It’s also important for me to know how to get around a city in the time period I am studying: so maps of urban areas bombed during the Blitz and rezoned afterward were invaluable as I created how Brent and Diana would navigate the post-war city.

The Toronto Reference Library in my home city, has a wonderful range of architectural resources: including facsimiles of many of Wren’s early sketches and blueprints and that was so vital to me in understanding this man and his architectural legacy.

Once I have the general overview of the period ready to go, I zoom in on what major research will bolster the world I am creating. Approximately 1/3 of what I research in each book ends up on the page. Yet, even though the reader only sees a tip of that iceberg, knowing far more than what funnels through to the last edit, gives me a confidence to be able to lose myself in the story and fall down rabbit holes.

Readers love your strong, unique characters. How do you make your characters so likable to your readers, while also making them seem like real, flawed people?

This is always really flattering to hear. Because I am a character-driven reader, it is wonderful to be able to spend time crafting character-driven stories and Diana and Brent are now close friends of mine. Some writers create characters, I meet them and then take them down to dictation. My main characters often show up so fully formed I can see them like a movie in my mind and even hear their voices. This is wonderful to me because I have to like them because I will spend years with them: through research, revisions, edits and the promotion and release of a book. One of the things I try to do –and this is especially integral in crafting a romance—is give them traits they fall in love with beyond physical attraction. For Diana, Brent’s sketch of a church and how he sees the churches she loves as well as his speaking voice is integral to her attraction to him and in the same way, the easy connection they share in their first conversation and the way Diana sees the world—especially after the war---for what it could be—is at the core of his attraction to her. I find that ensuring that my characters share something beyond physical attraction is key to giving them dimension.

I also needed to create a world where the honeymoon is long over and a love story is tea leaves three times strained and Diana’s horrible cooking and their first reunited kiss is so awkward they step on each other’s shoes. By immediately kicking them off the pedestal of that magnificent movie-end reunion, I could take their love story out of the sepia tones and swelled violin music of so many grand endings so it was essential that I exhume Brent and Diana’s imperfections and craft and extol their strengths from there. Brent hates the way Diana squeezes the tooth powder. Diana hates when Brent is sarcastic and turns away from her. These are real, identifiable things. Their marriage works because they can make it through the little spats and like most real-life relationships it is those trifles that are our true test so when Brent and Diana are forced to confront major life-altering events, they can do so secure in their love for each other.

Finally, I ensured that they have worlds beyond each other: this is especially demonstrated when they are ripped apart: Brent on the Front lines and Diana at Bletchley Park. In these scenarios I am able to give readers a snapshot into the hero and heroine outside of the realm of each other and how they relate to other people and, of course, how their friends see them. It’s why the supporting characters like Matthew Ross, Sophie Villiers and Simon Barre, as three examples, are so imperative in our understanding of Brent and Diana’s worlds.

What made you write this story?

While I am a historical fiction junkie, I never set out to write the WWII era at all. A few summers ago, I was in London for vacation and decided to visit some historic churches I had not visited on previous trips. The first was to All Hallows by the Tower, the oldest church in London, where I learned that while the bombs of WWII devastated the structure, they unearthed priceless artifacts from the Roman times. What a rich wonder, I thought, to have something so devastating wield something so wonderful. Later that same day, I walked into St. Bartholomew the Great which had survived King Henry’s dissolution of the monasteries, hundreds of years and wars (including the Zeppelins of WWI and the bombs of WWII ) and I knew I had to write about these churches. These artifacts. I assumed that in the current fictional climate, a novel about Christopher Wren’s time might not be as saleable: however, I was fascinated by how the rebuilding of the churches (especially the Wren churches) after the Blitz mirrored how Wren was able to create masterpieces from the devastation of the Great Fire of London centuries before. It was my awe of churches and the resiliency of the people to ensure that God’s house on earth withstood centuries that really inspired me! Needless to say, I went back to London with the sole purpose of discovering more and more about the churches and their lives before and after the Blitz. I also realized that so many war era love stories end with the couple reuniting. I was far more interested in how two people ripped apart for four years would find sure footing again. Divorce rates sky-rocketed after World War II. Men returned from the front forever changed and suffering from injuries and PTSD, whereas women were forced out of the workforce and integral operations such as those at Bletchley Park and expected to tend house while their husbands earned the paycheque. The thematic resonance of rebuilding a city and a love story and the parallels therein were fascinating to me. Finally, my Opa was a stretcher bearer in the Canadian forces in WWII and while he was reticent to talk about the war experiences, I always loved that he chose to carry men rather than carry a gun. He made it through the war having never fired a gun. I knew that I wanted to honour that part of my family’s history in Brent Somerville.