The Joys of Binge Reading

Faith Hogan is an award-winning and best-selling Irish author of nine contemporary novels, the latest of which is The Gin Sisters Promise.

Her books are for grownups, feel good woman’s fiction which is unashamedly uplifting, and inspiring, but doesn’t dodge the hard questions,

Hi there. I’m your host, Jenny Wheeler and today on Binge Reading Faith talks not only about The Gin Sisters Promise, her latest heartfelt family story, but also because her new Christmas book, On The First Day Of Christmas.

Booksweeps Draw, Sales and Free Book Offers

We’ve got our usual book giveaways this week, a special book offer of 40 Sweet and Mild romances in our latest Booksweeps Draw, many of them Christmas or holiday themed. Plus, you get with it a free reader, total value, $450. (Includes my Three Holiday Novellas Book Bundle)

ENTER BOOKSWEEPS DRAW – 40 BOOKS + e-READER Three Holiday Novellas – Kobo Romance Pick

Three Holiday Novellas free on Kobo until December 25…

Do you love sweet romance and twisty family secrets? Looking For An Enjoyable Holiday Escape?

From Elanora’s New York Christmas, to Josefa’s dilemma on a California ranch and Leilani’s Hawaiian adventure; three heart-warming novellas for escapist holiday reading.

Three previously published novellas in one delicious bundle.

FREE ROMANCE ON KOBO Susannah’s Secret – Launch Special

And we’ve got a special launch offer on my latest book. Susanna’s Secret, which was published just last week. Check it out now.

Susannah’s Secret is on launch special – Normal Price $5.99 On sale until Christmas Day at $2.99 buy direct from website.

LAUNCH SPECIAL – SUSANNAH’S SECRET

And if you enjoy the show, please leave us a comment online, so others can find us too, but that’s it for the housekeeping he has faith.

Links mentioned in this episode

Geraldine Hogan: https://www.geraldine-hogan.com/

Bookouture Publishing:https://bookouture.com/

Trish Ashley: https://www.trishaworld.com/

Penelope Ftizgerald: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penelope_Fitzgerald

The Reader On the 6:27: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25267912-the-reader-on-the-6-27

Jean-Paul Didierlaurent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Didierlaurent

Joanna Cannon: https://www.joannacannon.co.uk/

A Tidy Ending: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59366243-a-tidy-ending

Robert Galbraith. The Ink Black Heart: https://www.amazon.com/Black-Heart-Cormoran-Strike-Novel-ebook/dp/B09QKTCYVB

Maeve Binchy: maevebinchy.com

Deirdre Purcell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deirdre_Purcell

Where to find Faith Hogan online

Website: Faithhogan.com

Twitter: @gerhogan

Facebook: @Faithhoganauthor

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/faithhoganauthor/

Introducing inspirational women’s fiction author Faith Hogan

Jenny Wheeler: Hello there. Faith and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.

Faith Hogan best selling Irish author of women’s fiction

Faith Hogan: Oh, Jenny, it’s lovely to be here. Thank you for having me.

Jenny Wheeler: You’ve been described as writing women’s fiction, which is unashamedly uplifting and feel good, and you are an award-winning, best-selling Irish author of nine contemporary fiction books.

The ones that we are focusing are the last most recent ones you’ve done, particularly, there’s a Christmas one that you’re going to talk about, but also The Gin Sisters Promise, which was published earlier this year. You’ve said you particularly enjoyed writing this book. Now why was that?

Faith Hogan: It’s like all of my books. They’re all based around where I live, so very much with the women’s fiction, it’s about sitting in the chair and losing yourself in the characters. Characters tend to bring me into a story. I also have written crime and it’s a very different process.

I hate to say, but it’s a joy to write them. And I think that comes across in the books, that people find them quite uplifting to read. I set out to bring people up, rather than bringing them down, with the books.

I just think we all need something to escape into at the moment we’re living in.

Promises, promises, but then life gets in the way

Jenny Wheeler: Certainly, yes. Now this story revolves around three sisters, as you might guess from the title.

They promise that they will always be together and support each other during a particularly traumatic family event. And then life upsets their best intentions. What drew you to this particular conflict and subject?

Faith Hogan: Honestly, it’s the relationship between sisters. I have a sister and we’re very close, but we have seen in Ireland a lot of other experiences…. I don’t know if your listeners listen or follow Irish history, but very often there’s been cases in Irish history where families have fallen out, they’ve been very close, and then somebody dies.

There’s a will, there’s an inheritance, and a family can just be split in parts. My story, I wanted to turn that on the head, and so what I’ve done is I’ve turned it on it’s head by bringing three sisters who were very close as children.

