Jervis Bay local author Kell Woods is launching her new book, Upon a Starlit Tide, next week at Boobook on Owen. She chatted with Jervis Bay Weekend about her inspirations, her work routines and the insane amount of research that goes into her books! Tickets to the book launch are now available, for Wednesday 12 February or Thursday 13 February from 5.30pm at JB Coffee Co, next door to Boobook on Owen in Huskisson, $15 includes a glass of wine.
Jervis Bay Weekend: On the book jacket it says readers can expect a tale that blends elements from The Little Mermaid and Cinderella in a wholly original story. Can you sum up your story for our readers?
Kell Woods: It’s a historical fantasy for adults and it takes elements from Cinderella and The Little Mermaid and it pulls upon the familiar elements of those tales that we all know and love, like the ball and rescuing the shipwrecked prince and the glass slippers, and I’ve woven them together and made a new story out of it.
It’s set in Saint Malo in Brittany in 1758 at a time when France was at war with England in the middle of the Seven Years War, so you’ve got this amazing 18th century setting with a lot of high stakes and a lot of high fashion!
It tells the story of Luce, whose father is a very wealthy ship owner. Saint Malo was a privateer stronghold in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was very wealthy, very powerful and the Saint Malo ship owners and sailors were incredibly talented at stealing stuff from other people on the English Channel.
Luce is the youngest daughter of one of those very wealthy corsairs, a ship owner, and she’s feeling trapped by her wealthy, privileged lifestyle. All she wants to do is go to sea and explore the world.
JBW: She’s a wonderful heroine. Part lady of the manor and part pirate and a pioneering feminist. She’s a real force.
KW: Yeah, she is. She was very much based on The Little Mermaid character, inquisitive and curious and wanting to know what’s above the sea, in that world above.
I wanted to make Luce like that. I wanted her to be intelligent and curious and to have her own agenda, which is to get out and explore and see what lies beyond that horizon. And that was a real 18th century thing, too. It was the Age of Sail. You had incredible technological advances in shipbuilding and navigation in that century.
JBW: I love her cave of treasures, the combination of things in the cave, including ship’s navigational equipment and things that have washed up on the beach.
KW: Yeah, she’s a scientist, right? She’s collecting, she studies natural history. She’s quite accomplished. It was rare in that time for young women to have tutors and to receive the education that Jean-Baptiste has given to his daughters. She’s collecting things like shells and feathers, and then there’ll be some kind of random piece of furniture.
JBW: I love your descriptions of these grand yet slightly soiled or damaged goods that have come out of the shipwrecks, and how she shares the cave with Samuel. When you compare it with her cabinet of curiosities at home, the contrast is really interesting.
KW: Yeah, that was deliberate. It was her private place where she could feel free. It’s much more connected to her soul and her wildness. She is a little bit wild.
JBW: It’s also a ‘coming of age’ story, isn’t it? Luce is blossoming into her adult self and she’s becoming aware of her romantic attractions and her special powers.
KW: She’s very beautiful. As you go [further into the story], you’ll realise why. She’s not fashionable. Madame de la Pompadour was the height of fashion at that time. She was the king’s mistress and it was all about being plump and soft with pink cheeks and blue eyes and blonde hair. And Luce is tall and a bit thin and has really tanned skin and black hair. She’s not at all your fashionable 18th century young woman. The sisters were fun to contrast with her as well.
JBW: There’s also a lot of intricate details of the landscape and towns, the local culture and historical details, even a smattering of French. You pack an enormous amount of detail into your writing. What’s the process for you to get into this world that you’re creating so deeply?
KW: It’s a long process and the research starts before I start writing, and I do a lot of research! I went to France in May 2023, even before [my first book] After the Forest came out. I went to Paris and I took my husband with me, we went to the Louvre, to the 18th century rooms and looked at all of the beautiful furniture from that period and the way the decor would have been and the clothes. In London we went to a couple of [museums], which I’m posting about on my socials, I’m doing Friday Frippery, about the gowns and décor, it was just incredible. There was a lot of frockage!
Then we went to St Malo and we stayed right in the middle of the of the town, in the walls, it’s called the Intramuros. We walked the walls, we went around the beaches, we talked to some of the locals, we watched the tide come racing in. It was all that textural detail.
JBW: Do you speak French?
