Louise Harwood
Louise Harwood has penned novels such as Six Reasons to Stay a Virgin, Lucy Blue and Where Are You? And is back with her new book Kiss Like You Mean It.
I caught up with the author to talk about the new book, which mixes the modern movie industry with World War I and what lies ahead.
- Your new book is Kiss Like You Mean It so can you tell me a little bit about it?
Basically in the First World War they had the first moving movie cameras, as in filming with moving film rather than moving stills, a few very very brave young camera men went out onto the Western Front and started filming the soldiers, lived with them, ran with them into gunfire and died with them.
This wonderful footage was brought back of what it was like during the war and I was reading up about that and was wondering how it could possibly get moved into a chick flick, rom com.
I wanted to do something with a strong historical angle to it and what I came up with was to use this character Ambrose March, who is a camera man, and then have this modern Hollywood movie company making a film about him. So a hundred years later you have a Hollywood bad boy, gorgeous hero playing the part of this incredible serious World War One cameraman.
Rory is fantastic on set and playing the part brilliantly well but off set he is causing havoc amongst the make-up girls and wrecking the prospects of the film, to the point where it looks like it might all completely collapse. And so out make-up artist Ella has to step in and sort him in.
- So where did the inspiration for the story and the characters come from?
First of all I was wanting to do a war artist, which is how they had always used to depict the battles; they would have people painting out there. Because battles were moving so much faster they were superseded by stills cameramen and then moving cameramen.
It's funny with inspiration like that I just had an image of a cameraman being filmed by modern day cameras and the book just grew out of that. I don't really know how I just always find that I start with a scene, write that and then just allow everything else to gain momentum behind it.
- The movie mixes the First World War and the movie industry so what kind of research did you do for the book?
I had a fantastic day following make-up artist Jenny Shircore, who has just won a Bafta for her work on The Young Victoria, and they happened to be filming The Young Victoria when I was writing the book.
So through a friend of a friend of a friend I managed to meet someone who as working on the film and she asked Jenny if she would mind if I sat in the trailer for a day, she had to check with Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend because they were being made up that day.
They didn't mind, which was very nice, and so I just crept in at about six o'clock in the morning and just sat in the corner. It was brilliant, just the best day; it was like being in an incredibly glamorous hairdressers (laughs).
- So what did you learn about the role of a make-up artist and how did you find watching Jenny Shircore?
Well I learnt that they are incredibly brilliant at their jobs and technically, without thinking, the hair person, who is this young man, could just roll and twirl and twist in five seconds and make it looking stunning, in a way that if I tried to do it on somebody it would be like The Generation Game (laughs).
The skill that they have without even thinking about it lifts them to such a level. And they do so much research for it, with The Young Victoria they had thought and discussed for months about what she would look like and what colours they would use and they have a very close relationship with wardrobe which helps bring the look together. They are just so talented!
- Did you do any research into the First World War?
I did and I asked Jenny, she had Rupert Friend with hair pieces and moustaches suitable for Albert, and I was asking her how she would make up a First World War soldier and she was suggesting/imagining the make-up artist and the actor and how tactile it is and how much prodding and touching and stroking, if you have this incredibly handsome man sat in front of you how brilliant that you had to stroke his face (laughs).
She was imagining that a First World War was quite thick and bristly and it would be forever coming off and you would be forever having to press around his lips to put it back on again.
So she gave me funny tips like that.
Otherwise I did quite a lot online and looked at various make-up schools going on and I read quite a lot of books about film and stage make-up. But the best stuff all came from this day.
They had all these bottles of different types of blood gooey blood, sticky blood, runny blood, fresh blood and old blood; old blood looks very different to new blood and a gunshot wound looks very different to a stab.
- And how did you get into writing in the first place?
Well I started off as a secretary in a literary agents but knew that I wanted to work in publishing. So I moved across after a couple of years into Random House Publishers, stayed there for about four years where I became a commissioning editor.
I was buying commercial fiction, young romantic comedies and that sort of thing, and. maybe it's inevitable, but there came a point when I just thought I really want a go and try to be on the other side.
It took me a few more years after I left there but it got to the point where I was sat in front of the computer and I just thought I'm not leaving until I have written chapter one (laughs).
And then I just got really lucky because it was a good time to be writing the sort of thing that I was writing because there were a lot of urban books about London girls and I wrote a very rural book about girls growing up in a farming community and I think it came at the right time. I wasn't expecting it to work really I was just getting it out of my system.
- How does the writing process work for you?
