It’s All About Geography!

Apple Gidley, who has written about her life as a TCK, switched genres in the past several years. Her novels are about what is near and dear to her heart, and as every author will tell you, “Write what you know.” Apple’s characters are not necessarily TCKs or expats, but many are set within cultures that she knows well. Home can be hard to grasp, but through her writing, Apple can capture the culture and, in that, a sense of home. Her fellow writing companions in England may not understand this, but she wears the “Outlier” ribbon well.

Last autumn, I attended the Historical Novelists Society conference in Devon, England. Quite apart from feeling a tad intimated by some of the authors present—Kate Quinn for one, Bernard Cornwell for another—it highlighted the fact that many novelists become known for a specific period. Ms Quinn has been focusing most recently on the Second World War; Cornwell on the Napoleonic Wars with his rifleman, Richard Sharpe.

At that conference, I realized I was an outlier—not for the first time, but in rather different circumstances. As expatriates, we all know that feeling of not quite belonging, certainly in the first liminal days of a new posting. But I’m a repatriate now, sort of. England became home in 2023, a place I had only lived once as a young, single woman in London. I am now significantly older, married for many years, and in rural Cambridgeshire. Outlier syndrome arose once again.

And so it was in Devon.

“Are you a Tudor?” The question came from a bespectacled chap, grey hair nudging the collar of his tweed jacket, as we lined up for a restorative coffee.

“Er,” I responded. My British historical knowledge is iffy at best, but I was sure it started with Henry VII in the mid-1400s. “A bit before my time.”

“Yes, well, you know what I mean.”

I didn’t.

“If you don’t write about the Tudors, who do you write about?”

“Oh, I see,” I said, feeling a bit dim. I told you I needed coffee. “No. I write geographically.”

The conversation ended at that point, and Mr Tudor turned to a more likely candidate for an in-depth discussion about the Battle of Bosworth Field, which really should interest me because that is when Richard III bestowed the Girling family crest—Girling that being my maiden name.

I digress.

Writing geographically is, apparently, not ‘a thing’, certainly in historical fiction, but I did tell you I’m an outlier.

My books encompass parts of the world in which I have lived, or which fascinate me, both historically and in the now. Living on St Croix prompted a dive into Crucian history, long before it became part of the US Virgin Islands. It is an absorbing tale filled with nefarious deeds of the many countries who had claimed ownership, latterly the Danes. I wrote a sequel to Fireburn because, in my mind, the story based around a worker revolt which took place thirty years after emancipation hadn’t ended.

Next I headed to 1950’s Malaya, and wove a story about the twelve-year communist insurgency that led to independence. The more I researched, the more it fascinated me, and this time it was a country and culture I knew well, having spent ten years of my childhood there. Have You Eaten Rice Today?, the name of the book, is a term used to enquire after one’s health. Relevant because lack of food drove many terrorists to surrender. Countries, customs and cultures coming to life through fiction.

Finding Serenissima, published by Vine Leaves Press, dropped on March 11th, and this time, I have wandered along the labyrinthian canals of Venice with a mixture of delight and awe. I’ve never lived in Italy—three months as an infant in a stroller doesn’t count—but I love the country and visit whenever possible.

I couldn’t discuss Finding Serenissima at the conference—it is a contemporary novel, so I jumped ahead to the next historical fiction, Annie’s Day, which will be released in November this year. I was back on firmer ground, although not Tudor.

Annie’s Day is written from the perspective of an Australian army nurse posted to Singapore as it fell in February 1942, then moves to New Guinea and the battles fought by Australian and American troops in their bid to stop the Japanese from reaching the Antipodes. The story moved to Berlin during the Airlift.

Like I said, geographical.

Next, I’m moving to India and Poland. Why? I’ve been to neither place. Probably because the relationship between places and people, whether they are native to a land or a guest, intrigues me. Each country entices the senses in a different way.

What a privilege to perhaps encourage a reader to delve deeper into a new place, a new culture, a new custom and, with that knowledge, maybe understand a little that what makes us different is really not that different from what makes us the same

We all want stability, love, and hope, even the Tudors.