Fiona McIntosh in Tasmania with Captain Charlie Nash

I've chosen this cottage for Charlie and his daughter to live in Richmond, Tasmania.

I'm 50,000 words into the new book for you, which you'll be able to enjoy in 2025. And as most of you who keep up with my news know, this is the continuation of the story of Captain Charlie Nash who broke our hearts in The Champagne War. Actually I feel responsible for breaking his heart but can I say again that I don't plan my books so when tough things occur I just blame my characters.

Me in Richmond, Tasmania one glorious morning
researching where the Nash family lives.

We left Charlie at a particular time of loss and dismay. He was a character who had been punished so much through the story and just when it felt like he could build a life that was happy it all fell to pieces and yes, I felt dreadful but I've learned over the years to leave it how it comes out. I believe very firmly in instinct and I write based on instinct so as it arrives is how I accept the story must go and that the characters are driving the direction.

Anyway, I set out with great gusto for 1919 when Charlie is home and officially demobbed. He hung around in northern France after leaving Epernay to help out with the clearing parties that were essentially chasing back the straggler Germans and also locating as many fallen Allied soldiers and marking where they fell, identifying them for families, etc.

But the story gets going in the late 1920s. Anyway, I was going gangbusters until I realised with no little dismay that I had calculated my era entirely wrong and Charlie's daughter, who is the other important character in this story, is too young. I needed to grow her up fast. And it was only then that I realised I had no choice but to tiptoe into World War II with Charlie. I'd hoped to avoid it but no chance if I want his child to be an adult and be able to do what I need her to do.

So suddenly I had to dig out all my old reference books that I used for The Pearl Thief, etc, and start re-studying the later years of WWII to understand the era in which I find these new characters immersed. I felt quite cranky at first with myself for being such a dullard but once I got back into that era and realised how fascinating it is and that Charlie could also now legitimately have a reason for returning to France, it instantly opened up the world of the story.

I had no idea he would ever make it back. He's a middle aged man now remember, and late forties/early fifties back in the thirties felt much older than it does today and how we regard our middle age when children are grown, etc. Anyway, I am now admitting to loving my own mistake and where it has catapulted me and this story. Horrid old Hitler is back in my life and Charlie is under new pressures.

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