Interview with Amanda Geard - Author of ‘The Midnight House’

The Midnight House By Amanda Geard

What authors are saying about Amanda’s new novel!

'Secrets that kept me glued to the pages and wonderful characters' JENNY ASHCROFT
'I was pulled in from page one. It's beautiful and I love it' LIZ FENWICK
'Intriguing, evocative and beautifully written' TRACY REES
'Brimming with lush historical detail' HAZEL GAYNOR

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Pubisher: Headline Review , Hachette Australia

Released May 10th, 2022. Available at all your favourite bookstores

‘A literary feast for the senses and imagination…’ Link to my review. 

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INTERVIEW

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Welcome to my website, Amanda! Thanks for being my guest author today. Let’s talk about your new novel The Midnight House and what inspired you to write it?

Firstly, thanks for having me on the blog, Cindy! And for your wonderful review of my debut The Midnight House, through it I could sense your own love of Ireland, and my own passion for the country was the basis of my inspiration to write it.

The novel is part historical, part contemporary, and part mystery, and I like to think the whole narrative is wrapped in a love letter to County Kerry. It centres on the disappearance of a woman, Lady Charlotte Rathmore, from her Anglo-Irish manor house in the 1940s, and the disgraced journalist who unravels the mystery eighty years later. We watch Charlotte’s family grapple with the disappearance – and the consequences of it – during the 1950s, and meet them years later in 2019.

The inspiration for The Midnight House appeared in the rafters of our home, a two-hundred-year-old stone building perched on the edge of the Atlantic. Hidden there, scratched into wood were these words: 'When this comes down, pray for me. Tim O’Shea 1911'. What a message from the past! I started to think about that message a lot, and it became the basis for Ellie’s discovery of Charlotte’s letter between the pages of a book picked up from a charity shop.

Can you tell us a bit about Charlotte Rathmore and how she was created?

People joke about characters living in a writer’s head rent free, but the heroine of The Midnight House, Charlotte Rathmore, appeared one day out of the blue, moved in uninvited and made herself comfortable. It was while I was working overseas as a geologist, a modern nomad, never long enough in one place to hang my hat. But she always came with me: the young woman standing by a lake, her long skirt waving in the gentle breeze (was there a tang of salt in the air?), a battered suitcase in her hand. I wondered who she was. Where she was going. The landscape was hazy, just that lake, inky blackness, and a sense that the coat she wore – too big – wasn’t her own. It seemed she planned to run away, but from what or to where I did not know … until I moved to County Kerry.

Describe the setting and atmosphere of The Midnight House and how it powers the story? And why did you tell your story over three timelines?

The Midnight House’s key setting (County Kerry) is one of the novel’s central protagonists; I see it outside my window as I write and I love the way it looks and feels, the way that history seeps into the corner of every field, and into the stones of every building. In Kerry, I think, truth is hidden beneath many layers: history piled onto folklore, intertwined with landscape. As I was writing The Midnight House, I cleared my mind with icy dips in the sea under the shadows of an abbey, then walked home past towering stones that stood sentry in the fields. My neighbours are layered too. They go to Mass but never look at a new moon through glass. Even our young friends said they’d heard the banshee wail: at first, I thought they were teasing, but a few whiskeys later I realised they were not. I love that sense of vast histories stretching back generations, their imprints left on the land and those to come. This is why I chose to write the book over three timelines – I wanted to capture the way in which the past weaves with the present everywhere we look.

Please use three words each to describe Ellie, Charlotte, Hattie and Nancy?

Ellie: damaged, resilient, dogged

Charlotte: determined, passionate, surprising

(Young) Hattie: open-hearted, inquisitive, yearning

Nancy: loyal, resolute, brave

Who is your favourite male character in The Midnight House and what is special about him?

I love Jules – he adds a certain lightness (in his Argyle jumpers and with his unquenchable enthusiasm), but my heart breaks for both Tomas and Albert, each deserved better in life, and the tragedy surrounding their arcs (I won’t use spoilers) is devastating. I’m going to sit on the fence on this one!

What are the main themes in The Midnight House?

The Midnight House isn’t just a story of war, love and sacrifice, as the blurbs says, it is also a tale of home – and what it means to leave one, to find one. I think, in many ways, it twins with my belief that home isn’t a place we are born, or live, but it is something we’re searching for our whole lives, something we create, or we go back to. Each character, in The Midnight House, grapples in their own way with what it means to be home.

