I’m delighted to welcome Apple Gidley and her new book, Annie’s Day, to the blog with a guest post.
Guest Post
Keeping Out of the Rabbit Warrens
If, like me, you are fascinated by the minutia of past times and lives, then you too are in danger of getting lost in the gar hole of research. It is that interest that draws me to historical fiction as both a reader and a writer. To make a historical novel come alive even the smallest details are important. Or that’s what I tell myself after I have spent the better part of an afternoon tracing a snippet that might not even make it into the first draft.
The internet has without doubt made the writer’s life easier, but with ease come potholes filled with blind faith. AI can be a starting point, but it is up to the novelist to always dig deeper and wider.
After the publication of my first book way back in 2012, my husband gave me the coolest desk imaginable. Styled after a huge old steamer trunk, it is covered in studded leather and, even more appealing, has lots of drawers. Some are filled with maps, some with files full of random bits of information, such as yellowed and curling bus and train timetables from obscure places that might one day be useful—as are site visits.
The downside of writing historical fiction is that sometimes it is difficult to justify those site visits, as places do tend to change! It was fortunate that for Annie’s Day, I already knew the countries about which I would write, having been educated in Australia, lived in Singapore as a child and an adult, then in Papua New Guinea, and had visited Berlin before the wall came down. Towns might have grown and changed, but a visit still provides a sense of place—the smells, the sounds of the voices in the market, if not the sights.
Gleaned from my mother’s Australian Army Nursing Service records, courtesy of the Australian War Memorial Archives, Annie’s Day follows the timeline but not the story of Mum’s war years. I know she also spent time as a nanny in Berlin during the Blockade, but apart from the odd comment she did not speak about those years and I, to my regret, never pushed.
With some of the writing barely legible on Mum’s army records, I began Annie’s roadmap around those basic facts, and made up the rest, with the addition of actual people—Matron Drummond of the AANS; Captain Selwyn Capon of the Empire Star; Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen of the US Air Force, aka ‘the candy bomber’, who brought moments of joy to the starving children in Berlin by dropping chocolates from his plane window as he flew in to deliver desperately needed supplies. Real people who added depth to the fiction.
Even before becoming a writer, I loved maps, and maps underpin any book written about the war, particularly when the area in question might be off the usual travel path. In a pub quiz, with a little head scratching, most can come up with the five Normandy beaches in Operation Overlord, but names like Lae, or Scarlet Beach, where the Australians landed in the fight to retake the Huon Peninsula in New Guinea, are not so easy to place. And maps are vital in not just locating a spot, but showing the terrain—the rivers to be forded, the mountains climbed, the beaches waded onto. So, maps surround me not just in the research phase but when I’m writing.
One lovely surprise when Annie’s Day began to really bubble was an idle online search for Mum. Writing had been a slow churn—some days are like that—and so I typed in Ida Arundel Morse and up she popped. A number of times. Photos that were not in her papers or albums but that were, again, in the Australian War Memorial Archives. It sent me into a spin, and the rest of the day was lost in tears as I mulled over the mother whose early life I had known so little about. (Mum is #2).
The Imperial War Museum at RAF Duxford is just down the road from where I live and I spent many happy hours wandering around, and sometimes clambering into Lancasters, Dakotas, York Avros, all planes used during the Berlin Airlift.
And books. Lots of books. A few included Giles Milton’s Checkmate in Berlin which tells history in a wonderfully relatable way. Singapore Burning by Colin Smith put me on the island in 1942. For the Pacific theatre, Philip Bradley’s D-Day in New Guinea was invaluable. Patsy Adam-Smith, and Rupert Goodman have both written fascinating books about Australian women at war, the latter focusing on nurses. Peter Ryan’s Fear Drive My Feet is the classic memoir of an Australian operative behind enemy lines in the New Guinea mountains.
Unless you are fortunate enough to find letters in your research, it is impossible to get first-hand data for earlier historical fiction, but for background and general information, I have found that people are incredibly willing to answer questions. One of the characters in Annie’s Day is a former RAF padre. After asking our local vicar interminable theological questions, she put me onto a memoir, Life and Death in the Battle of Britain, written by Guy Mayfield who had been a padre at RAF Duxford during the war. It was a goldmine, and I shamelessly stole one of his anecdotes and gave it to my fictional character, naturally with an acknowledgement in the book.
Another character, Samira, is a Hindu woman destined for an arranged marriage. My friend, Pooja Vacchani, endured countless questions about Hindu culture—she too is thanked!
It truly takes a global village to research, write, then get the final draft into the publisher’s hands, where another village takes over. The author? Well, she moves onto to the next deep dive into research!
Here’s the Blurb
War took everything. Love never had a chance. Until now.
As an Australian Army nurse, Annie endures the brutalities of World War II in Singapore and New Guinea. Later, seeking a change, she accepts a job with a British diplomatic family in Berlin, only to find herself caught up in the upheaval of the Blockade. Through it all, and despite the support of friends, the death of a man she barely knew leaves a wound that refuses to heal, threatening her to a life without love.
Years later, Annie is still haunted by what she’d lost—and what might have been. Her days are quiet, but her memories are loud. When a dying man’s fear forces her to confront her own doubts, she forms an unexpected friendship that rekindles something she thought she’d lost: hope.Annie’s Day is a powerful story of love, war, and the quiet courage to start again—even when it seems far too late.
Buy Link
Vine Leaves Press Paperback Buy Link:
Meet the Author
Anglo-Australian, Apple Gidley’s nomadic life has helped imbue her writing with rich, diverse cultures and experiences. Annie’s Day is her seventh book.
Gidley currently lives in Cambridgeshire, England with her husband, and rescue cat, Bella, aka assistant editor.
Connect with the Author
MJ Porter 