when someone wasn't embarrassed about such things, yet she had just told him he should be.

An unconventional situation called for an unconventional answer. She stood then held out her elbow. "Why don't you escort us to the gates and tell us about her on the way?" Strips of light crossed Charlise's skirt as they strolled, while Elise flitted along the path as light as one of the robins.

For a man not wearing gloves, heat still beat from his light hold around her bicep, each tiny indentation of his fingers like a bran through her sleeve. A warm fizzle traced her spine. She should declare herself promised, but apart from accepting their offer of assistance, what right did she have to assume he thought anything more of her?

Would she embarrass him again with her arrogance? And she couldn't shake the thought that perhaps, if everything hadn't gone so horribly wrong, this is what courting would have been like, all shy smiles and fumbled etiquette. Was there any harm in just enjoying this moment? "I prefer you call me Sinclair," he said, his voice a warm drizzle through the cold air.

"My father is Mr. McIntyre. It doesn't sound right to my ears." "Call me Charlise," she said, half turning towards him. "Your grandmother sounds fascinating." He laughed and she could hear the easing of the burden in his voice. "She was something. I suppose she had to be. She was transported at 18." "Because of her relationships?"

"That came later," he said, shaking his head. "And I think it was just one or two red coat gents she became friendly with. Just enough to help her get by. Her crime was breaking stocking machines in Leicestershire when steam engines put families out of work. She was protesting the changes that made her family homeless and drove whole villages into the city to look for work.

But if you think my grandmother is something, she's barely a speck on my mother," he continued, his voice thick with pride. "She was 16 when she married my father, and only a few years older than the boy she was to become a mother to. And they gave her a time. But she's stuck with it. And now they're like a bunch of kittens around her.

Meek as you please." "Was your father transported too?" She asked, her curiosity edging out all thoughts of proper conversation. "No, although he may well have been for all the choice he and his first wife had. The laird had the whole village cleared out and paid everyone's passage to the other side of the world.

A new start, he said, even though they'd never wanted to go." "So the illustrious heritage of Sinclair McIntyre includes a rebellious convict grandmother from Leicestershire, an illegitimate mother, and a Scottish father turned out in the clearances." She tapped off each point as she spoke. It was a mismatch of composite parts, every single piece at odds with what was considered respectable and desirous to men like her father and the Baron.

Yet she'd never felt more comfortable in another's company. "And you sound like any gent I've met in a ballroom." "My mother insisted Sarah and I be educated, not at home like the boys." His rounded accent, formal English tinted with the old clipped word, settled into the confession. "We're quite the conversation at home.

My mother sounding as rough as any street urchin, and my father and brothers brogues as thick as if they'd just walk out of the Highlands. And Sari and I, like a proper pair of toffs, even though she spends her days bottling and boiling in the kitchen, and I spend mine in the warehouse dodging horse, dodging horses."

[00:14:52] Katherine Grant: wow, what an interesting scene. I love that there's such tender romance going on in a cemetery. And particularly that it's a Victorian romance, because that's, that feels very

[00:15:05] Alivia Fleur: appropriate. Yes, yes. so very much about the Yeah, that whole iconography and

[00:15:11] Katherine Grant: yeah, yeah, well, I have a lot of questions for you about what you just read and about you.

But first, we're going to take a quick break for our sponsors.

Hey samplers! It's Katherine Grant. I am interrupting this episode to tell you how to get a free book, the Viscount Without Virtue. First, go to bit.ly/hrs fan, go through the checkout process. This is where you add the promo code, HR SFAN as your last step. Just download your free ebook to your ereader.

Alright, well let's get back to this week's episode.

So we are back with award winning author, Alivia Fleur, who just read a sample from A Song and a Snowflake, which am I correct that that is available for people to read

from your newsletter?

[00:16:02] Alivia Fleur: Yes, yes, that one is free with newsletter sign ups. So,

[00:16:06] Katherine Grant: so everyone can just go grab that right now and keep reading and find out what happens. So there were a few things that stuck out to me from that passage. One, obviously it's set in a cemetery but there was also this very strong emotional tie to generations past, even this great grandmother that Sinclair himself hadn't met.

