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Kelly Doust

Kelly Doust

Tag Archives: Fiction

Interview with Theresa Smith

07 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by kellydoust in Books & films, Inspirations, Writing

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Blog, Dressing the Dearloves, Fiction, Novels, Precious Things, Theresa Smith, Writing

Blogger and historical fiction enthusiast Theresa Smith recently interviewed me for her site – I thought I’d share the post here. Thank you so much, Theresa! x

Behind the Pen with Kelly Doust

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018 / THERESA SMITH WRITES

small kelly doust - credit amanda prior & ruby star traders1074011420..jpgI recently read the most gorgeous novel, Dressing the Dearloves, and is often the way, I absolutely had to dig deeper and ask the author for an interview. So today, I have great pleasure in welcoming Kelly Doust to Behind the Pen.

 

I really loved the style in which you told Dressing the Dearloves, with the different forms of writing providing an alternate context and/or perspective for the characters. What inspired you to tell the story in this multi-media way?

Thanks Tessa. Writing in different voices can be really fun and seems to bring a fresh energy to the story. Minette Walters sometimes used this device in her crime fiction, and I always thought it was a clever way to illustrate the story from various viewpoints. It’s tricky, because you need to not go overboard, but whenever I was feeling stuck in the writing of Dressing the Dearloves I wrote one of these intersecting pieces and it seemed to help the story flow again. Some did get cut in the final edit, though.

 

Do you have a favourite scene from Dressing the Dearloves? One that was more fun, or more emotional, or even more challenging, to write?

I enjoyed writing the scene between Sylvie and her friends in the bar at the beginning – it was exciting to bring the cast of characters together for the first time and create their relationships from scratch, because they were riffing off each other from the get-go. I also really loved writing the scenes between Sylvie and Nick, and teared up when writing a later part of the story where Sylvie has a long-overdue conversation with her dad. Sometimes the writer is surprised, too, by how the story plays out.

 

Dressing the Dearloves has such a wonderful bunch of characters in it. Were they all already a firm picture in your mind before you started writing or did some of them develop a personality of their own as the story progressed?

Not all of them – Lizzie, Victoria, Rose and Gigi were always going to be there and were part of my original plotting, but Sylvie, her parents and her friends evolved around them, and helped me to fall in love with the writing of it when Sylvie and Tabs became a big part of the present-day thread.

There’s lots of different ways to write a novel but with my first one, Precious Things, I actually wrote so much from a place of inspiration, but it made it difficult to wrangle the story when I had all these separate threads. With Dressing the Dearloves I started out with an overarching plotline, but the inspiration didn’t really come until I’d set up that framework and built all the characters’ interactions in layers over it, if that makes sense.

 

Now, let’s talk fashion. How did you come up with all of the amazing outfits and pieces that were described throughout the novel? What sort of research was involved in this creative process?

From years of obsession and too much shopping! Also, an almost scientific approach to what people are wearing. I just adore clothes, and I have to stop myself from letting descriptions of them take over the story.

In 2012 I published a book on vintage fashion called Minxy Vintage: how to customise and wear vintage clothes, and undertook a huge amount of research (and shopping) for that, learning all about the different eras of the twentieth century and how social change affected what people were wearing. So I drew from that, and all my visits to the Victoria & Albert museum in London, and the magazines I’ve been reading since I was twelve.

 

Moving on to my other area of interest from Dressing the Dearloves, to that of the ‘old English estate’. Did you tour any of these newly rebuilt estates for inspiration? Any favourites that stood out?

Lots. My family are members of the National Trust in the UK, and when I lived there (and whenever I visit every few years) we spend a good portion of time exploring old homes and estates. Last year we went to Montacute House in South Somerset, and that was brilliant. They have a needlework gallery and an outpost of the National Portrait Gallery London featuring Tudor artists in the style of Holbein… it’s absolute heaven. The gardens are gorgeous, too.

 

Where do you normally write? Is it in the same place every day or are you an all over the place writer?

All over the place and whenever I can. Usually at the kitchen table or in a café – yes, I’m that person sitting on a cup of tea for too long, tapping away at their laptop in the corner.

 

Are you balancing a different career with your writing? How do you go about making time for your writing within limited hours?

I also work as a book publisher, so I slot in my writing around that, but I work four days so tend to write on my day off and over the weekend. Also very early in the morning or late in the evening if need be… it’s not always easy to fit it in, but I’m a mum as well so very used to juggling.

 

How far has your writing career evolved from when you first began to write to what it is today? Is this in line with your initial expectations?

I don’t know about expectations, but it was always a dream to write full-time. I did that for maybe seven years, but I actually missed the day-to-day interactions with colleagues and was feeling too isolated and stuck inside my own head after a while. I’m always thinking about balance. Writing and working is good, and feels more fulfilling than the dream of being a full-time writer actually was in reality. Overall, my writing career hasn’t turned out the way I expected it to, but I’m content with the way it’s played out so far.

