The Swallow & The Hummingbird was the last of my ‘Latin American quartet’. By this time my novels were doing very well in Europe, selling especially well in France, Germany and Holland. Much to my surprise and disappointment, the USA were not interested in Argentina and Chile and no one wanted to publish me out there.
This was also the last of my sagas. In a successful bid to win America I changed direction with my next book. For this one, though, I based the largest part of the book in Devon with a few chapters in Cordoba, north Argentina. When I lived there we stayed with a friend who had a beautiful ranch in the hills. We rode out with the gauchos across rugged countryside and watched eagles circle high above us. I thought this would be a good place to base the book, having explored the flat Argentine pampa, the cool Chilean coast and the English Colony in Buenos Aires in the previous three. This hilly terrain was a different part of Latin America that had captured my imagination.
I make up all my own locations. This is partly because I enjoy inventing places. I like to decide where the village church goes in relation to the main house, where the shop and pub are and how far it is from the sea. I like to invent names and local characters and of course the history, which is the main reason I make places up. If I use real towns and villages there will inevitably be a reader who complains that I have got the history wrong, that a bomb did not fall on the church in the war, or that on 9th May 1958 the pub did not burn down. Fictitious locations avoid uncomfortable replies to indignant readers!
For this novel, about a fighter pilot in the Second World War, I read a couple of autobiographies written by war veterans. They were fascinating as well as enlightening. While I was deliberating the plot I went for a walk in the woods where I grew up in Hampshire, and watched the pheasants and partridges. I thought about the way they are shot down and how some get back on their feet again and manage to fly while others just sit there looking terrified. This made me think of people I know who react to life’s struggles in the same way. What makes one person sit in a heap while the other draws on some hidden inner resource and pushes on? I used the analogy of the two wounded birds, hence the title. One is English, the other American. I thought it fitting also that as the hero is a fighter pilot, the theme should be about flight.
I might add that I began the novel with one of my most important characters, Mrs Megalith, and needed her to be talking to someone. So I created Max. Max wasn’t meant to have such a large part, he was simply there to enable me to introduce Mrs Megalith. George is the hero, after all. But I so enjoyed him that he ended up taking over. When writers say their characters sometimes take on lives of their own, I think that is what they mean!
