On Publication Day, What is ‘Saga Fiction’?

Wheee! It’s publication day for my third novel, ‘The Highland Girls on Guard’ which is the second in the series about the feisty gals of the Women’s Timber Corps.

The e-book and audio versions are available from today and the paperback is out on Thursday this week (only, currently, on-line, although you can of course order from your local bookshop/library. The paperback will be for sale in ‘The Works’ at some point. I’ll let you know when!).

What’s It About?

What else can I say about the book?

1. My agent Robbie Guillory came up with the title, which I love (great alliteration!). And as for who or what they’re guarding.. you’ll have to read the book to find out!

2. There are lots of horses in it! (Two of the main characters work on the dragging team, with horses, bringing the timber out of the forest). So if you like horses (like me!), it might be your thing, even if you’d never normally consider a WW2 novel.

3. There’s not as much about felling trees as in the first book! (As some reviewers have pointed out!). But I wrote a fair bit about that in book 1 and I didn’t want to repeat myself. It’s quite a juggling act, when you write a series, not to bore readers who’ve read stuff before but also to put enough in so that new readers know what’s going on!

By the way, although you might enjoy this book a little more if you’ve read the first, it is a ‘stand-alone’, so don’t feel that you must have read ‘The Highland Girls at War’ first.

When I came downstairs this morning, I found a lovely present waiting on the worktop from my OH. All 3 of my book covers made up into jigsaw puzzles! How lovely is that? I’ve removed a bit from the bottom of ‘The Highland Girls on Guard’ so you can see it really is a jigsaw! (When I’ll have time to do them though, is anyone’s guess! When book #4 has been delivered, perhaps).

I often think writing a novel is like doing a huge jigsaw, so it’s rather appropriate that my cover has been turned into one!

The Definition of ‘Saga Fiction’

If you’ve been following the blog for a while, you’ll know that I write ‘saga fiction’ (who knew? I certainly didn’t when I wrote the first one, ‘A Wartime Secret’. It was literary agent Kate Nash who told me I’d written a saga!).

If you’re wondering what ‘saga fiction’ is – and whether you could write it or might like to read it (it’s a huge, if not widely-known or reviewed genre and the readers of saga fiction are loyal and voracious, Oh and they love a series!) – there’s a great article here on The Novelry website, written by editor (and saga author herself, as Ginny Bell), Gillian Holmes, which explains it all really well. In fact, it’s taught me quite a lot!

In a nutshell, saga fiction (the modern version, not Norse mythology!) could be said to have started with Catherine Cookson (I loved her books when I was a teenager! I devoured them!). It’s also often called a sub-genre of historical romance. If you want an example of saga fiction on TV, ‘Call the Midwife’ fits the bill very nicely. And it’s a huge and very popular genre. Many bookshops and supermarkets have whole shelves devoted to saga fiction.

I’m very proud to be part of such a fabulous genre, that gives so much pleasure to so many people and has so many fans and loyal readers!

Cheers!