Novelists in November Anniversary: Interview with Bethany Willcock

 

In honor of the Novelists in November anthology’s one-year anniversary, I’m thrilled to host Bethany Willcock, one of its eleven authors. I thoroughly enjoyed her exciting and atmospheric mystery in this collection, featuring the endearing Greenwood family, and look forward to reading more of her works. We have similar tastes in books (such as classics and other books with rich, evocative writing styles that tell compelling stories), which is always fun to discover, so I just knew I would enjoy her writing as well, and I was definitely right! Now, let’s meet her.

Hi Bethany! Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you write.

Hi Kelsey! Thank you so much for having me, it’s an honour to be here. And Hi, Kelsey’s readers! I’m Bethany Willcock, author of “And As She Talked” in the Novelists in November anthology. I’m a South African Christian homeschool-grad who lives in a little seaside cottage in South Africa’s ‘garden province’, Kwa-Zulu Natal. Other than writing, I run a home bakery called BakerStreat and work part-time at a hair salon as well. I love everything vintage and cottagecore, or which pertains to cats and coffee. I write mysteries, mostly historical, and usually ones set in either the early Edwardian Age (Sherlock Holmes is a huge inspiration for my writing) or the 1940s/50s (Agatha Christie is another huge writing inspiration!). “And As She Talked” is set in 1947, two years after WW2 ended.

 

You have such an interesting life! What was your initial inspiration for “And As She Talked”?

I’ve been racking my brain trying to remember how I first came up with the premise for the story. I believe I’d always had parts of it tucked away in the dark recesses of my mind waiting for a future book to be inserted into. But I remember being inspired for the idea of an author’s fictional characters seemingly appearing to her while she writes after watching an episode of a TV show that dealt with a mystery involving mind games. Also, I couldn’t help but wonder what I would do if suddenly the impossible started happening to me; if cats began vanishing out of my own paintings and reappearing in others; or if something resembling Autumn Greenwood appeared in random corners of my house and scared me witless by quoting lines of her dialog while I was trying to write “And As She Talked”! So I thought it would be a fun and unique premise to explore, especially as it fit in so well with the “Novelists in November” theme. I love reading mysteries that have ‘explainable inexplicable’ events happening in them, such as ‘ghostly’ sightings that end up having a rational explanation (think Nancy Drew, or Jaime Jo Wright’s books). I believe everything mysterious has a normal explanation, and I so enjoyed writing a story that has a seemingly impossible answer but which turns out to be quite simple after all.

I know I was also inspired a lot by a stanza of Mark Van Doren’s poem, “The Storyteller”, which is where I got the title as well:

“He talked, and as he talked

Wallpaper came alive,

Suddenly ghosts walked

 And four doors were five.”

Your story premise captured me as soon as I heard it, and it did not disappoint. How would you describe Autumn Greenwood, the protagonist?

Autumn Greenwood is my favourite female MC to date. She did her bit during the war, and now lives in London. She’s a very neat and precise person, in the way she dresses as well as with her paintings. She’s a rather successful novelist when the story opens, however she’s been having some trouble getting inspiration for her new WIP, so she goes to Mossfern Lodge which is owned by her brother Noah and his two young daughters, to try to get some rest after WW2 and story inspiration. The important thing about Autumn is that she likes to paint her characters and scenery from her books as she writes, as this helps her form the story clearly in her mind since she struggles to remember faces. She’s also the 1940s’ equivalent of a crazy cat lady, and cats play an important part in the mystery she finds herself caught up in at Mossfern.

 

I loved Autumn. She’s relatable, like someone I’d want for a friend, and she’s such a sweet sister and aunt to Noah and his daughters. Was there a particular place that inspired Mossfern Lodge?

There was indeed! I’m so glad you asked, Mossfern Lodge is my absolute favourite setting I’ve created! I just wish it was a real place. I was inspired by my favourite classic fictional house and setting, Misselthwaite Manor from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “The Secret Garden”. Mossfern is not anywhere near as grand a house as Misselthwaite, but the grounds and location (although I never gave a specific location in the book) are very similar. There’s no walled-up garden at Mossfern (that we know of, perhaps, one will be discovered in a future Autumn Greenwood book!), but there is a large pond with a mysterious willow tree growing on the bank, that plays a huge role in the story. I loved the setting of Mossfern so much that I drew a map of it, the house and the grounds, as well as the cute little cottage Noah Greenwood built for him and his children to live in.

Fascinating! I wish it were a real place, too, where I could go stay. So you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan … do you have a favorite Sherlock Holmes mystery?

Ooh that’s a hard one, there’s so many! Of the four full-length Sherlock Holmes books, hands down my favourite is “The Valley of Fear”. The twist in that one left me speechless. But there are so many of the shorter S.H. adventures that I love as well, so of those ones probably “The Dying Detective” and “The Priory School” would be at the top of my list.

 

Oh my, I haven’t read any of those yet! It’s great to know I have more Sherlock Holmes to look forward to.

Let’s take a different track and talk about the season that inspired our anthology. It’s fascinating to think about how the Southern Hemisphere months are in opposite seasons of the Northern Hemisphere. What is November like in South Africa?

Haha yes, so November here is actually the last month of spring! It’s a really pretty month because all the flowers are finally out in full force and there’s birds and butterflies everywhere and the sky is bright and the weather warm and sunny. It’s the last comfortable month for us before the dreadful heat of South African summer hits us!

 

How intriguing, and beautiful! Here in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s hard to imagine November as a spring month, but it’s much like our May. What is autumn like in South Africa? Do you have a favorite thing about autumn?

Autumn is my favourite season and I wait all year for it. It begins here in March, and ends sometime around the end of May when the weather suddenly turns cold. Sadly, at the coast we don’t see much change in the colour of the trees and leaves, but up in the Midlands where I was born and grew up autumn makes the towns there look like they stepped out of a Hallmark movie! My favourite thing growing up there, aside from leaping into leaf piles, was the Royal Agricultural Show that was held every May; it was a famous outdoor fair that featured all kinds of autumn-y things alongside the livestock, and now I always associate the smell of crunching autumn leaves with the Royal Show.

 

That sounds absolutely lovely. I’ll have to go find pictures! The color change of leaves is one of my favorite things about autumn, too.

To finish off with another bookish subject, what authors inspire you the most?

There are so many authors who’ve inspired me and helped shaped my writing over the years, but probably the original and main ones were the good old classic authors like Laura Ingalls Wilder, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mary Roberts Rinehart, and Anna Katherine Green. If I can ever write a book that’s half as good as one of theirs, I’d feel that I’d arrived in life!

 

Those are fantastic authors, and you are well on your way, Bethany! Thank you so much for joining us today! 

Readers, thank you for joining us, too, and if you want to further connect with Bethany and check out her books, you can visit her website Vintage Volumes. She's also on Instagram here. Also, it’s not too late to read Novelists in November and enjoy it for this season. Here is the link; please do check it out if you haven’t already. If you have read it, what did you think of “And As She Talked”?