Life has come between them somewhat, a man, a marriage, a career, have all come between them and then they have to return to Ireland to bury their father.

And when they do that, there’s a will and instead of the will separating them, it actually tries to bring them back together.

How family labels can define our futures

Jenny Wheeler: Yes. It’s a lovely story and it’s a perfect picture too, of how families sometimes do get divided because of the labels that we put on one another, as we’re growing up.

One will be regarded as the achiever and the other will be the dreamer and that kind of thing. And then sometimes we tend to fit the labels that have been put on us.

And to a certain extent that happens with some of your sisters. Was that part of what you were aware of as you were writing?

Faith Hogan: It was, I wanted them to be not opposite each other, but definitely, I didn’t want them to be characters that would run in parallel.

I wanted them to each to be in a safe place where they could envy the others, but they were so different that it was very hard for them to see behind that façade, that life was not exactly what they thought it was for the other.

And by having them quite different, I felt it was easier to achieve that.

So we have the girl who’s very career driven. We have the sister who really just wanted love, and then we have the sister who wanted to be an actress and was for a short while, an actress, and then, I think she dug a bit of a hole for herself and ended up maybe not being successful anymore as an actress.

She becomes successful in other ways.

Dealing with deep and painful emotions

Jenny Wheeler: Yes. The uplifting label is a great one to have, particularly in these times. But I do think that it may also undersell the depth of your books a little bit, because you deal with deep and painful emotions as well, don’t you?

Faith Hogan: Yes. There’s no doubt about the fact that, with a number of my books, you will require a good big box of tissues beside you as you’re reading them.

But ultimately, I think the uplifting thing is about the spirit of the characters I write about.

It’s about the fact that while life may be coming against them for a while, that they by themselves or with the help of other people, maybe people that they least expected to help them, eventually triumph.

And I think that is where the uplifting part comes in. And I think that, when we look around us, and we look at maybe adversity that’s currently going on in our world, it’s that ability of the human spirit to triumph.

And I think that’s where we find encouragement and that’s where we find our uplifting things that can put smiles on our face, you know?

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Jenny Wheeler: Yes. You mentioned at the beginning that it’s situated close to where you live.

Tell us a bit about that landscape, because it does very much feature in the book. There’s a real sense of the place there, and it’s a long way from London and the bright lights, but it’s got its own power and beauty.

Faith Hogan: I live in the west of Ireland. I live in a small town. There’s about 8,000 people in my town, and within a 10 mile radius of that north, south, east, and west, I have the Atlantic Ocean on one side. To the north, there’s the North Sea. We have a beautiful forest nearby.

It’s the second largest forest in Europe just down the road from us. We have the richest Salmon River in Europe, running through our town.

And it’s just one of those places where you’re endlessly inspired by the landscape. And I suppose for me, the landscape is almost like another character.

It’s like a distinct character in the book, it’s a character that can bring out emotion in other people. It’s almost like a device I can use to mirror people’s emotions and mood and events that are happening or about to happen within the book.

How the pandemic has affected books and people

And I think it’s very powerful and it’s certainly an inspiration. Reader’s feedback is a lot just about the actual place, it resonates particularly with people who were Irish and have left Ireland. I think it makes them a little bit homesick, though that’s not my intention.

Jenny Wheeler: You mentioned about, us being in some tough places, particularly in this last couple of years, and you have had a number of commentators who say that you’re very much in touch with the times.

There are even people who say things like you are the right person to read. You’ve got a feeling for what’s been going on in the pandemic.

Can you comment a little bit on that? How has the pandemic affected you personally or has your town been affected much?

Faith Hogan: I think in Ireland, we were very blessed. There’s no doubt about the fact that in the Southern Hemisphere you seem to be very well prepared and you reacted very well to it, you really closed everything off and that worked very well for you.

But for us, it’s not quite as simple. We’re linked to Europe. We have trade going over and back with people coming in and out. But I think people, the vast majority of the population, took it all very seriously and there was a great outpouring of understanding towards people who were less fortunate, particularly people who were compromised.

The changes Faith Hogan has observed in her world

And I don’t know that we ever expected to see that. Do you know what I mean? I had teenagers who we think really don’t care about anything. And my teenagers took it very seriously.

When I look back to being maybe 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, we would’ve been in an awful sulk if we couldn’t get out for a weekend.

And our children, they just didn’t leave the house for six months, you know? And, and very other child was the same. Mine weren’t and more especially brilliant than any other child.

I just think it gave us all pause for thought, and I think we developed an empathy for people who actually couldn’t get out, you know, elderly people, people with lower immune systems and stuff like that.