 

To finish up with, let’s keep it all about the fashion. If you could wear one pair of shoes for the rest of your life, what type are they and what colour?

Oh my goodness, just one?!? At the moment I’ve fallen completely in lust with a pair of pink leather Chloe boots with gold studs. But they wouldn’t be terribly practical for my entire life, would they? Probably my white Puma Baskets… I hope that’s not too much of a disappointment 😊

 

Thank you so much for joining me today Kelly!

You’re very welcome.


About Dressing the Dearloves:

y648 (9)2070598949..jpgOne crumbling grand manor house, a family in decline, five generations of women, and an attic full of beautiful clothes with secrets and lies hidden in their folds. Kelly Doust, author of Precious Things, spins another warm, glamorous and romantic mystery of secrets, love, fashion, families – and how we have to trust in ourselves, even in our darkest of days. One for lovers of Kate Morton, Belinda Alexandra, Fiona McIntosh and Lucy Foley.

Failed fashion designer Sylvie Dearlove is coming home to England – broke, ashamed and in disgrace – only to be told her parents are finally selling their once-grand, now crumbling country house, Bledesford, the ancestral home of the Dearlove family for countless generations.

Sylvie has spent her whole life trying to escape being a Dearlove, and the pressure of belonging to a family of such headstrong, charismatic and successful women. Beset by self-doubt, she starts helping her parents prepare Bledesford for sale, when she finds in a forgotten attic a thrilling cache of old steamer trunks and tea chests full of elaborate dresses and accessories acquired from across the globe by five generations of fashionable Dearlove women. Sifting through the past, she also stumbles across a secret which has been hidden – in plain sight – for decades, a secret that will change the way she thinks about herself, her family, and her future.

Romantic, warm, and glamorous, moving from Edwardian England to the London Blitz to present day London, Dressing the Dearloves is a story of corrosiveness of family secrets, the insecurities that can sabotage our best efforts, and the seductive power of dressing up.

Read my review here

And the new novel is… Dressing the Dearloves

23 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by kellydoust in Books & films, Writing

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Belinda Alexandra, Dressing the Dearloves, Fiction, HarperCollins, Novel

Excited to finally share with you the cover and blurb for my new novel, out in September with HarperCollins (what did I say here? PINK! Bisous, HarperCollins, and bisous to Belinda Alexandra for the kind cover quote).

About the book

Failed fashion designer Sylvie Dearlove is coming home to England – broke, ashamed and in disgrace – only to be told her parents are finally selling their once-grand, now crumbling country house, Bledesford, the ancestral home of the Dearlove family for countless generations.

Sylvie has spent her whole life trying to escape being a Dearlove, and the pressure of belonging to a family of such headstrong, charismatic and successful women. Beset by self-doubt, she starts helping her parents prepare Bledesford for sale, when she finds in a forgotten attic a thrilling cache of old steamer trunks and tea chests full of elaborate dresses and accessories acquired from across the globe by five generations of fashionable Dearlove women. Sifting through the past, she also stumbles across a secret which has been hidden – in plain sight – for decades, a secret that will change the way she thinks about herself, her family, and her future.

Romantic, warm, and glamorous, moving from Edwardian England to the London Blitz to present day London, Dressing the Dearloves is a story about the corrosiveness of family secrets, the insecurities that can sabotage our best efforts, and the seductive power of dressing up.

Kelly Doust, author of Precious Things, spins another warm, glamorous and romantic mystery of secrets, love, fashion, families – and how we have to trust in ourselves, even in our darkest of days. One for lovers of Kate Morton, Belinda Alexandra, Fiona McIntosh and Lucy Foley.

You can pre-order a copy here.

Fashion Meets Fiction Podcast

20 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by kellydoust in Books & films, Fashion, Inspirations, Publicity & events, Writing

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Fiction, Kimberley Foster, Podcasts, Vanessa Carnevale, Your Creative Life

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A few months back I was interviewed by Kimberley Foster for the Your Creative Life podcast. Please click here to listen to the interview on iTunes.

 

Culture Street article

29 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by kellydoust in Art, theatre & culture, Books & films, Fashion, Inspirations, Writing

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Culture Street, Fiction, Henrietta Moraes, Precious Things, Vintage

spanish-diamond-coronetDo you follow Culture Street? It’s a great site featuring reviews of the latest films and books, recipes, giveaways and interviews. I’m thrilled to be featured as their April Author of the Month, and wrote a short article recently about a few of the inspirations behind Precious Things which I thought I’d share with you here:

Desire, marriage and writing fiction

Clothes – particularly vintage and antique ones – are my weakness. I’ve always been intrigued by their history and am constantly fascinated by what we wear and why. That’s why I decided to write a novel about an antique French collar. Precious Things tells the story of the women who wore this special piece; those who created it, loved it and lost it over the course of more than a hundred years, and the crucial events it witnessed in their lives. There’s also a modern-day heroine who, like me, finds herself intrigued by the beaded collar’s mysterious past.

