RESEARCH

You may be interested in some of my research for various novels I’ve written.

Since Three Steps of the Sun has recently won another prize, I’ll start with this one.

Based on the life of visionary artist of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Mary Watts, this novel depicts how two significant relationships with GF Watts and William Morris may have formed a creative triangle that both hindered and helped her complete her masterpiece, the Watts Chapel.

Over a period of five years, I did research for the novel, including visiting the Watts Chapel, the Gallery and the home of Mary and GF Watts three times in different seasons. I wanted to capture the feeling of the place, to know the nature there like Mary Watts did. I read her journals and notes as well as the book she published herself on what the imagery in the chapel symbolized. I kept my own journals, sketchbooks and took many pictures. I’ll share some here too. I have a reading list at the end of the novel. It was a journey of much research both in books and online to understand the period of time in the United Kingdom 1870-1904. I also studied the places she and GF Watts traveled during their honeymoon, to Italy and Egypt in 1886.

Here are some photographs of the characters in this novel who were also real people of this time.