Featured Interview With James R. Vance
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Originally from Manchester, England, I fell in love with France when I was aged twelve; a school trip to Blois in the Loire valley fascinated me. I persuaded my parents to holiday there and, when I became a parent myself, France became a regular holiday destination. Inevitably, I purchased a property and relocated here almost fifteen years ago, having previously worked in England where I was responsible for scripting and delivering interactive training scenarios for an international company, a role that took me not only to various locations throughout the U.K. but also to France and the Czech Republic. This experience was influential in my decision to embark on a writing career by expanding my creativity to produce novels. One of my leisure activities involved amateur dramatics, which also motivated me to write, becoming the co-writer of a one-act play. Writing can be a lonely labour of love but the leisurely lifestyle here with my son, two daughters, a Border Collie and a cat called Barny is compatible with my passion for reading and writing.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
Aged ten, I wrote my first published ‘composition’, entitled ‘Nonsense’ in a school magazine. Many years later, I commenced my first novel, which combined space travel with a vision of ‘life after death’ and the mystery surrounding the fate of Russia’s Tsar Nicholas II. Unfortunately, the remains of the Romanov family were discovered, an untimely event that scuppered my plot! The original manuscript remains incomplete and gathering dust. After settling in France, I began writing novels in the genre of mystery crime, but a series of events and situations led me towards historical fiction even though I found history at school rather uninteresting.
When I lived in the UK, I had occasionally watched a TV series, ‘The World at War’. One particular episode lingered in my mind for many years; episode twenty-six began with a picture of a country lane and Laurence Olivier’s narration: ‘Down this road on a sunny day in 1944, the soldiers came…’ followed by the distressing coverage of a Nazi atrocity. Though I had spent many holidays in France, I had often wondered about the location of Oradour-sur-Glane. To discover that it lay less than thirty miles from the property I now owned prompted me to make several visits. I purchased a book entitled ‘Martyred Village’ by Sarah Farmer, a read that led me to another book by Max Hastings: ‘Das Reich. The March of the 2nd SS Panzer Division through France, June 1944’. Considering my abhorrence of history, these stories inspired me. Quite unexpectedly, something else happened.
One evening, not long after living here, there was a knock on my front door. A little old Frenchman (I discovered later that he was a neighbour) stood there and asked if I was the Englishman who had come to live in the village. His strange request for information about the battle of Cambrai during WWI started my love affair with the genre of historical fiction. His true story became the prologue to my first HF novel, ‘Les Ruines’, which supports the fictitious story of his wife’s involvement in the Résistance.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I have always been a fan of mystery crime novels, eager to read the next John Grisham, Ken Follett, Ian Rankin or Lee Child novel. More recently, however, I have enjoyed reading Sebastian Faulks, particularly ‘Birdsong’ and Tatiana de Rosnay’s ‘Sarah’s Key,’ historical fiction genres that inspired me to write three novels based on factual events interwoven with fictional threads, all focussing on the Nazi occupation of France. Having discovered I resided in an area that had been a hotbed of Résistance during WWII, I began researching this region of France where I uncovered a rich vein of anecdotal evidence and visual reminders that I wove into my plots.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My latest novel, ‘Something Old, Something New’, published earlier this year, covers several generations of a French family from the beginning of the last century to the present day. Two sisters discover a medallion secreted in an old trunk in their grandmother’s attic. Despite their different attitudes and conflicting views, they embark on a quest to trace its origins, a journey that reveals disturbing aspects of their family history with devastating consequences. The novel explores the confusion, misconceptions and fears that existed during those dark years of Nazi occupation, reflecting the conflict and bitter sentiments that still exist amongst families some seventy years later…a permanent legacy of that tragic period.
To write the novel, I spent over six months interviewing some geriatric survivors of the occupation, visiting many sites where the Nazis, sometimes aided by the milice (a mainly French militia) and members of the gendarmerie had been involved in documented atrocities. I visited the Bureau d’Archives, the Musée de la Résistance et Déportation in Montauban, La Musée de la Résistance in Limoges, the towns of Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glane. To ensure the authenticity of the story’s factual background, I spent hours reading non-fiction books by renowned authors like Philippe Burrin, M.R.D.Foot, Julian Jackson, H.R. Kedward, Pierre Louty, Marcel Parent, Guy Pauchou and others. In Montauban, I even stayed in the Hotel du Commerce that features in the novel to discover how it traded during the Second World War.
Connect with the Author on their Websites and Social media profiles