People that we wouldn’t have been aware of before. I think it made us stop and think. It maybe was a terrible thing. There were terrible things happened, but I also think it, it did make us reflect and I never think that’s a bad thing.

Given us all reason to reflect on life

Jenny Wheeler: And how did you convey that in your books?

Faith Hogan: I’m not so sure how I conveyed it in the books, but I do know that I watched other writers and some writers really struggled with silence.

For me I suppose it’s that thing of having time to think now. It meant that my house was full of people… people weren’t at school. They went to college last year, but at that time we probably should have had a more empty house.

But I suppose it makes you more aware. It meant that I got more writing done somehow or another. And I wrote things. I didn’t write things about the pandemic, but I did write about the times we were living in.

And I put a note in the book, just around the fact that… I didn’t mention masks or hand sanitizers or the fact that we nearly washed our hands away, you know?

But at the same time, I think we’ve all been usually affected by it.

And I think every single book that was written in the last two years, what happened usually was affected by whether or not we want to recognize that it is quite another thing.

I think that level of thoughtfulness that became part of our lives, that maybe we didn’t expect the fact that suddenly we could hear ourselves think and that was a good thing.

In Dublin – a fox walked down the main street

Jenny Wheeler: Interesting that you could hear yourself think in a house that was fuller than usual, isn’t it?

Faith Hogan: Yeah, it’s because we live on a road where there’s traffic constantly coming in and out of town and suddenly there was no traffic.

And sometimes we can walk out our door and I will walk on a five-minute walk from town and. I can walk into town quicker than it’ll take to drive it because the traffic is just backed up. And all of a sudden there were no cars.

In our main city here in Dublin, there was a fox pictured walking down our main street, in Grafton Street and they were unreal times for everybody.

You know, we were all just thrown everything that we thought we knew was thrown up in the air. And I think for a writer that’s very rich, that’s full of possibilities for us.

Do, you know what I mean? Because it screws your perception a little bit and I think that’s a very rich place for us,

Jenny Wheeler: Your other recent release is The Ladies Midnight Ladies’ Swimming Club.

Now this book has been quite a breakthrough book for you on Amazon. I believe it’s still selling as a very popular title on Amazon, and as the title indicates, it’s about a group of ladies who have this slightly eccentric habit of going swimming at night time, in the dark.

Tell us about this one and the genesis for it.

The Ladies Midnight Swimming Club The Ladies’ Midnight Swimming Club – a breakthrough book for Faith Hogan

Faith Hogan: The Ladies’ Midnight Swimming Club is one of those books that I was writing for about a year before I told anybody about it.

I suppose in New Zealand and in Australia, places where it’s actually warm, you can swim all year round, but there’s been a phenomenon here for the last maybe 20 years, but it’s become really prevalent in the last three or four years for women to have taken to swimming all year round.

Now here, that means here, the weather can be anything between zero degrees, five degrees, which, I’m not really great at conversions, but it’s very, very cold.

And yet you’ll see women and men, particularly retired people, at that stage where we’re all much healthier and we’re much more active now than we were maybe 20, 30 years ago.

And people have more time on their hands. They’re retiring younger. and it’s a phenomenon. Dry robes, the dogs going in.

I looked and I thought, it’s rich pickings, basically. I had in mind a character. Elizabeth is retired, she’s a doctor’s wife, and she has spent her life, basically tied up in her pearls and her twin set.

And she’s never really had the chance to breathe. And all of a sudden, she walks down the beach. She sees her friend who has always been quite free. Jo burned her bra before she actually needed one.

A book about community, love, and friendship

She’s just a breath of fresh air. And one night Elizabeth walks down the beach and she decides to herself, I’m no longer tied by this man who wasn’t a very nice man.

And she takes off all her clothes. She jumps in and suddenly she really is free. And the book goes from there and with it, there’s a lot of good done for the community as well.

And I think that’s very important because it ties, in because while Jo is a wonderful character, her story is not a happy one.

But it does resonate and it’s really central to the book. I did cry writing sections of it, and I know people have cried reading it.

But I would still say it’s an uplifting book at the end because it’s about community, it’s about friendship, it’s about love, and ultimately it’s about women having the opportunity to express themselves in a way that they maybe wouldn’t have been able to previously.

So, yeah, it’s been great fun.

Jenny Wheeler: Yes, it’s been likened to that movie, The Calendar Girls, which is about the middle-aged ladies who made a nude calendar for charity, the one that made it into a movie that Helen Mirren starred in.

And you can see this book having a similar pathway. Really, it could easily become a movie.

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Faith Hogan - Irish Best Sellers