A tour of Combe St Philip

When Sophie, Jessica, Anne and I looked around for a setting for our fictional Cotswold village, I immediately  thought of Castle Combe - the prettiest village in England. Allegedly. (Other villages are also extremely pretty!)

I'd had lunch at the Manor House Hotel with the Bath and Wiltshire Romantic Novelists' Association chapter when Jill Mansell gave a talk there.

She'd used the hotel in her book, Daisy's Place and I knew it would work very well for Hasebury Hall, the childhood home of Hope Kennard, Sophie's heroine (The Prince's Bride).

Sophie, Jessica, Anne and I had a day out walking the ground of "our" village on a gloriously sunny spring day and had a wonderful lunch there, purely in the necessity of research, you understand. Research is not all about surfing the 'net and dusty libraries!

Jessica, who'd been the first out of the traps with a draft ms, had named the church  where the wedding was to take place St Philip and All Angels and when we went into the beautiful church in Castle Combe, one of the first things we saw was this array of angels on either side of the aisle. 

One of those spine-tingly magic moments for a writer.

We found a suitably ancient monument where our bride's ancestor would have been laid to rest and imagined a stained glass window bearing his coat of arms,

There was some discussion about the differences between a US wedding and one taking place in the UK - the bridesmaids follow the bride in the UK. The fact that the bride and groom (and their witnesses) disappear into the vestry after the service to sign the register. Details that may not be used but are important to know.

We walked around the churchyard, working out the where the television people would put their cherry picker - my heroine's concern - and, because that's what you can do when you've created your own location, we turned it around so that the heroine, walking from her family home, would not have to walk all around the graveyard. 

There were other important locations. This is the market cross, Ally's home, and the Three Bells where Ally was working when Fredrik arrived unexpectedly.  

Actually the pub isn't in Castle Combe but in the equally pretty village of  Lacock and is the pub where our local Romantic Novelists' Chapter meet for supper once in a while.

And the last picture refers to something that our village and Castle Combe have in common. They are both used as locations for films and tv dramas. 

Castle Combe was recently used in the film War Horse.

Catching Up...

It's only the 6th June but there's been a heck of a lot going on this month. You won't have missed (I hope!) the fact that Her Pregnancy Bombshell, the first in the Summer at the Villa Rosa quartet, was published at the beginning of the month in the US, UK and Australia. Here are a few things people are saying about it -

"...lovely scenery, interesting characters, and plenty of hiccups along the way... it is a truly delightful read..."

"Very beautifully done, as always Liz never fails to give the warm fuzziness that we crave from a heartwarming beautiful story..."

"
Her Pregnancy Bombshell by Liz Fielding is a story about trust, hope and the power of love. I was deeply moved by the sincere characters and thought about them even after I closed the book. What really kept me turning the pages though were the deep emotions the author layered into the story. Cleve and Miranda are two people I cared for and if you pick this book up I think you will be touched by their individual journeys too."

Mills and Boon have also made me their "Author of the Month" which has totally made my month - possibly my year!

Finally, there's one of my occasional writing craft posts up on the Romance University site about writing characters the readers will care about and that is here


Right now I'm working on the last chapter of the The Bridesmaid's Royal Bodyguard which will be published later this year by Tule and then I'll be starting on a duet with the uber talented Kate Hardy. Busy, busy year!