Image Credits:-
Many thanks to Ruth Leigh for supplying author pictures and book cover shots. Other photos created in Book Brush using Pixabay images.
It is with great pleasure I welcome Ruth Leigh back to Chandler’s Ford Today to talk about her hilarious and moving creation, Isabella M Smugge. Ruth has written her third book in the series – The Continued Times of Isabella M Smugge.
Ruth Leigh
Ruth Leigh is a freelance writer, novelist and book reviewer. Married with three children, a cat, one husband and assorted poultry, she is a recovering over-achiever.
Isabella M Smugge
As for Ruth’s “star”, Isabella M Smugge, on the face of it, is shallow and keeps up appearances no matter what, but she also shows wonderful capacity for adjusting to difficult circumstances and getting on with life. Her past has its own problems for her present too. She is an interesting character because it would be easy to judge her then she comes up with something you would not expect (and often profound. Do check the books out).
About the Isabella M Smugge Series
The series so far consists of The Diary of Isabella M Smugge and The Trials of Isabella M Smugge. Isabella has proved behind the fashion facade there is a thoughtful soul, who has been deeply hurt and betrayed, but is soldiering on. There is a loyal character here and often a very funny one.
She’s also discovering life in the countryside is not what she expected but from that has sprung up unexpected friendships she now treasures. A good series of novels must have depth to them for the setting and characters to work so you want to find out what happens to them next. Ruth Leigh does that well here.
Publication Day
This is always a great moment for any writer and Ruth will be launching the third book in her series tomorrow, 22nd October 2022, so this is a timely post for Ruth to tell us more about her book and the joys of book launches. To find out more about Ruth and her books, do visit her website shop at https://www.ruthleighwrites.co.uk/shop.
You can also order The Continued Times of Isabella M Smugge at https://www.ruthleighwrites.co.uk/shop/the-continued-times-of-isabella-m-smugge
Welcome back to Chandler’s Ford Today, Ruth.
Tell us more about The Continued Times of Isabella M Smugge.
Allison: The success of a series does depend on the lead character engaging with readers and a good way into that is via an enticing blurb. Below is Ruth’s blurb for her latest addition to the Isabella M Smugge series.
Blurb
Now in her third year of living the rural dream, starry Instamum Issy Smugge is up against it. A single parent of four with an award-winning brand, a gin-swigging mother convalescing upstairs and a distraught relative craving a shoulder to cry on, her diary and listed Regency home are bursting at the seams!Of course, she can count on lively support from the colourful playground mums – and then there’s always Tom, the startlingly good-looking vicar, and his angelic wife, Claire. But as pressure begins to mount, long-buried memories surface and difficult decisions need to be made. How will our heroine cope with painful emotions? (Clue: no filter!) And when the influencer needs influencing, who will show her the way?
Now you’ve having a “live” launch for your third book on Thursday 10th November. Can you tell us what that entails and what kind of launches you have had before? Why did you decide to make the change? Also, how nervous do you get before a launch? And can you let us have times?
I’ve never done a live launch before and I am quite nervous about it. The first Issy Smugge novel came out in lockdown so I had no alternative but to wrestle with technology and address my readers via the magic of the internet.
I found a good formula which worked and applied it to my second book launch (also online) last year. I wanted everyone to have fun so we played games and at regular intervals, my husband let off incredibly loud confetti cannons. We are still finding bits of tissue paper in the Palace of Creativity (my writing studio) even now.
I invented a game called Casting Couch where people voted on the actors who will play the characters when the BBC come calling (as they surely will) and Hashtag Heaven, where viewers made up hashtags to appear in the next book. I chose the ones I liked best and those people had a character named after them. I think those games will translate well to a live launch, but we might retire the cannons.
I’m having my launch at a very cool local wine bar in Woodbridge called 1975 (https://www.1975winebar.com/) with fizz on arrival and a lovely table of grazing platters (very Issy).
It will take place on Thursday 10th November at 1975, Gobbitts Yard, Woodbridge and everyone is welcome. Timings are 7.00 for 7.30. Look out for the information on my socials. I decided to take the plunge and have a live launch as I’d seen my friend Deborah Jenkins do it recently with her book, Braver, and I thought it looked like such good fun.
Isabella is a fantastic and memorable character. How easy do you find it to come up with stories for her? A great series shows a character developing over the course of many books and Isabella does just that. How easy do you find it to develop her further?
Thank you. In the first book, it was easy. I invented a charming, handsome but possibly duplicitous husband, a difficult mother and an estranged sister and the rest just flowed. Book two was a little trickier to write because I had to make Isabella change subtly and slowly.
One of the ways I achieved that was to put her in a situation where she was thrown together with people she would never have met in her old life. The brutally honest Liane Bloomfield is a great foil for Isabella, as she has no filter, says exactly what she thinks and doesn’t really care about all the trappings of our heroine’s gorgeous Insta-ready life. She’s a good device for throwing Issy off her stride, which needs to happen if she’s going to change.
Often, plot threads simply drop into my head. “What would happen if Mummy had a stroke?” “How would it be if Silvia wasn’t quite what she seemed?” I’ll be driving or doing something completely different and the thought will come and won’t go away. From that, writing subtle changes into Isabella’s character seems to flow naturally.
Do you keep copious notes of Isabella’s appearance, main traits etc? Do you have a record keeping system here to help you keep track? I know some writers use spreadsheets for example.
I don’t. And I probably should. I’ve been deliberately vague about her appearance. In book one, she says she’s inherited Mummy’s thin red-gold hair which needs daily washing to avoid that dreaded lank look. In book three, we learn she has deep blue eyes. As I start to think about book four, I am going to have to make up a spreadsheet. With so many characters, it’s hard to keep up with ages, names, previous incidents etc. Before I start work on book 4, I will certainly be creating a Smugge Spreadsheet (#onit #keepingtrack).
Allison: This is one of the tricky things about writing series – keeping tabs on what you’ve already written as readers to pick up on inconsistencies. Many writers use spreadsheets. Others have folders on their computers for individual characters (makes it easy to find information later but you do need to remember to add in any new details to your character profile here).
Conclusion
Next week, Ruth will be sharing with us her thoughts on what she loves about writing novels and her views on marketing. The latter is something no author can get away with as whether you’re with a publisher or self publish, every writer has to carry out at least some marketing on their work.
Publishers really don’t do it for you. This is partly because they can’t (mainly due to financial reasons) but there is a more positive reason for this. After all, who is better placed to talk about their work than the author themselves? Ruth will be sharing interesting insights here and her thoughts about her characters next week.
Related Posts:-
The Joys and Perils of Writing Humour Part 1 – Fran Hill and Ruth Leigh
Part 2 – The Joys and Perils of Writing Humour – Fran Hill and Ruth Leigh
Read interviews with Chandler’s Ford writer Allison Symes: Part 1 and Part 2.
Read blog posts by Allison Symes published on Chandler’s Ford Today.
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