Author Interview – Nhys Glover

How did you develop your plot and characters? The plot was simple – rescue children from the Titanic before it sinks. The subplots just evolved as the larger story played out. I decided the Titanic would make a good place for my New Atlanteans to Retrieve from. After all, over a thousand people ‘disappeared’ that night. Then I decided I wanted to have a variety of perspectives or POV across all the echelons of society on-board. Then I did the research. By the time I had my head around the whole period and very specifically this journey, the characters had started to present to me. A bit like kids in a class putting up their hands saying, ‘Pick me, pick me!’ So I did, and I told their stories as they took part in those last days of the Titanic.

How much of the book is realistic? Are there time travelling Retrievers from the future? I’m not sure. There might be. Are the last days of the Titanic as historically accurate as I could make them, and therefore ‘realistic’?  Yes, I hope so. Are the issues each of the central characters deals with realistic? Definitely. You don’t have to be from the future to suffer the fear and numbness that follows a traumatic experience in your life, and to fear what coming back to life might mean. Most of us have been there, or will go there…at least once in our lives.

When and why did you begin writing? Other than from childhood? I probably started seriously writing novels from the time I began teaching at 22. But as my subject matter didn’t fit into accepted generic formulas I never tried to get published. My first book I wanted to get published was Labyrinth of Light, because I thought it had a message some people needed to hear. But it wasn’t until the Indie Publishing trend started that I discovered that I could find readers for what I loved, without a middle-man dictating to me how and what I should write. I think this trend has been incredibly freeing for many creatives in a variety of fields.

Tell us a bit about your family. My parents were very arty New Agers, who died comparatively young. They gave me my spiritual take on life and an understanding of my Muse. I was married for many years and had two sons. The eldest died suddenly when he was 20. So now that leaves me with one sister, an ex-husband, and one son living in Aus. My son’s a 22 year old Fine Arts Photography student, and I’m very proud of him. Other than Mat, I consider my family to be my friends.  These are people who’ve stuck with me through thick and thin, and I’m lucky to have them in my life.

Who is your favourite author and why? JR Ward, at the moment, because her ‘Black Dagger Brotherhood’ takes me places I would never normally go, and makes me love every minute of it. To me, that’s the mark of a truly great writer, no matter the genre. She’s gritty and very explicit in her description of sex and violence, but the power of love in her stories is amazing. In the last book she made very graphic gay male sex the most truly powerful and moving read of my life. If I could do what she does, I’d be a very content writer.

How important do you think villains are in a story? I don’t often have villains in my stories, except my historical romances that have some seriously diabolical villains. Mostly I think life has enough ways to create Conflict without the need to cast someone into the baddie role. In life there are few real villains, I’ve found. (And that’s coming from a woman who worked nearly five years in a male medium security prison!) There are just people who don’t want what we want.

Have you included a lot of your life experiences, even friends, in the plot? The world of New Atlantis is symbolic of the life I now live. Eilish I intentionally modelled on a beautiful full-figured friend of mine who can’t see her own beauty. I hoped she would see herself in Eilish and start seeing what the rest of us see in her. I also spent a total of 3 months on an ocean liner like the Titanic when I was a child. My dad took me ‘home’ to England from Australia. In the sixties you did that journey by ship not by plane. I think the reason I could really get into this story so deeply was because I know what it feels like to travel on that kind of liner. You can’t truly imagine what that feels like. You have to experience it to write about it.

Three loves are discovered as the clock counts down to 11.40 pm April 14, 1912. Karl Ontario is a medical researcher not an adventurer but when an audacious mission is proposed to go back in time to save doomed children on the ill-fated Atlantic liner, RMS Titanic, he makes sure he’s included on the team. Little does he realise that his own future happiness depends on saving the life of just one passenger: Lizzie Faulkner, an unwed mother-to-be.

Eilish Cork is a time travelling Retriever and this mission is like any other to her until she falls in love with her handsome Target, London barrister Maxwell Ingham, and is asked to risk everything to save him from his fate on the maiden voyage of that tragic ship.
And sweet Pia Rogaland, whose only goal is to rescue the children on board the Titanic until she meets Marco Lorenza, a man she’s not permitted to save.

With time running out, is it possible to rescue those victims history determined went down with the unsinkable Ship of Dreams or will more lives be forfeited trying to carry out this dangerous mission?

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Genre – Romance

Rating – Between PG13 and R (sensual but not erotic)

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Website http://nhysglover.com/