How to Write a Love Story

by Katy Cannon

  Gran had always been a great beauty. I’d inherited a watered down version of her hair, but our eyes – green and bright – were almost identical. That was where the physical similarities ended, though. Gran was tall and willowy, whereas I had my mother’s rather less impressive height, and some of her curves, too.

  But I was still looking at the beret. The beret worried me. Gran’s hats all had meanings, and that one looked like a serious discussion hat. Maybe even an argument hat.

  Slowly, she turned to face me, her green eyes sharp on mine. Whatever issues she’d had with her eyesight over the years, Gran could always see right through me.

  “Sit down, why don’t you,” she said, her voice dry. “Unless you’d rather take my seat?”

  I winced. “Gran, I can explain.”

  “Oh, I do hope so.” Gran folded her hands in her lap as she watched me. “I’ve been trying to imagine ever since the review was posted exactly what your explanation might be.”

  “So have I,” I admitted, pulling a face.

  In a moment, the imposing version of Gran, the grand dame of romance, that had been waiting for me, disappeared. It started with a flash of a smile in her eyes, a hint of it around her lips. Then she rolled her eyes to heaven and raised her arms to beckon me over, the Gran I knew and loved once more.

  With a sigh of relief, I rushed over to my usual seat – the squashy, velvet covered armchair by the window next to Gran’s desk.

  “So, the only thing I could think of was that you were saving me from myself somehow, you little martyr you.” Gran raised both eyebrows as she watched me for my reaction. “Am I right?”

  I tried not to squirm too much in my chair. “Well, sort of. You were still sick, and you needed to go to hospital…”

  “But I remember you there with me,” Gran said, frowning. “I remember talking about the book, giving you all the pages you needed to finish it. I wouldn’t go to hospital until I’d finished writing down my final scenes.”

  And she called me a martyr. “That’s right. You did.”

  “I sense a ‘but’ coming here,” Gran said drily.

  “You were delirious, Gran. You had pneumonia.”

  “I’m a writer.” Gran straightened her already poker-straight back a little more. “When it comes to my art, it would take more than mere mortality to stop me completing my book on time.”

  “It was five months late already when you went to hospital,” I pointed out.

  Gran grinned. “Well, that practically is on time for me.”

  “True.”

  Gran has never been great at deadlines, although since I started helping her she’d got better – if only because I was so invested in the stories she wrote I hurried her along so I could find out what happened sooner.

  That first summer we lived at Gran’s, I read all twelve of the Aurora books she’d written so far. The series is all about this large, eccentric family – the Harwoods – who live in this crumbling estate called, of course, Aurora. Each book has a different couple at the heart of it, falling in love, while in the background the rest of the family get on with their lives. Gran’s written plenty of other books, too – standalone romances set in English villages or on isolated islands or in stately homes. But Aurora will be what she’s most remembered for, I think.

  The part I loved most about the series, and the part that made Gran a household name, is how you feel when you read the books – like you’re living, even growing up, with the family. You feel like you’re part of them.

  And that first summer, I really wished I was.

  So, twelve books in, I went and knocked on the door to the office, where I knew Gran was working on book thirteen, and asked, “What happens with Huw and Rosa?” They were the two characters nearest my own age, by the twelfth book, and so, of course, the ones I connected with most. They were fourteen in the book and, even with my limited twelve-year-old knowledge of love, I could see that they were meant to be together.

  Gran never even looked up from her pad of paper. “Come in and help me, and you might just find out.”

  And that’s how it started. To begin with, she had me filing and helping organize her boxes of notes into something approaching plot order. Then I started doing bits of research for her on the weekends – learning about topics as varied as medicinal plants, tax fraud, train times and weather patterns. Gran always wrote longhand and paid someone to come in and type up her manuscripts for her, so when I was fourteen I proudly waved a touch-typing certificate at her from an online course I’d done and took over that job, too. I loved being the first person to read Gran’s books, and actually getting paid for it made it even better.

  My absolute favourite part of my ever-expanding job, though, was helping Gran turn her confetti of Post-it note ideas and scrawled half-thoughts into an actual book. Gran’s first drafts tended to wander all over the place, leaving dropped plot threads and forgotten characters in their wake. A character who might have been vitally important in Chapter Two could suddenly disappear until the last scene – or sometimes never reappear again at all!

  So when she had a finished draft, Gran would hand it to me to read, and I’d find all the things that drove me mad as a reader – not knowing what happened to that character, not understanding why another would do something, that sort of thing. Then we’d make tea, and buy in cakes from the bakery at the bottom of the hill, and sit down together to dissect the book. Then Gran would piece it back together the way she wanted, and I’d type up all the changes for her.

  It worked, anyway. The last two books, since we started doing this, had received the lightest edits from her actual editor, and some of the best praise of her career. I wasn’t so big-headed as to believe it was all down to me, but making Gran think of her books like a reader, instead of a writer, was what she said made the difference.

  Until the last book: Aurora Rising.

  Before Gran went into hospital, she gave me every note she had on the almost-finished book. She’d already written three-quarters of it, and I had it typed and ready to go. All that remained was the last few chapters, and it was the longhand draft of that she gave me when the paramedics arrived.

