I’m very pleased to welcome author the The Sea Glass Beach, Tina Pritchard. to the blog today. She is sharing #TenThings she’d like her readers to know about her. Her dog, Horace, who we can see above features and we find out a bit about a rather shocking incident from the book which actually happened in real life to one of Tina’s relatives! Thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for having me as part of the tour.
- I’m a big fan of the author Elizabeth Strout. I loved Olive Kitteridge.
- I used to be a Humanist celebrant conducting weddings, namings and funerals. On several occasions I conducted all three ceremonies for one family. I have lots of stories from that time, but they couldn’t be published, for obvious reasons.
- When Roisin’s Aunt Peggy refers to a nurse friend of hers being shot dead by a patient suffering from what was then known as ‘shell shock’, this happened in real life to a relative of mine.
- My rescue terrier Horace forces me out of the house even in the most inclement of weathers, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Walking helps me to organise my thoughts, an essential process for any author.
- My favourite flowers are blowsy pink peonies.
- I love savoury foods, but have a weakness for flapjacks and chocolate.
- When I was a young child, my playground was the grounds of Windsor Castle. My stepfather was a Grenadier guard. I wasn’t allowed to speak to him when he was on duty. His bearskin gave me the collywobbles!
- My family travelled to Malaya, as it was known then, by ship. I seem to remember it took over three weeks to get there. I loved the time I spent there, especially as when school ended at midday we spent the rest of the day on the beach. I have a collection of short stories from the time I spent there, including the one when I was sitting reading and looked down to see a snake curled around my chair leg.
- The Sea Glass Beach is primarily a work of fiction, but I recognise elements of me in the main character, Roisin. I was left to my own devices a lot as a child and probably went a bit feral for a while.
- My husband and I spent time in Nova Scotia where the major part of the book is set and we did consider moving there. It’s a very inspiring place to visit and I loved writing about it’s rugged beauty. We once rented a beachside cottage at the tail end of a hurricane. Wild and windy is an understatement.
About the Book
In 1950’s southern Ireland, single mother Theresa gives birth to a child she names Roisin. Arrangements are in hand for the adoption when Theresa changes her mind. The child, gifted and intuitive, is viewed by the local community as ‘odd’. Reeling from the news of Roisin’s heart-breaking expulsion from convent school, Theresa makes a momentous decision. To protect her daughter, she must send her away.
Canada’s wild beauty serves as a backdrop to a year of challenges for Roisin. She encounters trauma and devastating loss, but also gains a new family and finds love with the enigmatic Cal. Death, grief and culpability are potent forces she must somehow come to terms with. Can a tiny model boat unshackle her from her past and help her journey into a hopeful future?
Purchase Links
UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BMJR3ZT3
US – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BMJR3ZT3
About the Author
Tina Pritchard spent most of her life engaged in bringing up a family, taking a social science degree, working as a lecturer, a trainer and more recently as an independent celebrant conducting funerals, weddings and naming ceremonies. Her first book, a psychological thriller, In A Deep Dark Wood, was published in 2021. The Sea Glass Beach is a departure in genre and started life as a short story morphing over the years into a novel. It is a work of fiction inspired in part by her own mother’s experience of giving birth to a child at Sean Ross Abbey Mother and Baby Home in the 1950’s. That child, born all those years ago in Co Tipperary, Ireland, is the author of this book.
Tina loves to write and has won competitions for both her short stories and her poetry. She lives in a beautiful part of the world and gains much of her inspiration from walking her badly behaved terrier, Horace, in the Derbyshire countryside.
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