Episode 104: Soraya Lane, bestselling author of historical and contemporary women’s fiction
Soraya Lane, bestselling author of historical and contemporary women’s fiction, introduces us to her new series, The Lost Daughters.
The Italian Daughter, first in the new series, is a dual timeline novel which takes the reader to Italy, both in 1946 and to a beautiful vineyard in present day.
Readers describe the novel as emotional, heart-breaking and “full of hope and love”.
Soraya chats about The Italian Daughter. She shares her writing process that has led to writing forty books, and explains how it’s changed over time, and she’s moved from panster to plotter in her approach.
Don’t miss Soraya’s meatballs and book club questions (along with other food suggestions for your club) at Book Club Bites. As Soraya says “This is the kind of food I can imagine my character Lily eating with Antonio's family in Italy- delicious meatballs with either a salad on the side and a loaf of warm, crusty bread, or served on spaghetti. I can actually see them all together as a family, laughing and sharing stories at the dinner table as they eat this.”
Books Mentioned:
The Italian Daughter by Soraya Lane ( Amazon )
Voyage of The Heart by Soraya M Lane (Bookshop.org / Amazon )
Wives of War by Soraya M Lane (Bookshop.org / Amazon )
The Tattooist of Auschwitz Series by Heather Morris (Bookshop.org / Amazon ) - and the third book Three Sisters (Bookshop.org / Amazon )
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (Bookshop.org / Amazon )
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Connect with the author:
Transcript:
** Transcript created using AI (so please forgive the typos!) **
Lainey Cameron 0:00
I'm here with Soraya Lane. This is so exciting for me because I've read Soraya's historical fiction. This one is dual timeline modern and historical 1946, I believe. And it's the first in a series of did I get seven right? There's gonna be seven in the series. Is that right?
Soraya Lane 0:17
It is actually supposed to be eight. Would you believe?
Lainey Cameron 0:20
Eight!
Soraya Lane 0:20
I've always wanted to write a big series. And somehow it's just, you know, I had all these ideas, and it's exploded into into an eight book idea.
Lainey 0:28
Well, I can't wait to hear more about how you come up with an eight book series that just blows my mind. And even like the concept of selling an eight book series to a publisher, it's fascinating to me. But let's start with where are you joining us from because you have such a fun location that you're in. So tell folks where you are?
Soraya Lane 0:43
Yeah, I do. So I'm in New Zealand, if you haven't been able to tell by my strange accent. So yeah, coming to you from New Zealand.
Lainey 0:50
Let's just start by talking about the book, the first in the series, The Italian Daughter. Why don't you tell folks, it just came out, so they're probably not familiar with it yet. Give them a little bit of the spiel, tell them about the book.
Soraya Lane 1:01
So this is obviously the first book in my new series, which is the Lost Daughters series. I feel like I've been planning this series for such a long time, in my mind, just trying to piece it all together. The main story that really had always stood out to me when I was sort of thinking about it was the story set in Italy. And I think because I wrote this first book during lockdown, so here in New Zealand, we had very, very strict lockdowns during COVID, we could only leave the house, you know, for groceries or to go to the doctor. So it was it was very strict. I think I was suddenly dreaming with our borders, international borders closed. I was just dreaming of, you know, being able to travel and Italy was just the place that I kept thinking about. I wanted to do a dual timeline and which is a little different.
For me, the story begins, we've got the modern day story, which is set in London. And obviously we're introducing readers to the series as well, you find out that there has been there's been this house called Hope's House which is has existed for unmarried mothers and their babies to to give birth and to find adoptive parents for those children. And so we have the story opening with the main character Lily is summoned to the offices of a lawyer, and she finds out that there's been this little box left behind for her grandmother that her grandmother has passed away. Now her family don't know that her grandmother was adopted. And it turns out her grandmother never knew either. But this little box has been left along with seven other boxes. It was found beneath the floorboards and it has two clues in there about the grandmother's past about her heritage.
