Christine Wells; Secrets and Spys

Christine Wells worked as a corporate lawyer in a city firm before exchanging contracts and prospectuses for a different kind of fiction. In her novels, she draws on a lifelong love of British history and an abiding fascination for the way laws shape and reflect society.

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Transcript:

Sarah Williams:            Today, I’m chatting to Christine Wells. Thanks for joining me, Christine.

Christine Wells:            Thanks so much for having me, Sarah. It’s great to be here.

Sarah Williams:            I appreciate you spending the time here today. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey to publication?

Christine Wells:            Well, I’m a Brisbane girl, and I started off wanting to be a brain surgeon when I was very young and very soon realized that I didn’t like the sight of blood very much, so I switched and ended up becoming a lawyer, which showed a lot of imagination. But I ended up, when I was a solicitor working for a law firm, I really started to love writing, and I got into it in a big way. I just couldn’t stop. Well, I did stop to do actual work, but I was writing in my lunch hours and way into the night and on weekends. Eventually, I decided to give up the law and become a writer full-time.

Christine Wells:            So, I mainly self-taught. I had a bit of a self-taught apprenticeship for about four years before I actually sold a book, and that was through the RWA, Romance Writers of America. They had several contests where acquiring editors would judge the contests if you got into the final. So I had a few manuscripts with editors over in New York, and one said she wanted to buy it. You never, ever, ever say yes. You say, wait while I get an agent. So I was on the phone overnight to America trying to talk to all the agents that I had been submitting to and ended up with one the next couple of days. And then, it was a Friday. She sent the manuscript around for everybody to read over the weekend, and I think by Tuesday, I had a deal with a different publisher from the one who had originally offered. So, yeah. It was sort of a long lead-in and then a whirlwind sale in the end.

Sarah Williams:            Excellent. So you wrote ten novels before you’ve written these ones, which we’ll come to in a minute. So you wrote those ten novels, and they were published to New York publishers, so tell us about those. What sort of books were they?

Christine Wells:            They were historical romance set in Regency England, and one lot were under the name Christina Brooke. That was for St. Martin’s press.

Sarah Williams:            Excellent. And now, you’ve written three books about historical romance and historical fiction, and you’ve written them under your name, Christine Wells. So, it’s The Wife’s Tale, The Traitor’s Girl, and your latest one is The Juliet Code. So tell us about these ones ’cause they’re all three quite different, but very, very interesting storylines. So tell us about them.

Christine Wells:            Well, the latest one is The Juliet Code, which I happen to have right here. It’s set in World War II England and Paris, France. It’s about a wireless operator who is captured behind enemy lines and survives the war, but then afterwards, an SAS officer wants her to help him find his sister, who was also captured and was lost after the war. He wants to find her, dead or alive. And Juliet has her own secret that she doesn’t want to come out. So actually finding this girl who might reveal it is a difficult challenge for her.

Sarah Williams:            Brilliant.

Christine Wells:            The Traitor’s Girl is also set in World War II, and it’s about a woman who is employed as an agent provocateur, so she will test out the spy school students to see how discreet they are. But she’s got her own agenda because she’s trying to uncover a traitor in the midst of the secret service. So, this one was inspired by the Cambridge Four, the moles in the secret service who worked throughout the war but also afterwards into the Cold War. I read once that a barrister actually, a female lawyer who worked for MI5, was the only one this very famous traitor, Kim Philby, was worried would uncover him because she knew so much about the Russians. And I thought, what a great premise for a story. What if she did uncover the traitor? So, the lawyer and the agent provocateur work together to try to bring down this very clever and evil traitor.

Sarah Williams:            Fantastic. And then a few hundred years before, we’ve got The Wife’s Tale, which is a … it’s a dual timeline, too, isn’t it?

Christine Wells:            That’s right. In The Wife’s Tale, again we have a lawyer. Liz is Australian, and she is asked by her boss to prove that he is actually the true heir to an estate called Seagrove on the Isle of Wight in England. Of course, legally, he can’t reclaim the estate, but he just wants to prove that he’s the rightful heir. And so, she has to track down lots of clues in the past, and of course, then we flash back to the past to the inhabitants of Seagrove in the 18th century.

Christine Wells:            This story was actually inspired by a legal case. It’s a criminal conversation, actually, which we don’t have anymore. But it was a husband could sue his wife’s lover for damages because she was his chattel, and the lover had spoiled the goods. So, I just thought this was such an outrage, and the money that exchanged hands was huge. It could be 10 to 20,000 pounds, which was an absolute fortune in those days, and very prominent people were sued.

Christine Wells:            Actually, Lord Melbourne, the prime minister who is featured in the Victoria series that’s on television these days, he was sued for criminal conversation, and the woman he was sued for having an affair with was called Caroline Norton. She was an author, and her husband was really politically motivated to sue the prime minister because he wanted to bring down the government. But she was a very strong woman, and she was also an author. What made me so mad was that because she was married to this horrible man, he owned even the books she wrote. He had the copyright on them.

Christine Wells:            So, it made me so mad, and I had to write about it. So my character, Delany in the 18th century, is also a writer, so she has to go through one of these cases, and it’s very tough because in those days, you had no rights.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Yeah. I’m glad that’s not still around. That’s quite funny. Excellent. So how was it with writing the dual timelines? Is it a lot more research that goes into it? How do you go about it?

Christine Wells:            It’s a lot of research. There’s also a lot of piecing the scenes together. So, I used Scrivener for that. It’s great. It’s a software program for writers, and you can really see all of your scenes in a very pictorial form and move them around easily and color-code them and all of that sort of thing. But the research is very full-on for all of these. Because most of them, I was researching a new era to me, it took me a while to really feel comfortable writing in that era. But maybe, I think The Wife’s Tale took me about two years, and the others have taken a year each.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Brilliant. And they’re all traditionally published. Do they all have the same publishers?

Christine Wells:            Yes. They’re all with Penguin Australia and New Zealand. They’re only available in Australia and New Zealand at the moment, but I’m hoping for more territories.

Sarah Williams:            And they’re available on audio as well?

Christine Wells:            Yes. E-book and audio. The narrator who does the audio is fantastic. She’s a professional actor, and she does all the accents. She’s just brilliant. So, Jennifer Vuletic, who does all three of my books. She’s fabulous.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. Wonderful. Well, what are you working on at the moment, Christine?

Christine Wells:            I’m working on a new book that’s in the French Resistance. I can’t say too much about it at the moment. It’s a bit secret [squirrel 00:09:41]. Yes, it’ll be Paris, fashion, Resistance, really. I’m just really loving writing it at the moment.

Sarah Williams:            Yes. That’s awesome, and I love how so many of these historical fiction books that are coming out, yourself, Natasha Lester, and some others, the women are such strong, female leads. It’s fantastic to see at the moment.

Christine Wells:            Yeah. I love strong, female protagonists. That’s really my bag.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. That’s awesome.

Christine Wells:            [inaudible 00:10:16].

Sarah Williams:            That’s it. We like some kick-ass girls. Brilliant. So where can we find you online?

Christine Wells:            My website is christine-wells.com. I am on Twitter @ChristineWells0. I’m on Facebook, Christine Wells/author, I think it is. And Instagram as well. Anywhere you are, I’m probably there too.

Sarah Williams:            Excellent.

Sarah Williams:            So, I highly recommend everyone goes on and follows her, and if she’s coming to a library or a bookstore near you, go and say hi and have a chat. That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much, Christine. That was really fun.

Christine Wells:            Thanks, Sarah.