Welcome to another Weekend Read. This week’s featured book is the historical fiction novel, The Miller’s Bride by award-winning author Liz Harris. Liz has dropped by to tell us more about her book and her writing life. So grab a cuppa, get cosy and let’s get chatting to Liz.
BLURB
Scotland, 1885
Grace McLeod’s life changes overnight when her father sells the family grocer’s shop and moves the family from their Highland village to a distant fishing town. But Grace refuses to follow.
Desperate to maintain her independence, she reluctantly agrees to an arranged marriage to Angus MacKenzie – a stranger who makes it clear he doesn’t want her, and who is in love with another woman.
When Grace arrives at the mill she now must call home, she finds herself entangled in a web of deceit and ambition. Unknown to her, Angus’s cousin is plotting to take over the mill and destroy her marriage from within, and he’s enlisted Angus’s former lover to help him.
As secrets and sabotage threaten to ruin everything Grace has tried to build, she must decide whether to fight for a life she never wanted – or walk away with nothing.
A sweeping, emotionally rich saga set about betrayal, resilience, and a woman brave enough to demand more.
BUYING LINK: https://mybook.to/MillersBride
Welcove to my blog Liz. Have you always wanted to be a writer?
No, I haven’t. In fact, it didn’t occur to me to write a novel for a number of years. I’ve always loved reading, and I’ve always loved writing – I even enjoyed writing answers to exam questions! But I had never thought of combining those two interests until one day a friend of mine with a busy life, recipient of yet another lengthy tome containing the minutiae of my existence, told me with a certain weariness that I really should write a book. So I did.
What do you like writing most?
I love recent history. By that I mean the 19th century and more recently. I also love setting books in distant places.
If the setting is somewhere I’ve never been, I go to the area for research. For example, for my five novels set in Asia in the 1930s, the first of which was Darjeeling Inheritance, I twice visited India and also went to Vietnam.
The three Linford sagas, which were re-published this year by Boldwood Books, are set in the UK, US and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. The first of those is A Daughter’s Courage.
The sagas I’m writing at the moment, The House of McLeod, the first of which is The Miller’s Bride, are set in Scotland in 1885. Last year I went on a research trip to Scotland, the first time I’d ever been there. I loved it!
Are you a pantster or a plotter?
I think most authors are probably a little of both.
The first three chapters of a novel are meant to establish the genre and set the tone of the book. They also introduce the main characters and the sub-plot, if there is one, and set the story in motion. It must be quite difficult to write three chapters if you don’t know where the story will be going.
I’ve often likened a novel to a train. You know the station from which the train will set off on its journey, and you know its destination. You know also the larger stations on the route, but not the smaller ones. You’ll come to know the smaller stations when you write the book and stand in the shoes of your characters, think as they think, react to events as they’d react.
What are you writing at the moment?
I’m writing three sagas set in Scotland 1885 for Boldwood Books. The first of the novels, The Miller’s Bride, is published on 27th May. The second, The Mariner’s Daughter, will be published in November this year. The Dressmaker’s Girl, which I’ve just started writing, will be published in May 2027. The series is called The House of McLeod.
What inspired you to write these books?
I have a lovely Scottish daughter-in-law, Scottish co-grandparents and two half-Scottish grandchildren, but I had never been to Scotland although I’d been hoping to go for a while.
I had just finished writing Jaipur Moon, which had taken me to India, and was wondering where to set the next novel. I wanted it to be in a place I’d enjoy visiting for purposes of research and pleasure, and to be closer to home for once.
The time for me to visit Scotland had arrived!
I started to think about a date for the story. When I looked at Scotland’s history and the variety of locations it offered, I felt that 1885 would give me scope for three books.
The Miller’s Bride is set in a village in central Scotland, The Mariner’s Daughter in a fishing village on the east coast, and The Dressmaker’s Girl in Edinburgh.
What are your hobbies?
It won’t surprise you from what I mentioned above that I love travelling, and also reading. I read a number of different genres, but not fantasy or sci-fi. The cinema, theatre and cryptic crosswords are also high on the list. When I met Colin Dexter, the writer of Inspector Morse, at a party in Oxford we bonded over a shared love of cryptic crosswords, and he gave me a book he’d written called Cracking Cryptic Crosswords. He also asked to endorse The Road Back which he read, and his words ‘A splendid love story, so beautifully told’ are on the cover.
What advice would you give to other writers?
You cannot edit a blank sheet. Get your ideas down, and then you’ll have something to shape. Don’t worry about getting published: just write.
It’s a difficult market, and I would advise writers to send the completed novel for a professional critique before they send it to an agent or publisher. No one would want to send out a book in their name that wasn’t the best it could be. It would waste a golden opportunity with an agent or publisher, and if you self-publish, you could lose readers who might otherwise have looked for your later books.
It’s impossible to read what you’ve written – everyone reads what they think they’ve written, but that’s not necessarily what’s on the page. A good critique, based on what you’ve written, is the best way to improve your writing skills, and to ensure that the novel is the best you can get it. For that, you need independent eyes that know what they’re doing. That rules out your mother!
If you receive rejections, it’s tempting to fiddle with the novel after each one. At a certain point, however, you should leave the novel alone or you risk destroying its heart and your voice, and you should start on the next novel, but keep on sending out the first.
In the end, it’s a matter of luck whether an author gets published. Hopefully, everyone will be as lucky as I’ve been, but giving birth to people who didn’t exist before you put finger to keyboard, people with emotions, who live and breathe in a world that didn’t exist before you created it – that’s the real thrill. Getting published is merely the icing on the cake. Thank you for reading my
Meet Liz
BIO
Liz Harris is an award-winning author of 28 novels, including emotional and heartwarming sagas that are perfect for fans of Dilly Court, Rosie Goodwin, Rachel Brimble and AnneMarie Brear.
Her latest series of sagas, The House of McLeod, is set in Scotland in the 1880s, and was a joy to research for someone who loves to travel, as Liz does, as it involved Liz going up to beautiful Scotland for several weeks and staying in Central Scotland, Fife and Edinburgh, where the three books are set.
After graduating in Law in the UK, Liz moved to California where she led a varied life – from cocktail waitressing on Sunset Strip to secretary to the CEO of a large Japanese trading company. Upon returning to England, she completed a degree in English and then taught in a secondary school for a number of years before developing her writing career.
Liz now lives in Windsor, Berkshire. Her two sons have fled the nest, and now have families of their own. In what free time she has, which isn’t much, she loves to travel, go to the theatre and cinema, do cryptic crosswords, and above all, to lose herself in a novel!
Contact Links
Twitter Handle: @lizharrisauthor
BlueSky: @lizharris.bsky.social
Instagram Handle: liz.harris.52206
Website: https://lizharrisauthor.com
Facebook: Liz Harris https://www.facebook.com/lizharrisauthor/
More of Liz’s Books
Karen King 