And I picked up that the sisters also had some grief going on. So I'm curious, did you know, setting out that you wanted to write a story that was about grief of losing loved ones and also the grief of You know, the experience of being forced out of your home, or did that just kind of come up naturally?

[00:16:49] Alivia Fleur: I never really know what I'm doing when I start. So I, I often feel like When I'm writing, it's kind of like sketching something where I'll have like I knew when I was writing this, that it would be a working class Australian character and that it would be that the, the female would be you know, a ruined character.

So I had sort of things that I wanted, but in terms of piecing together No, I never, I never know what's really going to happen. I'll know that I need a scene that has some kind of connection or some kind of emotional, you know, whether it's the lead up to the kissing scene or, you know, in this scene, they're getting to know each other with nobody else around, really apart from Elise.

So it's sort of what ways can you tell a story that reveals a bit about those characters and brings out their backstory and all of those interesting things about them whilst also showing them connecting and, and moving the story forward. So I'm not clueless the whole time.

[00:17:56] Katherine Grant: Well you're subconscious delivered, it was a really beautiful scene.

I loved that moment when she's looking at his hands and there's so much revealed just from his hands. There was also a lot of historical detail in that scene. Like there was the lock of hair. There's, you know, the reference to the Luddites and also to the clearances with sailing. So can you talk a little bit about your research process?

[00:18:24] Alivia Fleur: I, I just love that part. That's, that's why I started to write fiction. So I work as a historian, but writing fiction felt to me like a new way of researching things that I don't get to do at work because obviously what I do at work is very Australian based. So there are stories from, you know, France and England and all over the world that I wanted to learn more about.

So I probably go a bit too deep on the, on the research, but I really love it. And also for me to write a character, I really have to have a huge amount of backstory from them. So I had to, Particularly because Sinclair is Australian, I needed to know what that looked like in terms of when his grandmother arrived and making sure that fit in time wise when, for when there was transportation.

So a lot, it's always back and forth. I don't do a whole lot of research, then sit down to write. I'll read a couple of non fiction books, or I'll have an idea already, And then I'll start writing and then I'll come across something where I don't know. So with this this book in particular, it was sort of, well, if his father's Scottish, you know, it's like, well, what did that look like?

What did Scottish migration to Australia look like? And then I went off and did some research and then incorporate that in and then move forward with the next bit. So it's very much, I'll be researching the whole way through.

[00:19:57] Katherine Grant: Yeah, that's so interesting. I did not know you're a historian. Every time I meet a historian who's also a writer, I'm like, I want to talk to you so much.

So the question I would like to ask you is, how do you think about the line between historical accuracy and narrative joy.

[00:20:20] Alivia Fleur: I, I don't like deliberate bending like I think if you know something is true, but I also really love the idea of the possible, you know, is it, it, you might not have an actual historical reference of this type of thing happened, but is it possible that it happened? Did the rules of society and life and all those things allow for that at the time?

So I kind of like that and, and pushing that. I mean, that's the whole point. That's the whole fun of historical romance is that you take all those rules and and restrictions on people's lives and you do push them and and see how love conquers all. So that's, that's sort of where I sit. I couldn't put something in that I knew to be completely inaccurate.

 In a beginner's guide to scandal, I had to completely change the timeline to make it line up with the invention of postcards, which is, which is like, it's like that much of the book, but it's like, Oh, maybe no, no, no. It's like, no, I just got to just got to do it.

[00:21:29] Alivia Fleur: I couldn't not. So that's kind of how it sort of works for me where, yeah.

[00:21:33] Katherine Grant: Because he, I read that book. So like, he's carrying around this postcard and it's like evidence of his love, right? So I get why you needed to do that.

[00:21:40] Alivia Fleur: Yeah. Yeah. And of course, postcards came out of the Paris siege. So originally scandal was going to be set five years before but then the siege doesn't happen until after that.