  It wasn’t until the ambulance had pulled away, sirens blaring, and I read some of the text that I realized how useless those pages were going to be.

  I sighed. “I tried to work with the notes you left, Gran, really I did.” I’d grown to be quite the expert in deciphering Gran’s own peculiar shorthand, not to mention her … let’s say … distinctive handwriting. But even I couldn’t make sense of the pages she’d thrust into my hands as she was carted off in the ambulance. “But they were gibberish. Honestly, they were.” And there’d been no mention of the fate of Huw and Rosa at all, which had to be an oversight, surely.

  “But what about the earlier notes?” Gran asked sharply. “The drafts and thoughts from before I got sick. Surely you could have used those to piece together what I wanted to happen with the ending?”

  “I did!” I protested. “It was just…” I trailed off and shrugged helplessly. There weren’t many things I couldn’t say to Gran, but I had a feeling this might be one of them.

  Except that she was going to make me.

  “Go on.” She had her hands folded in her lap again, the utter image of unfailing patience (which we both knew was totally not the case. Gran is more impatient than the twins some days and they’re not even two yet).

  “It was just…” I repeated, then swallowed. “The notes you left … I didn’t think they were fully representative of the story you wanted to tell.” That sounded good, right? That was much better than just saying ‘they sucked, and if you’d been yourself you’d have seen that, too, and changed them’.

  “You mean they sucked,” Gran said, as if she was reading my mind. The word sounded odd coming from her perfectly painted lips. “And so you changed them because…?”

  “I wanted you to be proud of the book?” I said, hoping it was the right answer.


  “And?”

  “Um, I wanted your fans to be satisfied with the conclusion of the series?”

  “And?” Gran pressed again, leaning forwards in her chair.

  I cast around for another answer but the only one that leaped to mind really wasn’t one I could say.

  “Say it,” Gran said and I winced. Some days, I could swear she could read my mind.

  I thought I knew what she wanted to hear now – the real truth that I’d barely even acknowledged to myself until she made me see it. But as much as my family encouraged aspiration and achievement and being proud when it was justified … how could I tell Gran I’d rewritten the ending to her book because I’d known I could do it better than she could, right then?

  Gran was still waiting for my answer.

  “You have to remember,” I started, “how sick you were. There was no way you could make the changes the book needed – changes I was pretty sure you’d want anyway if you were well enough for me to discuss them with you. But under the circumstances, I decided … I decided that I could write it better.”

  Gran leaped out of her seat with more energy than you’d expect from a seventy year old.

  “A-ha! You thought you could write my book better than me!” The look on her face was somewhere between outrage and satisfaction that she’d got me to admit it.

  “Kind of?” I said, my voice a little squeaky as I cowered into the corner of the oversized armchair.

  “And you were right!” Gran dropped down to sit on the arm of my chair. “I read through the ending this afternoon. You hit every high point, tied up every loose end, satisfied every major fan question the Queen Beas have been asking to have answered for years.”

  “So you … you liked it? You’re not mad?” I blinked twice, trying to catch up with Gran’s quicksilver moods.

  “Mad? I’m delighted! You’re right – you wrote the ending I would have wanted to write, had I been well enough.” Gran wrapped an arm around my neck and hauled me close, placing a loud smack of a kiss on top of my head. “Now the question is what you do next.”

  “Next?” I asked, pulling back so I could see her face. No evidence of another joke there. “I just figured we’d go back to doing things the way we always did, now that you’re better.”

  Gran’s smile turned a little brittle, and she jumped to her feet again, turning away from me as she paced over to the opposite window, talking as she went.

  “Nonsense.” Her hands flapped expressively as she spoke, as usual. “I always knew you were destined to be a writer like me. Why do you think I encouraged you so much, from such an early age?”

  “Because you liked having someone else to type up your manuscripts and decipher your terrible handwriting?” In truth, I’d never hidden my ambition to be an author. From the moment I realized it was a job, I’d known it was the only career I’d ever really want.

  “Well, that too,” Gran admitted, flashing me a grin. “But mostly it was because when we worked together on those books, I could see my legacy coming to life. I won’t be around forever, you know.”

  “I think there’s a portrait in the attic that would beg to differ,” I joked.

  Gran rolled her eyes. “A Dorian Grey gag. How original. Really, how many lazy magazine journos have used that one? And, as I keep telling them, I just have exceptionally good skin and genes.” She studied my face and sighed. “Such a shame you got your mother’s complexion, really.”

  “Thanks, Gran.” I tried to sound offended but really I was just relieved we were back on to more normal topics again. Talking about how no one believed that Gran hadn’t had work done was everyday for me. Talking about her death was definitely not. And as for talking about me being a writer, well… Three chapters didn’t make me an author, I knew that much.

  It wasn’t that I hadn’t tried to write my own books before. I had a whole notebook full of ideas and snippets of dialogue and character descriptions. One day, when I was good enough, maybe I’d even write them. But right now… Working with Gran on hers was so much fun, but it made the idea of writing my own kind of intimidating. It’s not easy to sit down and start writing your own story when just down the hallway is one of the bestselling romance authors of all time, working on her next book.