So suddenly, Lily finds herself on this journey of traveling to Italy. She's a winemaker. So she has actually taken a job on a beautiful vineyard. And of course, there is also a very, very handsome man that she falls in love with on the vineyard who helps her to discover her past or figure out what the secrets mean, the clues that she has, she has a an old recipe, a handwritten recipe part of a program that she doesn't know what the program was. And it actually turns out that it's a theater program from LA Scarlett, which is a famous theatre in Italy that starts her on her on her journey of trying to figure out her grandmother's past. In the meantime, we also have we have part of the book set or about half of the book set in the past, which is where we meet SJ and Felix nsj is a beautiful young girl who's a ballerina, she's fallen in love with Felix Felix is from a very prominent family, his family owned bakeries, and it's a very sad love story where they are, you know, they're forced apart, they know they can never be together, he's already promised to another woman. So the story sort of follows this day as she leaves and becomes a ballerina Atlas scholar, and then they end up finding each other again as adults and you know, they still have a deep love for one another. The childhood romance has continued to blossom even after all the years. And so we have that lovely sort of inter woven to storylines throughout the book,
Lainey Cameron 3:41
I noticed you chose 1946 So right after the war, which is interesting to me, because you have first off if anyone hasn't read your books, your love scenes are just beautiful. I fall in love every time I read one of your love scenes, so I'm excited to read like a modern modern one that was well, like 1946 Why 1946 So you're so well known for doing World War Two fiction if anyone hasn't read your world war two fiction, it's phenomenal. Also has beautiful love so you like why 1946 What made you choose that year in particular,
Soraya Lane 4:11
I just love that genre. I love that time period, you know, I just wanted to write something different and so all of the books in the series are set at different times in history. The second book in the series is called the Cuban daughter and that is set in Cuba during the 1950s you know pre revolution and it was just nice to try out some different time periods and and do some different research and I just wanted my readers to to see a different side of my writing I guess
Lainey Cameron 4:35
for you brought up research how do you research like we said Cuba? 1950s Yeah, how do you approach that so you can actually write what it's like to be there when you weren't there in Cuba in the 1950s
Soraya Lane 4:44
Look, I think that's the most challenging part of writing historical fiction it's it's one of those things where you just have to immerse yourself and reading and looking at photos and and just really absorbing that culture and and what it was like during that period. So I feel like I sort of When I'm writing a different period, I feel like I genuinely just live and breathe as much as I can. What I'm researching, I'm working on my next historical World War Two fiction at the moment before that I handed in my book set in Cuba and oh, it was just amazing women and they're beautiful.
Lainey Cameron 5:15
I love it. I love it. Talk to me about the series idea, like how do you get the inspiration for an eight book series? I'm fascinated.
Soraya Lane 5:23
I feel like I'd been thinking about the series for so many years and wanting to write a beautiful a disconnected books that you could read out of order. It doesn't matter whether where you pick up a book in the series. Yeah, I think it had been in my mind for such a long time. And I actually have sold it. I've sold the first four books, I didn't want to commit to all eight straight away. But as soon as I started writing it, it stood out to me as I knew I had to write all eight of them. It just feels like the right time in my career, I suppose to try something different and to really push myself and just be able to build my readership and and show my readers, you know, something different from me as well.
Lainey Cameron 5:59
And I love the fact that this one also takes you to a vineyard, right? The main character goes to work in a vineyard in Italy that had to be fun researching the vineyard setting piece of what it's like to work there.
Soraya Lane 6:10
Yeah, it was just so beautiful. I love that research. When I started out writing, I wrote contemporary romance. So I felt like it was almost, it was just nice, almost like coming home to what I first started writing. And so I very much fell in love with Italy, the vineyard and obviously our gorgeous hero as well. He was Antonio. He's just delicious.
Lainey Cameron 6:31
Yeah,I know. How can you not fall in love with an Italian hero with all of that? Romance food? And yes, indeed.