So yes. There's so much history to know.

[00:21:56] Katherine Grant: So another thing that stood out, I know you wrote Sinclair as an Australian hero and In this scene, at least, we were exploring a lot of the kind of generational trauma of the various ancestors being forced out of Great Britain and into Australia in different ways, and then what that life was like.

 Do you feel that you have an Australian point of view that you bring to historical romance.

[00:22:23] Alivia Fleur: Absolutely. It's, it's impossible not to definitely in terms of class consciousness. And it's a very complicated relationship that historically Australia has with Britain in sort of the closeness and this antagonism the whole way through, like and so, you know, it's very hard to know how to describe, but I find it very hard to think in any other way from that perspective and very much about The working class and you know, that sort of idea of taking all these sort of ideas and, and what's going on in Britain at the time and transporting them to another place and then seeing how that plays out.

So, and then of course, you know, Sinclair goes back and sees this country where he can't. He doesn't fit in. He's, he's a nobody because of his working class background, whereas in Melbourne, the family is quite well off because of the gold rushes. They've made a lot of money from selling booze and cordials.

So that whole contrast between what is happening between the two countries, I find really interesting.

[00:23:38] Katherine Grant: Yeah, that is very interesting. And do you have plans to write more Australian characters?

[00:23:43] Alivia Fleur: Yes, I do.

In my, I think in my book four, so yes, I think I need a I think I need a plucky Australian woman to go and find her fortune. So yeah.

[00:23:59] Katherine Grant: Nice. I love that. I know you do some drawing and sketching and visual arts as well. So do you feel that your, your creative mind is very visual, but how does your creativity work?

[00:24:13] Alivia Fleur: Yeah, visual, but also moving. I have to move a lot, like my hands all the time, put them down. But when I get stuck if I'm writing and I've, I come up against something I need to move location or, oh, I mean, going for a walk is, you know, It's just the best thing ever, but also I always used to think I was visual, but then when I started I plot with post it notes a lot and a lot of different colors.

And so it's the moving between them that actually helps me when I have to come across and get a different colored note or those types of things. So definitely creative visually, but a lot more about movement. So the sketching moves me from my desk and I sit outside and you know, and I'm not very good, but I do enjoy doing it.

And it's a different part of the brain that you are accessing. So yeah, it's sort of all those things happening at once. Yeah, but I also really love music, like I can't play music, but I really love music. So just listening to different songs and for every book I write, the first thing I do actually, before I research anything is I put together a playlist and I'll put together that playlist over a long period of time.

And it's a timed playlist. It's always 60 or 90 minutes. It's I call them mixtapes. So the same as an old mixtape, you can't go over the end of the tape. And, and so having that kind of creative input from other people definitely helps me as well.

[00:25:43] Katherine Grant: That's very interesting. Do you change it up as you're writing?

Like you're like, Oh no, this song actually doesn't fit the story.

[00:25:49] Alivia Fleur: Yeah. Yeah. I was doing that last night, actually. I was there was a couple of songs that weren't quite right. So then I had to go hunting for new ones that might work to come And I really enjoy that. I'll, I'll often be writing and I'll have Spotify, going with a random playlist of something it suggests or finding something completely different or just putting in a random word and seeing what it throws up.

So yeah, I do explore music a lot.

[00:26:17] Katherine Grant: That's so cool. One more question before our fun segment, just who are some of the authors who have influenced you?

[00:26:26] Alivia Fleur: Oh, not, not a typically romance writer, but one of my favorite writers is Kate Forsyth, who's an Australian historical fiction writer, but all her stories have happy endings and they always have a little bit of romance to them.

And she just writes so beautifully. And I remember when I was starting to write and trying to get my descriptions better, I would look at her work and just find a paragraph where she sets up a scene and try and break down each character, like each sentence. What is she doing here? She's showing the landscape here.

She's showing the character, you know, feeling the cold or what have you. And I, Yeah, I just adore her writing.

[00:27:16] Katherine Grant: Well it's good to know. I actually have this prejudice against historical fiction that there are no happy endings.

