Monday, December 06, 2021

Q&A with Tessa Harris

From my Q&A with Tessa Harris, author of The Light We Left Behind:
How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

These days I work with my editor after she’s read the novel to come up with something appropriate. In my WW2 titles we’re going for a less direct approach. The Light We Left Behind was inspired by the fact that my protagonist, an English psychologist at a top-secret intelligence base, fears her lover might be dead and yearns to reignite the spark they had when they were working together against the Nazis in Munich. The working title was The Secret Listeners, because the book centres on a group of German Jewish emigres who are taping the conversations of captured German. These officers are incarcerated at a luxury prisoner of war camp, designed to relax them and get them to talk freely amongst each other. As far as I know, mine is the first novel to feature this building – Trent Park – because for many years it was classified as top secret, just like Bletchley Park. I’m...[read on]
Visit Tessa Harris's Facebook page and Twitter perch.

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Q&A with Tessa Harris.

--Marshal Zeringue