Today I’m delighted to revisit my Five on Friday interview with Jane Cable which was first posted in June 2019. Since it was first posted, Jane has also started writing as Eva Glyn. As Jane she writes romance with a twist, and as Eva Glyn she creates escapist relationship-driven fiction. Her inspiration comes from the nuggets of history she discovers both at home and abroad, and the beautiful places in which she finds them.

Over to Jane/Eva:

Eva Glyn’s books are set in Croatia, a country I fell in love with in 2019. My friendship with tour guide Darko Barisic has proved invaluable to gain an insight into Croatian daily life that few foreign authors can dream of. My first book set in the country, The Olive Grove, was inspired by Darko’s experiences of the war in the 1990s and the second, An Island of Secrets is a dual timeline looking back to a little known period of British World War 2 history. Eva is published by One More Chapter, a division of Harper Collins.

My Jane Cable novels are published by Sapere Books. The first two were haunting contemporary romances looking back to World War 2; Another You inspired by a tragic D-Day exercise at Studland Bay in Dorset, and Endless Skies by the brave Polish bomber crews who flew from a Lincolnshire airbase.

Although I am Welsh I live in Cornwall and my current Sapere Books series, Cornish Echoes, are dual timeline adventure romances set in the great houses of the Poldark era and today. I love visiting the county’s historical sites and rugged coastlines as well as travelling further afield.

Which five pieces of music/songs would you include in the soundtrack to your life and why?

Now that’s really tough because I love music and it’s always been important to me so I think the best way to do this is to choose one song from each decade.

1970s: I was fourteen in 1977 when punk hit mainstream and seemed the most exciting thing ever with the fast and furious pace and rebellious lyrics. One artist in particular framed my youthful political thinking and that was the Tom Robinson Band. Their music opened my eyes to prejudice, and how harmful it is. So overall my song of the 70s must be Glad to be Gay.

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1980s: I started this decade as a student, then married for the first time and divorced, all of which made for quite a varied soundtrack. I could pick Dire Straits’ Romeo and Juliet from the beginning of my marriage, or U2’s With or Without You from the end, but looking back the record that resonates most from the era is Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner. I’m a big fan of her music and that song always takes me back to Marylebone High Street in 1987, the time when I was starting to rebuild my life.

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1990s: I changed my career and met and fell in love with my husband Jim. He’s a huge Bon Jovi fan and at our wedding we danced to their In These Arms, so that’s a simple choice.

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2000s: Setting up my own business, working from home, freelancing as a cricket writer. It was also the decade I first managed to finish a novel length story and an incredibly busy time. One song which stopped all that rushing around the first time I heard it was Duffy’s Mercy. I literally had to stand still and listen.

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2010s: So far I haven’t even mentioned my favourite band, The Manic Street Preachers. We grew up in roughly the same place at roughly the same time, so their heritage is very much my own. For me some of their best work has been in the current decade and it’s hard to pick, but from the well known tracks Show Me The Wonder encapsulates so much of South Wales.

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What five things (apart from family and friends) would you find it hard to live without.

I’ve gone on so long about music I’d better be brief: So…

Music

A notebook

My iPad that doubles as my Kindle

My passport

My Olay moisturiser.

Give five pieces of advice to your younger self?

I’ve gone on so long about music I’d better be brief: So…

Music

A notebook

My iPad that doubles as my Kindle

My passport

My Olay moisturiser.

Tell us five things that most people don’t know about you

I won prizes in my professional accountancy exams, even though my then boyfriend had to show my how to work my calculator beforehand.

I have a china cat called Gypsy a flatmate once thought was real.

I went to the same school as and share a birthday with academic, writer and broadcaster Alice Roberts. I’m a bit older than her though.

My great great uncle was killed by Apaches in 1871.

I’m addicted to TV cookery competitions like The Great British Menu.

Tell us five things you’d still like to do or achieve.

For most of our working lives Jim and I didn’t have the time to travel, but we’re making up for it now so my bucket list is really a series of destinations, in roughly the order we’re planning to visit them:

The Dalmatian coast: this one is already booked and although I’m longing to go there, the
first part of our holiday is a cruise and I’m terrified I’ll spend all my time being seasick. I
don’t have a good track record with boats!

Tucson, Arizona: where my great great uncle met his end and where a street is named after him – something I only found out about a few months ago.

The Canadian Rockies: we loved visiting the Rockies in Denver and this will probably be
even more spectacular.

Hadrian’s Wall: we’d love to walk from one end of it to the other and then for good measure tackle St Cuthbert’s Way as well.

New Zealand: this would be a very long trip as there’s so much we want to see.

Jane’s Books

(NB This post features Affiliate links from which I earn a small commission on qualifying purchases)

Writing as Jane Cable

The Forgotten Maid

Two centuries apart, two lonely women seek a place to call home…

Cornwall, England, 2015

Nomadic project manager Anna Pritchard has arrived in the village of Porthnevek to oversee the construction of a trendy new glamping site. But with many members of the local community strongly opposed to the development, she quickly finds herself ostracised and isolated.