So it's good to know I'm wrong.

[00:27:25] Alivia Fleur: A lot of the time they are. A lot of the time they aren't. And that's probably why I do like Kate Forsythe in that it does have that that's like a safety thing she promises that it will have a nice ending.

[00:27:35] Katherine Grant: Yeah.

[00:27:36] Alivia Fleur: Yeah.

[00:27:38] Katherine Grant: When I was like 12 and transitioning out of the historical fiction for a elementary and middle schoolers, which always has a happy ending.

I got into, I think it's by Jean Rhys. It was this historical fiction about a sister of Henry VIII, and she gets married and all of that. But like, she gets cheated on. She, you know, her first husband dies. Her second husband isn't great. And then like it ends with her dying, like it was following her real life, which was not pleasant.

And I was like, I remember being in my room as a 12 year old being devastated. And so I still have that wound that I'm trying to heal.

[00:28:20] Alivia Fleur: Well, that's the comfort of historical romance in that you can sort of go through there's so much safety net to it. And that's what really drew me to it. Me too, because history is so awful and hardened and harsh.

And so reading historical romance is a way to still engage with that that sort of, you know, past and, and the olden days, you know, that I really love, but without having to wonder what's going to happen. And is it going to be a happy ending? Cause you know, it's going to be a happy ending. And I think that's wonderful.

I think that's the most amazing thing that you can, you know, that authors write these compelling, engaging stories, and you go through hundreds and hundreds of pages knowing how it's going to end. And you

[00:29:07] Katherine Grant: Yeah, that's

[00:29:08] Alivia Fleur: extraordinary. So

[00:29:09] Katherine Grant: yeah, and I mean, it's worth it because like, I would say people might look back on our times and say, gosh, that was terrible.

You know, there was a whole pandemic and everything. What a terrible time. Why would you want to read a book about that? But, you know, there are stories of joy, so it's nice to, to make room for that in historical fiction. Okay, well now it is time to find out how much of a rule breaker you are.

[00:29:39] Katherine Grant: Do you love it or leave it when protagonists meet in the first 10%?

[00:29:44] Alivia Fleur: Love it.

[00:29:45] Katherine Grant: How about dual point of view narration?

[00:29:48] Alivia Fleur: Yes, love it.

[00:29:50] Katherine Grant: How about third person past tense?

[00:29:51] Alivia Fleur: Love it. But don't need it.

[00:29:57] Katherine Grant: How about a third act breakup or dark moment?

[00:30:00] Alivia Fleur: Leave it.

[00:30:01] Katherine Grant: Always end with an epilogue.

[00:30:04] Alivia Fleur: Leave it. Oh, interesting. Depends. Depends on the story.

[00:30:10] Katherine Grant: Share research in an author's note.

[00:30:13] Alivia Fleur: Love it.

[00:30:14] Katherine Grant: Well then, I think it's, I can safely say that you are a romance rule follower.

[00:30:19] Alivia Fleur: Just a little bit. I don't like to stray too far.

[00:30:25] Katherine Grant: Well, this has been really wonderful. Thank you so much for joining the podcast. Before we go, how can our listeners find you and your books?

[00:30:34] Alivia Fleur: The best place to start is on my website, which is just aliviafleur. com. And that's where you can find A Song and a Snowflake. It's got such a beautiful cover for free. Yes. For free. And otherwise my books are in all stores. So on in Kobo plus on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Google. So all the places and libraries! Well, I'm going to put

[00:31:03] Katherine Grant: that in the show notes so everyone can find your website. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. So everyone go get a song and a snowflake for free. And is it a Christmas story?

[00:31:15] Alivia Fleur: It's set at Christmas. It's not particularly about A It will scratch that itch.

It is. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's just got enough of Christmas. Christmas adjacent, I think it's been called.

[00:31:28] Katherine Grant: Nice. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Alivia. That's all right. Thank you for having me.

That's it for this week. Check out the show notes where I put links for my guests, myself, and the podcast. Until next week, happy reading.