Blog Tour: Interview with Cora Harrison (Debutantes)

I’m pleased to welcome Cora Harrison to So Many Books, So Little Time as part of her blog tour for Debutantes, published by Pan Macmillan on August 2^nd.

1.    Is there a specific time or place you do your best writing in?

Yes, I am a morning person, and that means that I usually do my best writing first thing in the morning. I get up, shower, dress and take my dog Lily for a run in the fields around my cottage. And then I have my breakfast, take an apple, go into my study, switch on the computer and start work while munching my apple. By the time the apple is finished and Lily is eating the core, I am well into my story. I try to do about 2000 words in the morning.

2.    If you were only allowed to take three books to a desert island, what would they be? Why?

I think that I would have to take very thick and large books as I am a very fast reader. So I would take the collected works of Shakespeare – lot of reading in them! Then for my second choice I would take my favourite Dickens book which is ‘Bleak House’ – I could read that hundreds of times and still find new things to pause over – and the third book would be the Oxford book of poetry – by the time I got to the end of that it would be time to start all over again..

3.    Is there a novel you wish you’d written?

Harry Potter.

4.    What is it about the 1920s that made you want to write in that era?

Well, that’s an easy question – The poet Wordsworth says: ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!’

 It was a wonderful time for young people who suddenly had their own style of dressing, their own music, jazz, and their own amusements which older people very much disapproved of.

5.    Which of the Derrington girls did you enjoy writing about the most?

I think I enjoyed Rose the most as she is very witty and very funny and I loved making up the humorous newspaper headlines that she invented.

6.    Do you have an interest in photography and film-making like Daisy?

I have a great ambition to make a film and nowadays that is so much easier with digital cameras. I don’t think I would have been very good with dark rooms and dipping film into chemicals.

7.    Are you working on anything at the moment? Can you tell me anything about it?

I would like to pick up the lives of Violet, Poppy, Daisy and Rose a year later and see how everything is working out for them. Will Violet become a film star? Will Daisy achieve her dream to make a famous film? What about Poppy, and her friend Baz? How will things work out for them? And Rose? Will she really become a writer, or is it just a childish dream which she will grow out of? And what about the fortunes of the Derrington family? Will the Earl’s money troubles come to a head? And if so, what will happen to the family home and estate, the beautiful Beech Grove Manor?

Thank you to Cora and Macmillan for providing me with a review copy and organising the interview. Read my review for a taste of Debutantes.

Sophie