Through Her Lens follows a woman working as a photographer and British Intelligence agent who struggles for personal autonomy during a period of history where women are often overlooked. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

I have long loved history, but it doesn’t take much looking to realize that much of what has been kept and written about is men. One evening I was watching an episode of NOVA, a PBS program, called “3D Spies of World War II.” They talked about the V1 and V2 bombs and the pilots who took the images, but they also spoke about the women who worked at RAF Medmenham. Many of them outranked men because the creator of the 3D approach thought women would be better at analysis than men. A woman is credited for finding the V1, Constance Babington Smith. I had a short story with a character named Millie, who was being evacuated from London at the start of the war. My writing group had been encouraging me to explore a longer story for Millie and with this nugget of information about RAF Medmenham, I had my path and one that I wouldn’t have to work to fill in too many gaps. Women did the important analysis work. I only had to learn about them to create a more well-rounded Millie and the world that she would inhabit. It was a chance to tell a true and little-known story about one of the many important things women did to help the Allies’ efforts in defeating the Axis powers.

What were some of the trials that you felt were important to highlight the character’s development?

For a single woman working in the time, the trials were many. It was important to me not to gloss over that fact. For that reason, I made her family rich. Money wasn’t something I wanted her to struggle with. I did want to highlight the limited choices women had. The British government wasn’t going to give her a gun or let her take her camera into the fight for that matter, but they expected her to contribute all the same and with little or no credit. Every day Millie was going to open her beloved newspaper to see honor bestowed on the men of her day. She was going to have to risk everything, remember Britain was regularly being bombed, and get no credit at all. How was an ambitious person to manage something like this? How this would shape Millie interested me. It was also critical that her father not treat her like his sons. He could want things for and from her, but only within what his peers would find acceptable. William may have had progressive ways, due to the influences of his wife—Millie’s mother, Margaret—but they didn’t naturally flow to Millie. They would both need to bend and the conflict between them would need to shape them. Finally, I couldn’t create a world without grave personal loss. No one escaped the war without pain of some sort. Millie couldn’t be an exception.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

The thought I kept coming back to was this: There are things we want to do and things we should do, but unfortunately they are rarely the same things. Every character in Through Her Lens struggled with this fact. I believe most of my readers do as well. In this way I was able to take an old story and pull it into the present.

I also wanted the reader to grapple with how we value service. Why is a surgeon more valuable than a garbage man? Why is a man’s work, in the case of my novel, more noteworthy than a woman’s? Why have there been countless stories told of Winston Churchill, the men who stormed the beaches at Normandy, the men who endured the Battle of the Bulge, but few if any of the intelligence work the women did on Churchill’s behalf, the women who worked alongside him in his bunker in London, or the nurses and other women who followed the men into France, or of those who worked without a gun in the Ardennes? I do not mean to diminish the work and sacrifices of the men, only to ask why not the women too.

What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?

I found writing flirtatious banter quite fun. I have an idea swimming in my imagination of a group of female whiskey trippers, the folks who hauled booze during prohibition, and have written a few short stories to unearth my heroine. As you might imagine women were overlooked at the time and the 1920s were pretty bad for women. So perhaps an alternate reality of the time or maybe a more modern setting like revamped Smokey and the Bandit, populated by women, of course. I’d like to spend my time with a lighter topic and give my sense of humor a bit of a workout. I’ve visited a few spots in Appalachia to start getting a feel for possible characters and see who I can unearth for more inspiration. And I am constructing a cast with short stories and essays which is my second favorite part of the writing process. As to when it will be ready, who can say—soon, I hope! But research is my favorite part of the process, and it can take some time.

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Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2024/04/26/how-we-value-service/