Soraya Lane 6:37
I was gonna say there's a scene in the book where they're celebrating after the harvest, and I've got just this beautiful feast on the table and wine flowing and all these gorgeous, gorgeous evening as the sun sets. And you know, I just think, Oh, I could just during lockdown, I could just see myself there. It was where I wanted to be. So it felt really beautiful writing it. There's a few things I feel like I would love all Italian food. I've got them eating, I think what I have been doing just baking fresh bread in the morning and eating spaghetti. I just everything about Italy. Just I just love it.
Lainey Cameron 7:06
I actually took a little look at your first reviews because people are already loving this. You got early copies. And here's some of the things I saw that really caught my attention. People talk about how emotional the book is how full of hope it is full of hope and love. And also heartbreaking. Several people commented that although it's emotional and full of hope it's also heartbreaking at times, you've obviously like really grabbed folks and pulled them into the emotion side of the story.
Soraya Lane 7:30
Yeah, it has been lovely seeing those early reviews. I think, for me, it was about trying to really capture that emotion. And that heartbreak of the past story that we're interweaving and then having that beautiful element of hope and travel and falling in love when you're least expecting it in the modern day part of it. I sort of feel like you know, we need these kinds of stories right now, you still want that seriousness. And there's still that, you know, interesting part of the story being set in history. But we sort of need I think with everything happening in the world. It's really beautiful to work on a story and share with readers something that feels hopeful and happy and shows all the possibilities that there still are in the world.
Lainey Cameron 8:07
I love that. And so you've written so many books at this point, like you said, you started in romance. You're known for World War Two fiction and those books are fabulous. If anyone has read those, you're missing out. And now you've got this series, what advice do you have for people who are trying to find you know, what their passion their niche is writers who are maybe earlier in the career in their career.
Soraya Lane 8:26
I think the biggest thing for me is just to write you know, you can go to all the writers conferences you can listen to, you know, all the experts talk about writing, but at the end of the day, the only way we learn to write and we get better at writing is just by writing I wrote seven manuscripts before I was published and I feel that they were like my apprenticeship I often say to someone you don't become a lawyer or you know an accountant or you know, any other profession without studying and without learning what you're going to, you know, at the time, you need to believe it might be published, but I think it's okay to just be writing and learning and developing your voice for me, I certainly found myself at with romance early on, I very much approached my writing career, I was a journalist before this working as a freelance journalist while I was trying to get published and I very much approached it like a career and something I wanted to do full time but you know, things change and although I loved writing romance, and I still do, you know, there were other opportunities out there and I wrote my first historical fiction novel and that became my bestseller so that sort of showed me that even though I found those books really hard to write and I still do because you know writing historical can be it's harder than just sitting down for me personally in writing a modern story, but I just I love the book it connected with readers and so I sort of I pivoted and and really moved my career in that direction. And now I feel like it was the right time to say maybe I'll go back to a little bit of romance. I mean, my historical books always have some romance in them. I think you need to write what you love, but you also if you're wanting to make a career of in publishing is also looking at what's selling and where you can fit in with with books that are really You know, resonating with readers, it's over 14, I actually need to I get asked this question I need to count the number I've been writing since I think I had my first book published in 2011. I was writing shorter romance sort of novels at the time. So I feel like I got quite a few novels published in those first four, four or five years. But I've written eight historical World War, World War two books, though, and obviously, this this new series as well. So that's where my focus is now.
Lainey Cameron 10:26
And of all of those is there one that you're best known for so far, like your first bestseller, which was, which was the one that was the first?
Soraya Lane 10:33
That was my book Voyage of the Heart. So I actually originally self published that book, I sort of a friend said to me, just come on, just put that book up there on Amazon, you know, and, you know, it's worth just putting it out there. And I actually did it as my master's project. When I went back to university and did a Master of Fine Arts, I thought, Oh, look, I'll just put it up there. And the same friend emailed me will text me, you know, one day and said, Have you seen how that books doing? And back then I didn't really even understand sales rankings, or, you know, all that sort of thing. And I said to her, Oh, wow, it's actually selling quite well. And then Amazon Publishing, phoned me, I emailed my agent, and we later had a phone call, and they bought that first book. So I feel that voyage of the heart is probably that book. And my second historical fiction, wives of war are probably my two biggest sellers of all time. So I feel that a lot of my readers found me with those two early ones, and have kept reading my books, which has been beautiful.
