• When did you sense the time was right to begin writing novels?

I began writing novels in my late 40s, when the kids had flown the roost, reducing the demand on my time, and when the family income was stable enough not to require two full-time wage earners.


• What spurred you to write a novel in the Gothic suspense genre?

The combination of gothic and mystery/suspense elements came fairly easily to me. From my earliest years, mysteries were my choice of reading, starting with Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and then on to historical fiction and nonfiction. As we are advised to write what we know, my choice of genre was always going to be historical fiction, which allowed me to indulge my love of research with the challenge of crafting tight, mystery plots. Gothic suspense influencers include Daphne Du Maurier (Jamaican Inn, Rebbecca, My Cousin Rachel), Victoria Holt (too many to name), and Carlos Ruis Zafón (Shadow of the Wind and sequels), writers who impart a brooding darkness to their stories, where the location and often a dwelling, combined with a family secret, play their part in creating that Gothic vibe. Classics influencers include Sir Author Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series and Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White, The Moonstone). Authors Agatha Christie, M. M. Kaye (Far Pavillions, Trade Winds), and Mary Stewart (My Brother Micheal, Wildfire at Midnight, etc.) introduced me to who-done-its and romantic suspense in foreign climes. Contemporary author influencers include Kate Morton (The Forgotten Garden, Homecoming, etc.) and Jane Johnson (The Tenth Gift, The Sultan’s Wife, etc.)


• What made you set the story as seen through the eyes of a young boy? And how did you recalibrate your authorial perspective to write from Joe’s point of view?

Gender was determined by the need for my narrator to be that fly on the wall, to be anywhere and everywhere, a freedom that girls back then and even today in many cultures still do not have. Earlier readers contested the choice of a young narrator. However, something kept telling me he had to be young, specifically on the brink of adolescence, one foot still in childhood, the other stepping into adulthood, with that loss of innocence mirrored in Joe’s character arc. As for choosing the son of a housekeeper, as opposed to one of the sisters as was suggested by some, I wanted that essence of the ‘Other Side of History,’ a story told by the lay people instead of from the aristocratic colonials whose voices have rung loud and clear through history, subverting the fact that all have a story to tell, that all have their own truths.

Writing from a young boy’s point of view was not as complicated as I thought it would be. I was force-fed stories of my older brothers’ shenanigans from a young age and grew up wishing I’d had the freedom to wreak similar havoc. It seemed easy enough to channel those stories into Joe’s experiences. Joe and Kermitt’s bamboo-bursting escapade in the forest was pure fiction but heavily influenced by some of my brothers’ pyrotechnic exploits.


• Which ideas for the novel first entered your consciousness?

Place always comes first for me. After reading a historical fiction that started in Barbados but which did not transport me to the island, I felt I was ready to meet the challenge of writing a novel that would transport the reader to my home country. I chose the turn of the 20th century when the local population first started gaining access to higher education, setting the stage for the eventual handover from colonial rule to self-governance. Never having lived in a city and preferring the outdoors, choosing an estate as a setting for the novel was easy. With the choice being either sugar or cocoa, the fact that I knew next to nothing about sugar production but had a nodding acquaintance with cocoa made that decision an easy one. The location was always going to be the northern range, as again, write what you knew, and it was the region of Trinidad where I grew up. A video on the Ortinola cocoa estate influenced the choice of the Maracas Valley. This decision was further reinforced by the fact that it was where my mother’s family had lived for generations and that I’d spent the first seven years of my life in the St. Joseph area. As these decisions were being made, I was put in contact with an earlier-generation French Creole patriarch, whose detailed memories of his family’s past played a part in establishing some of the history of my fictional Cadett family. After that, the rest is my own twisted imagination, greatly influenced by the disquieting first few months of the Covid pandemic.


• Did you enjoy researching the flora and fauna detailed in the story?

I did, though much of the flora and fauna in Palmyra was based on my experiences growing up on the island and studying biology and zoology in school. I was also a birder from my early teens and influenced my father to pick up the hobby and apply his photographic skills, culminating in his publishing a book titled Birds of Trinidad and Tobago: A Photographic Atlas by Russell Barrow. So, no, I am not the first published author in my family.


• What specific challenges did you encounter while writing this time period? What surprises lay in wait for you?

Fact-checking is one of the biggest challenges of writing historical fiction. You will never get it all right, as there are different truths depending on who tells the story, and as different sources can have different facts, you need to cross-check as much as possible. I was lucky in choosing the period I did, as there are lots of photographic resources from that era. One excellent resource was The Book of Trinidad by Gerard Besson and Bridgit Brereton, a picture book of times past, which provided details of what people wore, hairstyles, past times, and much more. Another happy surprise was finding Child of the Tropics: Victorian Memoirs by Yseult Bridges, which was very helpful in describing life in the capital city, Port of Spain, in the late 1800s. The book is remarkable for being a published memoir written by a female, albeit a privileged Creole, there not being many examples of works like that at the time. Another surprise was finding a poem penned in the mid-1800s by another French Creole female that appears in The Book of Trinidad, which laments the fate of women only to be viewed as wives and mothers, with no consideration of their dreams and aspirations, which laid the groundwork for the creation of Isabelle’s character.


• Was there a point when you considered abandoning or changing the plot? Or did you start and end as planned?

For the most part, I stuck to my plot, though the details, including that surprising ending, came to me as the book evolved. I am halfway between a plotter and a pantser (writing speak). I have a rough outline for where the story will go, the characters, etc., but then I let the creative juices flow as I write.


• "Perhaps this was part of your plan all along, to take by guile what could never be yours by birthright." During a particularly heated moment in the novel, these words are uttered as invective between two intimate characters. Can you share the process of writing this interplay of ambition versus tradition in the novel, a world where men may forge their own paths but buck up against a solid, established status quo?

The interplay of ambition versus tradition crops up in various forms throughout the novel, whether it’s Isabelle’s desire to own and run Palmyra in her own right as a woman; Charles's desire to be an engineer versus taking over the management of Palmyra after the death of his older brother; or Robbie’s desire to have what would have been his if he’d been born on the ‘right side of the blanket.’ In these examples, we see patriarchal rule, the tradition of birth order in determining who inherits, and a class system where the legitimacy of birth determines one’s future. Other examples include the restriction of the number of scholarships to underprivileged boys (girls need not apply) and the plight of the hated overseer, whose position Robbie takes, a man who has the right colour but is not of the right class.


• Now that you’ve published a successful mystery novel, are you inspired to write more in that genre? Perhaps set in other places you have lived and worked?

Yes, stay tuned, as I am working on other mystery-based novels. However, my travels, as opposed to places I have lived and worked, influence my writing, Palmyra being a notable exception. But while Trinidad will always be ‘home,’ the fact that I left several decades ago at age eighteen has meant that with the march of time, I now often feel like a visitor to my birth country.