Let me explain: an antique travel trunk covered in peeling labels looking worn and scuffed around the edges isn’t just a rusty, damaged item that’s seen better days. To me it brings to mind tumultuous sea journeys, the smell of salt and gulls cawing, as well as the image of a fetching skirt suit worn to stroll a cruise ship’s upper decks. Or a stiff snakeskin purse with a long-ago tram ticket tucked inside its inner pocket – where was the woman who owned it going that day? Did she meet her lover for lunch, visit a gallery, or find herself fidgeting nervously in a job interview? This is what I mean; I love how old things give us a tantalising glimpse into other people’s lives – lives we can only dream of.

As I started to think about it more carefully, I realised I wanted to write a sweeping, romantic story that took in many generations of women and covered the significant eras of the twentieth century. I started envisaging how the collar – which is later transformed into a headpiece or a ‘coronet’, as I like to think of it – might have come into the various women’s lives.

A Francis Bacon portrait of Henrietta Moraes

A Francis Bacon portrait of Henrietta Moraes

My favourite part was researching the historical sections. I chose some of my favourite times and places, and my imagination was sparked by long-held passions and what I was seeing or reading at the time. For example, Bella – my 1950s goddess and artist’s muse – came from my love of Fellini’s 1960 film, La Dolce Vita, and the film’s star, Anita Ekberg who was famously pictured gambolling in the Trevi Fountain. Bella’s character was fleshed out for me when I saw an exhibition of Francis Bacon’s artworks. I wanted to feature an artist of some sort in the book, but when I read about Bacon’s muse, Henrietta Moraes, it got me thinking about what kind of world Bella might operate in. Henrietta worked as an artist’s model and became the inspiration for many artists of the Soho scene in the 1950s and 1960s. She was also known for her marriages, love affairs and hedonistic lifestyle, which saw her ending up in Holloway Prison after a failed burglary attempt.

There are other instances in the book where I wove in real-life events and embellished them to enrich the narrative. They say you should write what you love and that’s exactly what I did. I’ve visited each of the cities described – Istanbul, New York, Rome and Shanghai – and used to live in London, so there was also a huge element of nostalgia at play as I slipped into those different places in history and imagined the drama of what my characters were experiencing. Unfortunately my current home (Sydney) doesn’t get a mention, but I’m thinking of remedying that in novel two!

Why write?

13 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by kellydoust in Art, theatre & culture, Books & films, Inspirations, Writing

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Children's books, Fiction, Imagination

A still from Sydney Dance Company's recent performance, Louder than Words (costumes by Dion Lee)

Sydney Dance Company‘s Louder than Words, performed at Sydney Theatre. Costumes by Dion Lee.

Someone asked me recently why I wanted to write a novel. Not an unusual thing to ask, but it stumped me for a bit. Because at this stage of the process, when most of the writing is done and it’s now a case of editing and polishing and trying to make the book the best it can be, it’s easy to get caught up in outcomes and lose sight of this central question, which is of course the most important one of all.

Why?

Ever since I was small – about five or six from memory – I was enthralled by the people and places authors created from their imagination. With those books I loved the most, I so very desperately wanted them to be true… each found a way to affect and remake me profoundly, not unlike certain people I’ve met over the course of my life. Somehow these characters reside in me still. Michael Ende’s Momo, the Narnia children, Frodo Baggins and Roald Dahl’s BFG. Anne of Green Gables and Moonface from the Magic Faraway Tree. The Famous Five and Owen Meany, and the strange worlds of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. As a child I lived in a sort of half-place between reality and imagination (the way most children do) wishing these people could escape from the pages and invade my own world the way Bastian found in The Neverending Story, or that I could escape into theirs. I wanted all my books to be ‘dangerous’ in this way, until one day – probably during my mid to late teens – I forgot to wish for such things.

I can tell you now, decades later, that reading has always been a way of connecting with that same sense of childish wonder and delight. Along with forays into other art forms like illustration and dance, film and music – or a trip to Cirque du Soleil – it’s the best way for me to recapture it. That another person can make us feel this way through their writing is amazing, don’t you think? It’s a small miracle, and I want in!

The same person who asked me this question the other day also said; ‘books are powerful, they change lives’. Of course she’s right, and no writer should wield this power lightly. It’s taken me a few days, but I have an answer for her (which is why I’m so rubbish in exam situations – I need time to ponder these things).

I want to take readers on a journey, and make them delight in wondrous things. To make a connection, and leave a lasting impression. Because we are all essentially the same underneath, and narrative is everything.

I would like to tell you a story…

Kelly Doust

IT’S COMING!

Next book publishedNovember 5, 2019
The Power Age, Published by Murdoch Book

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