Seeking to ease her loneliness, Anna begins volunteering at a nearby National Trust house in Trelissick, once owned by the aristocratic Daniell family. In her new role, Anna soon feels her attachment to both Porthnevek and Trelissick deepening. And as she spends more and more time steeped in local history, it seems that the past and the present are beginning to collide…

Belgium, 1815

After losing her brother in the Battle of Waterloo, French army seamstress Thérèse Ruguel is taken to London by war artist Thomas Chalmers, becoming his reluctant muse. But with Thomas’s mother unhappy with the arrangement, Thérèse is soon sent to Cornwall as a lady’s maid to Elizabeth Daniell, a kindly relative of the Chalmers family.

Able to speak only a little English — and with the other servants suspicious of her — Thérèse feels lost and alienated. And when she discovers her brother may still be alive, she must decide whether to continue with her new life in England, or brave the dangerous journey back to her homeland…

What became of Thérèse? Can Anna unearth the ghosts of the past?

And has Anna finally found where she belongs…?

Endless Skies

If you want to move forward, you have to deal with the past…

After yet another disastrous love affair – this time with her married boss – Rachel Ward has been forced to leave her long-term position in Southampton for a temporary role as an Archaeology Lecturer at Lincoln University.

Rachel has sworn off men and is determined to spend her time away clearing her head and sorting her life out.

But when one of her students begins flirting with her, it seems she could be about to make the same mistakes again…

She distracts herself by taking on some freelance work for local property developer, Jonathan Daubney.

He introduces her to an old Second World War RAF base. And from her very first visit something about it gives Rachel chills…

As Rachel makes new friends and delves into local history, she is also forced to confront her own troubled past.

Why is she unable to get into a healthy relationship? What’s stopping her from finding Mr Right?

And what are the echoes of the past trying to tell her…?

Another You

Sometimes the hardest person to save is yourself…

Marie Johnson fell in love with The Smugglers pub when she first moved to Dorset with her husband, Stephen.

But when Stephen’s wandering eye caused the breakdown of their marriage, and the costs of running the pub started to mount, Marie felt her dreams crashing down around her.

With local celebrations planned for the 60th anniversary of D-Day, Marie is hopeful things will turn around.

But she could never have predicted the ways her life will soon be changed forever.

A charming American soldier walks into Marie’s life, but it becomes clear nothing is really as it seems…

Why is Marie suddenly plagued by headaches? Is her American soldier everything he seems to be?

Or could the D-Day re-enactments be stirring up something from the past…?

The Cheesemaker’s House

When Alice Hart’s husband runs off with his secretary, she runs off with his dog to lick her wounds in a North Yorkshire village. Battling with loneliness but trying to make the best of her new start, she soon meets her neighbours, including the drop-dead gorgeous builder Richard Wainwright and the kindly yet reticent café owner, Owen Maltby.

As Alice employs Richard to start renovating the barn next to her house, all is not what it seems. Why does she start seeing Owen when he clearly isn’t there? Where – or when – does the strange crying come from? And if Owen is the village charmer, what exactly does that mean?

The Cheesemaker’s House is a gripping read, inspired by a framed will found in the dining room of the author’s dream Yorkshire house. The previous owners explained that the house had been built at the request of the village cheesemaker in 1726 – and that the cheesemaker was a woman. And so the historical aspect of the story was born.

Writing as Eva Glyn

An Island of Secrets

That was then…

Seventy-five years ago, British SOE spy Guy Barclay was forced to leave behind the woman he loved in war-ravaged Yugoslavia.

…This is now

As ninety-three-year-old Guy’s days draw to a close, he asks his granddaughter, Leo Holmes, to go looking for answers. Given that her marriage has imploded and her City job is on the verge of killing her, Leo agrees and rents a house on the island of Vis, where her grandfather was stationed in the Second World War.

But as Leo’s search takes her down unexpected roads – and into the path of a gorgeous local, Andrej Pintaric – she begins to wonder if this journey down memory lane might yield unexpected results for more than just her beloved grandfather…

The Olive Grove

A woman searching for a different future

A man desperate to escape his past

Can they find what they are looking for on the beautiful island of Korčula?

Antonia Butler is on the brink of a life-changing decision and a job advert looking for a multilingual housekeeper at a beautifully renovated Croatian farmhouse, Vila Maslina, is one she can’t ignore.

Arriving on the tiny picturesque island of Korčula, Antonia feels a spark of hope for the first time in a long time. This is a chance to leave the past behind.

But this island, and its inhabitants, have secrets of their own and a not-too-distant past steeped in tragedy and war. None more so than Vila Maslina’s enigmatic owner Damir Maric. A young man with nothing to lose but everything to gain…

The Missing Pieces of Us

There are three versions of the past – hers, his, and the truth.

When Robin Vail walks back into widow Isobel O’Briain’s life decades after he abruptly left it, the dark days since her husband’s unexpected passing finally know light. Robin has fallen on hard times but Izzie and her teenage daughter Claire quickly remind him what it’s like to have family…and hope.

But Robin and Izzie are no longer those twenty-something lovers, and as they grow closer once more the missing pieces of their past weigh heavy. Now, to stop history repeating, Izzie and Robin must face facts and right wrongs…no matter how painful.