Lainey Cameron 11:22
You've got a beautiful community of readers, I see people write all the time that Soraya is a must buy whatever you're dealing with, they're gonna buy it. So I love that you've built that community of readers who just know that any, any topic you apply your skill to, is going to end up having that emotional, hopeful, romantic, you know, well researched. But I would say it's more the emotion that people really identify with in your book.
Soraya Lane 11:45
And I think that's the thing, a lot of women will email me and say, I've never read World War Two fiction, but you know, I'm loving your books. And you know, I've now and they often will read one. And it's really lovely, because they will then read, you know, the other books that I've published. And I think for me, it's not so much about I mean, obviously, I want to show history, and I'm very passionate about people who may not know a lot about history, and you know, finding out more, but I think it's for me, it's more like you say, drawing on the emotions, and really just showing what it was like to be a woman at that time and trying to show female relationships and emotions and what's happening
Lainey Cameron 12:18
And has your own process changed a lot? I mean, 40 odd books, like since you started, do you see the way that you approach it? You were just talking before we started, how you're writing multiple books per year, which blows my mind as your process, how you approach it really changed over time.
Soraya Lane 12:33
You know, it really has actually. So if you're not a writer, there's what we call Panthers and plotters. And so a plotter is someone who, you know, plots out this story before they start a pantser writes by the seat of their pants, I was very much in the pants camp. When I first started out, I would just sit down every day, and I would write and that was before I had children as well. So I feel like it was you know, I found it a lot easier to concentrate, and figure it out. My editor actually said to me, and she said to me, do you plot, you know, plot these books before you start, I mean, I obviously had an outline, and I knew what had to happen. But she said, You need to be doing a detailed chapter by chapter outline, you know, this will make your writing process so much easier. And I said to her, but I'm not a plotter, I can't do that to what she said, Well, you're just going to have to learn. So she was quite hard on me. And I think that was actually a huge moment for me, because I felt like I could write contemporary romance largely without plotting in too much detail. But as soon as you start having to, you've got to, you know, your story you've got.
I've often got three main characters, and they've all got their own individual story arcs, and then I've got the historical elements, there's so much going on, you just can't now I'm actually I'm a converted plotter. And I have a very detailed chapter by chapter outline with every single book that I write. So I really have changed my process. I don't think I could write with the speed that I have to now if I didn't let you say writing multiple books, I really need to have everything perfectly planned out before I start, it's painful. It's not natural for me, but it works.
Lainey Cameron 13:59
How long does it take you to write that detailed outline, like if you're working on one of those is that like a week or a month or like many months?
Soraya Lane 14:06
What I normally do is I normally write what I call the back cover blurb. So if I've got an idea, and I've been sort of making notes and doing research, I always think if I can't write a good back cover blurb, I haven't got a hook and I haven't got the right things happening. So I do that first. So that's like two or three paragraphs perhaps. And then once I've got that down, I do my sort of two to three page outlines. And then I'll later go on to do my chapter by chapter outline. So I feel like I put a lot of time into that groundwork so that when I start writing, I'm actually very fast with with the words because I know exactly where I'm heading and what's happening in each chapter. And I'll usually have a note of exactly how long each chapter will be. So I know I'm normally aiming for between 80 and 100,000 words. So I've become quite detailed with this plotting. By the time I sit down to do the chapter outline. I would usually take probably two weeks on it, I'd say just to really try and figure it out and get that balance right and then I also sent it to my editor to make sure that she feels I'm hitting all those points. It's and I feel that in doing this, it really made it made my editors job easier because I feel that the revisions are lighter because we've actually gone through sort of chapter by chapter, she's seen the flow of the story and how it's developing. And we often will make changes at that stage. And then it makes the actual writing and editing process easier and faster. Fingers crossed. Yeah,
Lainey Cameron 15:19
I'm in awe of learning to be a plotter because I'm definitely a pantser side. And I think I'm completely well, I am in the middle of completely rewriting for my fifth draft of my second book. So like, I'm in awe and like, yes, I want to learn to be that. So talking about writing, reading, what do you like to read? And do you have any recommendations of anything you've read? That's good recently.
