Rhys on Writing a Virtual Escape

 RHYS BOWEN:  I've just sent off my next historical stand-alone to my editor. The one that's called MRS. ENDICOTT'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE.  I have to confess that I have enjoyed writing this more than any other book as it was a virtual escape and fantasy life for me.

The heroine, a middle-aged English woman, is dumped by her husband of thirty years. Instead of accepting her fate and retiring to a cottage she steals his Bentley and drives to the south of France, taking with her two other women who have reasons to want to escape. Once there she finds a villa that has long been abandoned. On a ridiculous impulse she decides she wants to restore it and live there.

So this is my fantasy life. A villa overlooking the Mediterranean. That's what I want. And the interesting thing is that there are abandoned villas to be found in Europe. When we stayed on Lake Maggiore in Italy we passed several long-abandoned villas and I said to John then "Who owns them? Why doesn't someone buy them and restore them?"  In my case the owner abandoned the villa long before she died and it is now owned by some remote next of kin with no interest in it. I presume this is what happened to those villas I've seen.  I think I'm a little too old and chicken to buy one and restore it the way Mrs. Endicott did, but it was fun to write about.

Here is the passage where she first sees the villa:

In the middle of the wall was a tall iron gate. Mr. Danton took a key from his pocket and inserted it into the lock. There was a click and the tall iron gate opened with a protesting squeak.

                “Please proceed with great care,” he said, standing to one side and assisting each of them up a final steep step into a garden. Ellie entered but then stood transfixed as she looked around her. It felt as if she was in the book, The Secret Garden, or rather in the magic realm of Sleeping Beauty, fallen asleep for a hundred years. In front of them had once been a lawn but was now a dying mass of dried grass and weeds. The ubiquitous bougainvillea tumbled over the walls, in a riot of reds and oranges. At the far end of the lawn was an orchard of fruit trees, a pomegranate still bravely producing its brilliant red fruit after so many years of neglect, what might have been a persimmon and several citrus.

                Ellie turned to the other direction and saw the villa itself. Before it was a gravel forecourt in which stood a stone fountain, now long dry. And behind this was the Villa Gloriosa. Now no longer glorious.  Ellie had expected a ruin but found she was looking at a perfect villa with a red tiled roof. The house was painted pink with pale blue shutters. It took Ellie a moment to notice that the paint now peeling and some of the shutters hanging at crazy angles. Tiles had fallen from the roof. There had been some sort of veranda or trellised arbor along the entire back of the house but this was completely overrun by what looked like wisteria, although the leaves were now dying and lying in a yellow carpet.  Another vine with dark red and brown leaves—grapes this time?—climbed up the far side of the veranda and competed with the wisteria in a mad tangle.

                “This way.” Mr. Danton interrupted her reverie. He began to walk toward the house. The path was lined with an avenue of palm trees, now casting a neat row of shadows across the gravel. Ellie followed him around the side of the villa to an impressive pair of oak double doors carved with a pattern of vines. Mr. Danton produced another key and was about to lead them inside when Ellie looked past him, to her left, and gasped.

                “Wait” She broke into a run.

                “Careful, Madame. Watch your step,” he called but she didn’t care if the flagstones were cracked and uneven. She ran past the house and came out to a terrace overlooking the sea. It was edged by an ornamental stone balustrade topped with carved pineapples, some of which were now missing, but Ellie didn’t notice this. She crossed the terrace and stood with the whole panorama unfolding before her. Directly below her St. Benet lay nestled in its little hollow, the village mainly in shadow, the cliffs on the far side glowing in the sun. Beyond were more promontories, more cliffs, fading into blue distance. On the horizon was a chain of rocky islands. As she watched a boat with a red sail glided out from the harbor into a Mediterranean that went from shades of pure turquoise to deep, rich blue.

                “Oh,” she said out loud, “This is heaven.”

You can tell that I was creating my fantasy perfect villa. I browsed quite. few online and found some that came close, like this one:

But then I decided that would be too big to manage these days so I'd settle for something simpler, like this:

What do you think? Which one do you like better? I think you're going to root for Mrs. Endicott and her pals to succeed through a lot of difficulties and I hope that, like me, you enjoy spending some time living virtually in the villa. The book comes out next August, I believe.