I think it's seeing a scene and hoping that it moves into a narrative and becomes a book, quite often they don't and you have this great scene and you can't use it, but certainly with the first one I wrote I just had this image of these two girls walking up a high street in a Welsh town in the pouring rain, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and then these four incredibly gorgeous boys were walking towards them. I didn't know who they were or what they were doing there but it just moved from that.
And this one, again, I wanted to do something about the film industry and the balance between this cameraman and modern day Hollywood and it just grew from that.
- And what do you get out of writing on a personal level?
I get a real sense of achievement when I finish them. I get a sense of 'why can't I be more disciplined?' (laughs), I get a 'Why am I so disorganised feeling quite a lot. It's a lovely moment when you see it completed and you see the finished copy, if you like your cover.
And I do really enjoy living though my characters that are all setting out on their first big love. It's a decision that you have to make, especially in this market, whether you grow up with your readers or whether you keep re-inventing.
Some writers like Catherine Elliott started with her single girl but now writes about women who are married and having children whereas someone like Jill Mansell keeps re-inventing and her characters stay in their twenties, generally, as have mine.
And I have to admit that I still enjoy writing about a big romance that's happening to someone for the very first time.
- Finally what's next for you?
Early stages at the moment but I am working on a novel set on a local newspaper, but it's at the very beginnings.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Louise Harwood has penned novels such as Six Reasons to Stay a Virgin, Lucy Blue and Where Are You? And is back with her new book Kiss Like You Mean It.
I caught up with the author to talk about the new book, which mixes the modern movie industry with World War I and what lies ahead.
- Your new book is Kiss Like You Mean It so can you tell me a little bit about it?
Basically in the First World War they had the first moving movie cameras, as in filming with moving film rather than moving stills, a few very very brave young camera men went out onto the Western Front and started filming the soldiers, lived with them, ran with them into gunfire and died with them.
This wonderful footage was brought back of what it was like during the war and I was reading up about that and was wondering how it could possibly get moved into a chick flick, rom com.
I wanted to do something with a strong historical angle to it and what I came up with was to use this character Ambrose March, who is a camera man, and then have this modern Hollywood movie company making a film about him. So a hundred years later you have a Hollywood bad boy, gorgeous hero playing the part of this incredible serious World War One cameraman.
Rory is fantastic on set and playing the part brilliantly well but off set he is causing havoc amongst the make-up girls and wrecking the prospects of the film, to the point where it looks like it might all completely collapse. And so out make-up artist Ella has to step in and sort him in.
- So where did the inspiration for the story and the characters come from?
First of all I was wanting to do a war artist, which is how they had always used to depict the battles; they would have people painting out there. Because battles were moving so much faster they were superseded by stills cameramen and then moving cameramen.
It's funny with inspiration like that I just had an image of a cameraman being filmed by modern day cameras and the book just grew out of that. I don't really know how I just always find that I start with a scene, write that and then just allow everything else to gain momentum behind it.
- The movie mixes the First World War and the movie industry so what kind of research did you do for the book?
I had a fantastic day following make-up artist Jenny Shircore, who has just won a Bafta for her work on The Young Victoria, and they happened to be filming The Young Victoria when I was writing the book.
So through a friend of a friend of a friend I managed to meet someone who as working on the film and she asked Jenny if she would mind if I sat in the trailer for a day, she had to check with Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend because they were being made up that day.
They didn't mind, which was very nice, and so I just crept in at about six o'clock in the morning and just sat in the corner. It was brilliant, just the best day; it was like being in an incredibly glamorous hairdressers (laughs).
- So what did you learn about the role of a make-up artist and how did you find watching Jenny Shircore?
Well I learnt that they are incredibly brilliant at their jobs and technically, without thinking, the hair person, who is this young man, could just roll and twirl and twist in five seconds and make it looking stunning, in a way that if I tried to do it on somebody it would be like The Generation Game (laughs).
The skill that they have without even thinking about it lifts them to such a level. And they do so much research for it, with The Young Victoria they had thought and discussed for months about what she would look like and what colours they would use and they have a very close relationship with wardrobe which helps bring the look together. They are just so talented!
- Did you do any research into the First World War?
I did and I asked Jenny, she had Rupert Friend with hair pieces and moustaches suitable for Albert, and I was asking her how she would make up a First World War soldier and she was suggesting/imagining the make-up artist and the actor and how tactile it is and how much prodding and touching and stroking, if you have this incredibly handsome man sat in front of you how brilliant that you had to stroke his face (laughs).