Soraya Lane 15:42
Yeah, I've actually read quite a little bit lately. I've started reading on my kindle a lot more and I for a long time, there I really was really only reading paperbacks, but I have been loving here, Heather Morris's series, The Tattooist of Auschwitz series. And I've also just got the third book in the series. Three Sisters, so I'm eagerly waiting to start that book. And I've also very, very behind the eight ball on this, but I just I'm reading the Nightingale by Kristen Hannah as well. So I know many people will be horrified that has taken an historical fiction or for this long to read such a best selling book. But I often shy away from reading those stories, because I think it can be quite intimidating reading someone who is so popular in this similar genre that you're the same genre that you write. And so I often don't read those books that I put them aside for quite some time. I have really been reading a lot of historical fiction lately. So no, but here, the Morris series is brilliant. If you haven't already read it.
Lainey Cameron 16:34
Do you read while you're reading, like I've heard people say that if they're reading in a particular voice or a particular time period that they avoid reading in that same time period, while they're in the process of writing? Are you able to do it?
Soraya Lane 16:45
I normally very much avoid it. And I think it's, it's something I've always been very careful of, I think I've sort of developed my voice and and where are the stories I'm writing, and it doesn't worry me as much now. But I used to be, you know, I never used to read anything historical, you know, I'd sort of read thrillers and different sort of contemporary romance or completely different stories, depending on on what I was writing at the time. But The Nightingale has been on my Kindle for so long. And I couldn't sleep the other night, and I just turned my Kindle on saw it and thought you know what, I'm going to start reading it. But I'm also very much looking forward to reading The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, so we're going on vacation soon. And that is that paperback is sitting there ready to pack.
Lainey Cameron 17:22
That's another one that I haven't read yet. But it's like the TikTok book. It's everywhere.
Soraya Lane 17:26
Yes.
Lainey Cameron 17:27
If folks want to connect with you. Where do you hang out? And where's the best place for them to find you?
Soraya Lane 17:32
Yeah, well, so for those of you who don't know, Lainey and I are both members of Blue Sky Book Chat, which is a fabulous group on Facebook. You know, I think Lainey, you'll agree with me, they're just such a friendly bunch of readers. And obviously, there's a number of authors on there, including us. And it's, it's a really great place to be. You can also find me if my website, Sorayalane.com. Yeah, I'm always on Facebook and have my own Facebook reader group as well.
Lainey Cameron 17:53
So I'll put the links to your Facebook page, and also your reader group and blue sky but chat on the episode page at bestofwomensfiction.com. So folks can find those easily. And before we wrap up, is there anything I missed that you'd like to talk about that? I haven't asked you anything? In particular?
Soraya Lane 18:10
No, look, I'm just so excited about the new book coming out. Obviously, it's just come out. So it's available on Kindle audio and in paperback. This book has also been picked up by 11 publishers so far around the world for foreign translations. So it's been really, really exciting to see just how well the books been received throughout Europe in particular, I'm very much looking forward to I've just seen the covers the Dutch covers, and the German edition will be coming out early next year as well. So it's just been Yeah, it's been a really exciting journey. So hopefully I'll get to connect with a lot more readers from around the world.
Lainey Cameron 18:42
That's phenomenal. Is there a cover you liked the most or you're not allowed to play favorites?
Soraya Lane 18:46
I've only seen the Dutch cover and it is just the most Oh, it's just so pretty. It's just got this lovely soft, summery pink sort of feeling about it very much looking forward to sharing that when I can. I haven't seen the other covers, but it is it's just so exciting.
Oh, that's awesome. But congratulations because I can tell from the reviews. People already love the book and it's gonna do great.
Lainey Cameron 19:06
Thank you for joining me. This has been fun and I'm excited for folks to get their hands on the book.
Soraya Lane 19:06
Yeah, thanks so much.