How to write a bestseller

Liz Fenwick interview by Roger Howe

Liz Fenwick has taken her husband’s name. In thirty years away from Massachusetts her accent has become a tad anglicised. When she mentions living in Moscow she pronounces the name ‘Mosco’ not the usual American pronunciation ‘Mossgow’.

She has topped the summer bestseller lists in the UK while remaining unknown in the States. Hers is a story that has taken her from Mount Holyoke to Lloyds of London by way of Old Ironsides and Saks Fifth Avenue and thence to Dubai, finally making her home on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall.

When she describes being introduced to the Lord Lieutenant, the Queen’s representative in the county, she uses the standard English pronunciation ‘left-tenant’ rather than the American ‘loo-tenant’.

An only child, born Elizabeth Murphy, she grew up in Malden, home of Converse sneakers – Liz Fenwick has been long enough in England to refer to them as “trainers”.

We met in the café of Waterstones bookshop in Truro, the Cornish capital, where she had come for a book-signing. Affable and blonde she sat with one pair of glasses on her nose, a reserve pair on her head.

Her background was typically American. “I read voraciously. The library was my friend.” The books she read included Amelia Bedelia (“a wonderful story”), Constance by Patricia Clapp, Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes. “I loved Tom Sawyer.” She found she and her English husband Chris shared few early influences. “There were no common childhood books.”

Her parents “came from nothing”. The children of poor Irish immigrants, the Murphys, unusually, were from County Donegal. “My parents very passionately believed in education. It was their education that moved them through society.” Her father worked in insurance and set up his own agency.

Politically there were connections with the Kennedys. The Murphys had a place on the Cape, “we saw plenty of them – because they went to our church. My parents’ feelings about them went downhill pretty quickly, particularly after the Chappaquiddick incident.”

Despite her Irish background Liz Fenwick did not grow up hating the English. “No, not at all. My father was a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery of Boston which is the daughter company of the Honourable Artillery Company in the UK, so he had close links with the UK.”

At Mount Holyoke she took an English Literature degree concentrating on medieval literature and creative writing. “I took a fabulous course in my senior year on women writers from that period [the Middle Ages], most of them were religious writers and what I realised in the process is that women experience religion emotionally whereas men try and put logic to it – and I wanted to look at that difference.”

She planned to study for a Masters degree in Theological Studies at Harvard. Before starting she decided to spend three years in England: within weeks she met the man who would become her husband, Chris Fenwick.

“No, I didn’t come to England because of my interest in medieval studies; I came to England because I was interested in the men. In connection with the Honourable Artillery Company of London, they had been over in Massachusetts and several of the young men of the time that my father met, when I was 13, were all back over.

“I attended a function with them on the quayside of Old Ironsides. So, we had a fantastic week, I showed a whole slew of them around Boston, the nightclubs and everything else. And they said, ‘Come to London’ – and I did – and that two weeks I spent in London was fantastic.

“And that’s when they said to me, ‘Do you realise you’re eligible for Irish citizenship?’ And I said, ‘I’ve known that for years. What good’s it going to do me?’ And they said, ‘Once you have the passport you can work here or anywhere else in Europe.’ So, the next day after that discussion I went off and picked up the paperwork and just over six months later I’d moved to the UK.”

Qualified in insurance, Liz soon got a job at Lloyds of London. The famous bowler [Derby] hats were no longer ubiquitous. “There were one or two, but mostly not. But it was still in the time of long boozy lunches.”

Chris Fenwick trained as a geologist and specialises in seismic surveys prior to drilling in the oil industry. “We moved to Canada first – out in Calgary then back to the UK. Then we went to Moscow and then we went to Houston, although he detoured to Baku for a stretch. Then Houston, Indonesia, Dubai, back to London then back to Dubai.”

The couple had three children along the way, sons Dom and Andrew plus daughter Sasha.

“We needed a base [so bought the house in Cornwall]. A lot of stuff stayed here.”

Up to this point Liz Fenwick’s life resembled a picaresque novel where the lead character is intent on her own enjoyment and fulfilment rather than the pursuit of her destiny. But the main theme, the creation of a bestseller, was soon to emerge.

“I’ve always been a writer. As an only child I read and you would try to continue stories in your head. You know when you’re a child and you make make-believe worlds with boxes. Writers never lose that sense of imagination. We just continue on, we live in our heads and our imaginations all the time.”

