Katie Lumsden: On Paying Tribute to Victorian Literature
Author Katie Lumsden discusses combining Victorian era tropes with modern storytelling in her debut novel, The Secrets of Hartwood Hall.
Katie Lumsden read Jane Eyre at the age of 13 and never looked back. She spent her teenage years devouring 19th century literature, reading every Dickens, Brontë, Austen and Hardy novel she could find. She has a degree in English literature and history from the University of Durham and an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University.
Her short stories have been shortlisted for the London Short Story Prize and the Bridport Prize. Katie’s YouTube channel, Books and Things, has 25,000 subscribers. She lives in London and works as an editor. The Secrets of Hartwood Hall is her debut novel. Find her on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
In this post, Katie discusses combining Victorian era tropes with modern storytelling in her debut novel, The Secrets of Hartwood Hall, her advice for other writers, and more!
Name: Katie Lumsden
Literary agent: Karolina Sutton, CAA
Book title: The Secrets of Hartwood Hall
Publisher: Dutton, Penguin Random House
Release date: February 28, 2023
Genre/category: Historical fiction
Elevator pitch for the book: It’s 1852 and recently widowed governess Margaret Lennox takes up a new position at the mysterious Hartwood Hall. There she meets Mrs Eversham and her son, Louis—but it seems that everybody here has something to hide.
What prompted you to write this book?
When people say “write what you know,” they usually mean write about things you have personal experience with—but what I know is, apparently, the Victorians. I’ve been fascinated by Victorian literature and history for a very long time. I’ve been reading and loving Victorian novels, everything from Dickens and the Brontës to obscure authors no one’s heard of, since I was a teenager.
The Secrets of Hartwood Hall comes from that: The book is a love letter to Victorian literature. I wanted to write a book that played with the tropes of Victorian literature but did something different; something that probably couldn’t have been written during the Victorian period and certainly would never have been published during the Victorian period.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
Nearly four years. I had the beginnings of the idea in summer 2019 and finished a very rough first draft in early March 2020—so it’s been about three years from first draft to publication.
The book has changed hugely from the first draft to now—it’s almost unrecognizable. I think the first chapter is more or less the same, but that’s all. I must have done 10 to 15 drafts of the book by the end, and I changed everything on redrafting—characters, subplots, twists, solutions—both on my own and with the input of my agent and editors.
I’m so much happier with the book it’s become than with my messy first draft.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
Not exactly. I’m the kind of writer who writes a very bad first draft, then fixes it later, so the editing and rewriting process is more important than the initial writing process for me.
The first draft of The Secrets of Hartwood Hall took me around six months to write, but between edits on my own and edits with my agent and publisher, I must have spent about 18 months to two years editing it. That feels natural to me, though.
I think the biggest surprise of all has just been that it’s actually being published!
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
I’ve worked in the publishing industry myself, in the U.K., for the past seven years, so I know a lot more about the publishing process than most authors when they get their first book deal. This means I wasn’t really expecting many surprises, but in fact the whole process has been pretty surreal.
Every single publisher is different, and every book’s strategy varies—and it is hugely different sitting on the other side of the table to the one I’m used to. In a way, everything has been more of a surprise than I thought it would be!
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope readers will find it thought-provoking and compelling and maybe, in places, a little bit spooky—but above all, I just hope readers will find it really fun.
There are absolutely more serious themes in the novel, but I also had huge fun writing it, and it’s meant to be playing with and in conversation with a lot of Victorian books we know and love. (The best way I can describe it is Brontë vibes.)
So, I hope that readers who enjoy historical fiction, Victorian literature, or Gothic stuff more generally will just have a good time with The Secrets of Hartwood Hall.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Join a writing group—either online or in person. Writing groups can be both a support network and a great learning tool.
You share your work and get feedback on it. You chat to and befriend other writers, talk to people in similar situations with similar ambitions and interests to you. You read other people’s writing and give feedback on it—and thinking about what works and doesn’t work in their books will hugely improve your own writing.
Writing groups are also good for building writing into your routine, for pushing you to write regularly. I know my writing group has been invaluable for me.
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