Which scene was the hardest to write and what obstacles did you need to overcome?

In the final draft I added ‘to the page’ the death of a key character (no spoilers!), where previously we hadn’t seen the moment they slipped away. I was in floods of tears, and I realised that I had previously left the death scene out because I couldn’t face writing it. Very cowardly! My editor had convinced me that the reader needed to see that moment, and – as I’ve had many messages about it since – they were most certainly right.

Please provide an overview of your writing journey to publication?

I’ve always been a voracious reader, and wrote extensively at school, but I’d never put writing and job together in my mind. When I moved to Ireland, something clicked. Everywhere I looked there was a story. It started with a few articles, then a couple of short stories, and when one – Not Yet Recycled – was published in The Irish Times I thought perhaps I should continue on with the writing and a month or so later, in June 2019 I saw a flier for Listowel Writer’s Week. I had no idea what a writers’ festival was, but I went along and watched Patricia O’Reilly speak about The First Rose of Tralee and at the end an audience member asked a question about their own manuscript. Their manuscript! I realised then that I was surrounded by writers – they all looked pretty normal – and there was no reason I couldn’t be one too. I went home and pulled apart my favourite novels, tabbing the point-of-views and settings. I made spreadsheets. I tried to discover how commercial novels worked. Then I planned one, sat down, and wrote it. It took four months or so; I wrote in the mornings from 5am-8am, then started on my job.

Do you have a favourite place, room or natural setting where you like to write?

Generally, I write in my office on a desk which faces the wall (so as not to get distracted), but I’m not opposed to writing in all kinds of places. I’ve written in the car (as a passenger!), on planes, in waiting rooms, on my phone in a queue. It can be all too easy to wait for the right time and place (and the muse) to descend, but ultimately life gets in the way and I need to carve out whatever time I can to get words on the page.

Have you always wanted to be a writer? Was there a special event, a novel, or an author that sparked the desire in you?

I have always loved reading, and I think that is something that most writers share – a love of story, a love of being transported, a love of living different lives vicariously and seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. I’ve always dabbled in writing, but it wasn’t really until that moment at Listowel Writers’ Week that I seriously considered penning a novel. Some of my favourite contemporary authors are Kate Morton, Eve Chase and Tracy Rees so I naturally gravitated towards multi-timeline fiction; I adore reading stories that cross the generations and consider the link between past and present.

Are there any physical activities or hobbies you enjoy to refresh your body, spirit and imagination?

I can often be found walking County Kerry’s hills with our two red setters; fantastic inspiration can be discovered in wild places. If I’m really stuck, and my muse has gone on holiday, nothing beats the ‘go-to’ shelf that every writer should have – books that inspired them to write in the first place, or guides to the craft itself. I recommend On Writing by Stephen King and Into The Woods by John Yorke. Also writing podcasts fulfil the same role for me; a favourite of mine is Writer’s Routine – I always pick up ideas and inspiration from the author interviews.

Are you working on a new fiction project and, if so, can you share a little about it?

I’m currently writing my second book The Moon Gate, another triple timeline mystery also exploring sacrifice and love (and that ever present theme of home). It’s set it across hemispheres, from the wilds of Tasmania to bustling modern-day London and with, of course, a snippet of County Kerry thrown in for good measure. The novel opens with the discovery of a satchel that changes everything Libby Andrews knows about her long-lost father and the towering old house she recalls from childhood, shrouded in mist, and flanked by a moon gate, under which many have walked before … one who never returned.

This new book has a similar feel to The Midnight House, so for readers who enjoyed that, I think you’ll love The Moon Gate … and I absolutely can’t wait to share it with you!

Thanks again, Amanda for sharing all the wonderful background on your novel and writing journey. We wish you much success on The Midnight House and look forward to The Moon Gate!

Visit Amanda’s website for more information on her writing.

Plus:

Ireland during the War: (Independent. ie)

My Slush Pile Story: (writing.ie magazine)

Some of Amanda’s feature articles

Arthritis Ireland (a written and video feature on living with ankylosing spondylitis)

Photo by Cindy L Spear of Amanda Geard’s new novel.