KW: Not at all. My grandma was French and she was a French teacher. She’s passed away now and I was missing her a lot during this process because she would have loved it.
JBW: You even use historical French terms for when the forest evolves into the the fields and orchards …
KW: Bocage …
JBW: it’s that level of immersion, and it’s effortless in the book. You don’t pause and describe something, it just unfolds.
KW: That was a lot of editing and a lot of hard work to get to that point because it’s easier for me to throw a massive paragraph in there and describe all this stuff but that’s really going to slow the story down.
JBW: There’s a lot of symbolism woven in the story, like the Lion and Wolf emblems of the two main families, do you lean into that when you’re writing?
KW: I based the Leon family on a real family and they’re still alive so I had to change the name and pretend I’m not writing about them. The real family were very wealthy and all the things that Luce’s family is. Traditionally they have a white lion [as their emblem] and I quite liked that. I made up the de Chatelaine family, I thought the wolf and the lion go together so well. I borrowed a little bit from Game of Thrones there with the Lannisters and the Starks but there’s a reason we keep using these symbols because people realise straight away what’s happening, it’s a very powerful storytelling mechanism.
JBW: What about their summer houses, the malouinières?
KW: There’s about 112 malouinières still there in St Malo. Most of them are privately owned, but we drove around and looked through the gates. A couple are open to the public. We went to one of those and there was a chapel half in and half out of the wall, which is where I got the idea for that. So all of that was based on history and I tweaked it to make it a bit more fantasy.
JBW: Adding the power in the stones and the fae folk?
KW: I didn’t make any of that up. That’s all in their folklore. All the houses and the walls are made of granite, which is quarried out along the coastline in St. Malo, that was the basis for the stormstone. It’s all mixed up with folklore and history.
JBW: You mentioned frockage before, and you write in detail about textiles and clothing throughout the book and I think it gives so much life and authenticity to your story. You talk about hankies from the laundry and canvas bags of sailors and hammocks strung up in the cave and specific garments that characters are wearing. The textiles are a strong element in the book.
KW: They would have been in real life. This was the time when dresses would have been handed down from mother to daughter because the fabric was so expensive and precious. It comes back to that detail for me. If you can imagine the sound of the rustle of the silk and the way the light hits it, then you’re there. You’re in that room with them.
I love textiles and historical fashion. If I could, I would wear this stuff all day. I love historical fashions.
JBW: I could picture you in the drawing room in your outfit tinkling away on the harpsichord.
KW: Yeah, that’s me! Another author friend of mine said to me, Kell, when we read your books, we get frocks and we get food. I go there [in detail] with food as well. Because we wear clothes and we eat food and we smell food, it’s all that sensory stuff.
JBW: Your books are full of smells, and sounds as well, the smell of the town is so pungent off the page, of hot tar rotting fish, it stinks in my mind!
KW: Yeah, that was my aim. I like reading books like that, I like to be right in the story. I want to smell it. I want to see it. I know it was probably gross and they stunk and the dresses were probably full of fleas. But to look back at it from now, the paintings of those women in those gowns, it was quite a magical time.
JBW: I think our readers would like to know, does your life here in Jervis Bay have an influence on your professional life as a writer?
KW: It absolutely does. I moved down here when I was nine. So I’ve lived here and swum in the sea here since I was a little kid.
I write on the beach sometimes. When I was writing this book, I was taking my notebook to the beach and writing in the morning with a cup of tea and swimming. Jervis Bay is in this book, even though it’s set in France, I spent a lot of time thinking and writing and dreaming about the book on the beaches here.
JBW: Is there a routine or a ritual that you do to get into writing mode?
KW: I always light a candle or light some incense and I write to music. The first thing I do when I start a new writing project is make a Spotify playlist. When that music goes on, it’s usually film scores…
JBW: Do you try to relate the choice of music back to what you’re writing?
KW: My Upon a Starlit Tide playlist has things from Pirates of the Caribbean… I’ll find a song that feels like the scene I’m working on and I’ll put that on repeat. Sometimes I listen to the same song a thousand times in a day if I’m working on one scene!
I can’t think of a better way to come back to a scene or a mood than a piece of music. It takes you there straight away, it’s so emotive. That’s why I like film scores, because that music is telling a story. So when I put the music on and the candle’s lit and the timer on, it’s go time.