In Dubai Liz picked up some of the highly commercial Mills & Boon paperback romances [Harlequin in North America]. “I had three young children and I thought, ‘I can do that’ – it was 50,000 words and I wrote one and then duly submitted it – and it’s the only computer rejection I had and it was quite right.

“But because of that rejection I found the Romantic Novelists’ Association, I joined the new writers’ scheme. I submitted that novel and the critique came back as, ‘You can write, but you need to find where your voice fits and it doesn’t fit here.’

“So for the next several years I was writing a book a year, submitting it to the new writers’ scheme and rewriting previous books with the new skills that I’d learned. So I was always writing forward and if you will writing back.”

Networking was key. “I would go to these [RNA] parties and I would meet editors and agents, but I had nothing to submit at that point so I was allowed to meet them on a social basis without feeling, ‘Oh gosh, I’ve got to pitch right now!’”

At the first York Festival of Writing, Liz became convinced of her writing talent. In one workshop the aspiring writers were set an exercise to create a story from a coin, a number and a random name. “I thought if I can create a character out of [that] I need to stick with this.”

Not feeling ready to pitch to the legendary literary agent the late Carole Blake, author of From Pitch to Publication, Liz pitched instead to her junior, Oli Munson. She aimed for something, she said, along the lines of Daphne du Maurier meets Jodi Picoult.  

Carole Blake emailed back: “Take as long as you need and if you come anywhere near that I want to see it.”

Having decided on The Cornish House as her debut Liz sent a letter, three chapters and a synopsis of the novel to four agents. “By lunchtime UK time – because I was sitting in Dubai as I did this – I had my first request for a full [manuscript].”

Three of the four agents were interested, Liz Fenwick had to decide between them and chose Carole Blake because she would act as a mentor. “So she took the book on, gave me a couple of copy edits. It was right before the London Book Fair and my first book deal came before the fair, on Saint Patrick’s Day, from the Netherlands and to this day it’s a very strong market for me, they’ve bought every book. But my strongest market is Sweden. I think they classify my books as feel-good reads, not as romance and they just seem to enjoy it. That’s all I can say.”

In November 2017, after a series of Cornish novels had been published, The Bookseller magazine reported Liz Fenwick had moved from Orion publishers to HQ, an imprint of HarperCollins, in a six-figure deal.

The most recent novel The River Between Us topped the @thebookseller Heatseekers chart in July 2021 with its story of love across the class divide at the time of the First World War, DNA detection and the rehabilitation of a cottage on the banks of the Tamar River a century later. “The day’s fishing had gone well; the lovemaking even better.”

“I think it’s a great escapist read. It’s an emotional read. I am a writer of women’s fiction so therefore I’m always going to be targeted as a beach read. And what an honour that people would spend their holiday time reading my books. I provide entertainment, that’s what I do.”

Film? Netflix? “Yes please! I’ve had one nibble. No, that’s not true, I had a nibble of German interest and I had one nibble on The Path to the Sea.”

Recognition in the States? “I have none. HarperCollins have world rights and The River Between Us is out in e-book and audio but doesn’t come out in paperback [in the U.S.] until September.

The latest novel involved a lot of research including the war diaries of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry. “I obviously read quite a bit about the Votes for Women [campaign] and the Suffragette movement.”

The fictional Abbotswood Cottage owned by the fictitious Duke of Exeter closely resembles the real-life Endsleigh Cottage then owned by the real-life Duke of Bedford. Dukes have a rather different idea of what is a cottage to the rest of us; this one is now the splendiferous Hotel Endsleigh, still surrounded by the gardens designed by Humphry Repton.

“If you like gardens just go see the garden and that is pure magic.”

Cornwall, where she has come to rest, as an Atlantic promontory has distinct similarities with parts of New England. The character of the Cornish people she describes as having a “rugged and robust character that has adapted to live in at times a very hostile environment”.

While promoting The River Between Us, Liz Fenwick is hard at work on her next novel, set during the Second World War. Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, has just walked onto the page. “Yes! Yes, he has. Oh, it’s great fun. This’ll be my first fully historical novel, set during the war.

As for the fictional boatman’s cottage, scene of forbidden love, a real cottage on the Cornish side of the river, little remains. “The chimney-piece is there and one wall. I did a tour with the head gardener of Endsleigh and while we were up on the old Duke’s Drive, looking down, he was able to point it out to me.

“I had walked, trying to find it, because I knew it was there and actually he said there it is, all covered with vines and everything else and there’s not much. But who doesn’t like the idea of this old cottage and bringing it back to life?”

Roger Howe