1597, London. When Beatrice’s husband returns from exploring the New World, he comes home with unexpected a mysterious woman, and an enormous painted globe. As Hugh refuses to explain who their female guest is, Beatrice’s foreboding grows. The unwieldy globe now strikes her as sinister – a reminder of the world of secrets pervading her household.
I'm pleased to welcome author Naomi Kelsey to The Writing Desk:
Tell us about your latest book
My latest novel, The Darkening Globe, is out now in paperback. It’s an Elizabethan psychological thriller about the so-called Golden Age of exploration and how it may not have been quite so golden for all concerned… The book emerged from a serendipitous collision of several things: firstly, I’d been wanting to write about Bess Throckmorton, intrigued by what it must have been like for her to be left behind when Raleigh sailed off on his many adventures.
Secondly, I was also teaching creative writing to my Year 10s during lockdown, using a Twitter thread between various museums sharing images of their creepiest objects as inspiration when the National Trust magazine landed through my letterbox, containing a piece on the Petworth Globe, with its intricate cartouches of mermaids and sea monsters.
Perfect, I thought, I’ll use this to model the lesson’s exercises; my students weren’t particularly keen to share their ideas via Teams without a bit of encouragement, so to avoid any silent tumbleweed moments, I’d write alongside them and share my suggestions first. I had so much fun crafting responses to the globe that I just … continued!
The themes I’d wanted to explore in that fledgling story about Bess ended up absorbed into The Darkening Globe: female independence, colonialism, resourcefulness and resilience. Bess, along with Raleigh, the Earl of Essex and his sister Penelope Rich, and Queen Elizabeth I all make appearances in the finished book, but creating my own central characters gave me far more freedom to experiment with Gothic tropes – and inflict whatever fates I wanted onto them!
What is your preferred writing routine?
I love this question for all the imaginary versions of my life I can conjure up! My preferred routine is the extremely rare one when my kids are in holiday club: drop them off, get back home, have a cup of tea, write for several hours, have a leisurely lunch, more tea, write some more, then pick them up. I had 4 days of this last summer, and finished my third novel.
However, as a full time English teacher and a mum, my writing routine is about carving out little pockets during the week, whether it’s an hour in the evening on a not-too-draining day at work, or a Friday afternoon where I take myself off to the local library at the end of school, or a spell in a coffee shop while my daughter goes to art class. I’ll have mulled over my story and characters throughout the interim periods, so I’m usually raring to go when I finally manage to get pen to paper. I always write by hand – it’s a great excuse to buy beautiful notebooks, plus it separates my creative writing from my teaching: computers feel like data and PowerPoints to me!
What advice do you have for new writers?
Persevere. During the writing itself, chipping away at your book in snippets of time, inching your way towards the ending: it’s a long process, particularly if you have other responsibilities, and you need to keep going, one word at a time. You’ll need even more perseverance when it comes to getting published too – rejection is inevitable, even for books that go on to become bestsellers.
Always keep writing: if your first book doesn’t get past the query trenches, or submission to editors, write another book. Then another book. It’s rare for a writer’s first published novel to be the first book they ever actually wrote.
What have you found to be the best way to raise awareness of your books?
I’m not particularly social media-savvy, and I really wish I knew the answer to this. My most popular Instagram post isn’t about my books at all, but about how much I loved The Other Bennet Sister. I think it’s important to be reciprocal online though: I aim to talk about other people’s books as much as about my own. The book world is a lovely community, and I feel it’s vital to support others in their writing journeys, especially debut authors.
Tell us something unexpected you discovered during your research
I was absolutely horrified by Francis Drake’s actions. I knew him largely by his dashing, heroic reputation (I can still picture the History textbook with Elizabeth knighting him on board The Golden Hinde), but in Miranda Kauffman’s Black Tudors, his treatment of a Black woman called Maria was awful.
Somehow she ended up on board his ship after a clash with a Spanish vessel – it’s not clear whether she was a captive, an enslaved woman, or someone who came aboard semi-willingly. We do know that she was pregnant, and that Drake, rather than taking her to safe harbour, decided to abandon her on an island with two Black men. Did she know them? Were either of them the baby’s father? Did any of them survive, or make it off the island? We don’t know, and it’s appalling that he treated her so callously, and that history doesn’t give us any more record of her life.
What was the hardest scene you remember writing?
Emotionally, I can’t say, as it’s a massive spoiler! But I had to do some cruel things to my characters… What I found technically challenging was concealing what I knew about some of my villains: I had to write them in such a way that Beatrice didn’t guess, and the readers didn’t guess, but in hindsight, all the hints were there. That was a really tricky balance to strike.
What are you planning to write next?
My next book is out in July – Pale Mistress is a retelling of Othello from the perspective of Bianca, the only named female character in Shakespeare’s major tragedies who doesn’t die… Book 4 will be a novel about Northumbrian dragon legends set during the English Civil War. I love dragon books, and thus far (three chapters in), I’m having a great time!
Naomi Kelsey
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About the Author
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