  One day, I always told myself. One day, I’d have an idea for a book that no one could write but me – and I’d be ready to write it.

  That day just hadn’t happened yet.

  But Gran wasn’t giving up on me that easily.

  “I mean it, you know,” she said, pointing a perfectly manicured finger at me. The red polish matched her beret, I realized. And her shoes. And possibly the evil gleam in her eyes. “I didn’t work this hard to have it all die with me. I want a legacy – a family of authors, thrilling fans through the generations. You, Tilly, are my legacy.”

  “And what, exactly, are you expecting your legacy to do?” I asked, my eyes narrowing with suspicion. I knew I wasn’t going to get away with writing the ending of Gran’s book without some sort of punishment.

  “Well, since you’ve already finished one book, I think it’s time you tried starting one instead,” Gran said triumphantly. “I want you to write the opening chapters of my next book.”

  “What’s that?” Huw reached over and plucked the notebook from Rosa’s hands.

  Desperate, Rosa grabbed it back, making Huw laugh as she clutched it to her chest.

  “Something important, then?” he guessed.

  “It’s my journal. I’ve kept it for years. It’s private,” Rosa replied.

  Huw’s eyes turned sad. “That’s a shame. I’d love to know every detail of how you’ve spent the last few years. Since we’ve been apart.”

  Rosa bit her lip. She knew how he felt. “Maybe I’ll tell you the story of it. One day.”

  “We have plenty of days, now,” Huw replied, and leaned in to kiss her.

  Aurora Rising (2018), Beatrix Frost

  My first thought, the moment I woke up the next morning, was: she wasn’t serious. Right?

  There was no way that Gran would let me write her next book for her – not even the first few chapters. I’d go down to breakfast and tell her no deal. This had to be a trick, or a cruel and unusual punishment.

  Or maybe a challenge.

  I sat up in bed and thought about it. What had I been doing these last few years, helping Gran with her books, if I wasn’t preparing to write my own? Gran knew I wanted to be an author, I’d proved to her that I might not totally suck at it and now she was giving me a chance. An opportunity to go further.

  Did I really want to turn that down?

  A part of me felt excited at just the idea of it. I’d loved finishing off Aurora Rising – even with the panic about Gran, and the publishers getting more and more worried and talking about pushing back the release date… Getting in there with those characters, giving them all their happy endings and tying up those story threads that I’d been following for four years now – that was really special.

  I wanted that feeling again.

  As I swung my legs out of bed, I spotted something on my desk that I knew for certain hadn’t been there when I went to sleep.

  Curious, I padded across the room and picked it up.

  It was a soft-back notebook, about the size of a paperback novel. One side of the cover was bright blue, while the reverse was pink, and there was a yellow elastic holding it closed around the middle. Inside, the creamy pages held faint ruled lines, waiting for me to write on them – but only in one half. The other half held plain pages instead as if, weirdly, the notebook seemed to start from both sides. On the first page of the blue side, written in Gran’s distinctive writing, were the words Write Me Down in bright green ink. Underneath, she’d scrawled: Every writer needs a notebook. Every new person you meet, every image of the world around you, every conversation you overhear … as they greet you they will shout ‘Write me down!’. And so you must. On the pink side, she’d written Write Me Down again, in the same
green ink. But this time underneath she’d added: Every girl needs a place to put her thoughts, her feelings, the tumults of her relationships and experiences. Write those down too. You’ll need them later, even if they hurt now.

  So apparently Gran was pretty sure I was going to accept her challenge. Sure enough that she’d provided me with my own writer’s notebook to start me off.

  I bit my lip, excitement bubbling up in my chest. She knew me too well. She knew that, having thrown down the challenge, the part of me that was just like her wouldn’t let me walk away from it.

  I was going to write a book.

  I was going to be a writer.

  And that was the most exciting feeling in the world.

  So, now I had a vocation – and a handy motto, too, I thought, looking down at the notebook in my hand. (Gran was great at two-for-one gifts but usually that meant she bought you something she wanted, too. Which, in some ways, was exactly what she’d done with the notebook, actually.)

  All I had to do now was figure out what I wanted to write about.

  I thought, fleetingly, about the secret notebook in my drawer, filled with years of my own ideas and thoughts already. But they weren’t the right sort of stories for Gran’s readers. I knew what the Queen Beas loved – the all-consuming romances that Gran wrote best. I needed a story that fitted her style and that was a different challenge altogether.

  But one I was willing to rise to. After four years of working on Gran’s manuscripts with her, I knew how these books worked. I could totally do this.

  I was almost sure.

  My head was still fizzing with the idea of being an actual writer when I walked through the school gates that morning, and it didn’t stop through all my morning classes. I was glad to see that most of the Valentine’s decorations had been taken down, with just the odd tattered heart bunting hanging in forgotten corners – the school almost felt back to normal, even if I felt anything but.

  The February day was cold but bright and crisp, so as the bell went for lunch I grabbed Anja and Rohan and headed for our favourite outdoor spot (via the canteen to get chips for Rohan). I needed to talk to someone about all the thoughts bouncing around my head but I really didn’t want to have the conversation where anyone might hear us.