Behind the cover: Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel (2024)
The title was there from the start … but only in part.
Dear Sunshiners,
Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel is the novel that took the longest to come to life and the only one that had a title – or part thereof – before I started writing it.
When the idea for this story arose in the months after the publication of The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club in 2017, I was calling it ‘Duchess Hotel’. It was always to be a story set in a grand hotel and I knew the hotel was called Duchess. There was a character called Joan, and one called Kirrily, and some other lead characters who either disappeared or became a minor character (William, the manager of the hotel in the final incarnation).
I mentioned the idea to my publisher and she liked the sound of it, but there was another idea, about ladies who swim together, and that was more appealing. Which is why my second novel was The Shelly Bay Ladies Swimming Circle and not Duchess Hotel.
The idea wouldn’t leave me, though. Before my fourth novel, The Bellbird River Country Choir, became a reality I mentioned the Duchess to my literary agent and started thinking about where the hotel would be set. I looked at Tewantin on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, because I really wanted to set a novel in that area (and later did, in Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society). Then my mother – who was with me when the original idea for Duchess came about in a hotel in Melbourne – suggested Delgany in Portsea, on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. Once a grand hotel, it’s now private residences. I researched it online and as soon as I saw a photo I knew it was the Duchess.
[The Mornington Peninsula - photo from iStock]
I started writing the manuscript several years ago, while I was in between novels, and the main characters were Joan, Kirrily, Joan’s best friend Genevieve (who is a minor character in the final version) and Frances. Frances was in the original manuscript of Fairvale – of which very little survives, and Frances was not amongst the survivors. She kept following me around, though, and finally I realised she belonged in the Duchess Hotel.
Someone else who belonged in the Duchess Hotel was Shane, the bartender at the hotel, who is not a main character in the novel but he’s the lead secondary character, crossing each main character’s story. Shane popped up in two earlier novel ideas that didn’t go anywhere but I couldn’t forget him. Then I realised he belonged with Frances.
That first attempt at the story reached 20 000 words or so before I had to go and write something else, and it was dark. Heavy. I wanted to explore the nature of Joan and Genevieve’s friendship and how it would change after a tragedy drove them apart. But ultimately I knew that took Joan away from how I’d originally conceived of her: a woman trying to find her way back to herself after decades of dismay.
Still, my publisher considered that partial manuscript in two consecutive years until we agreed it was too dark, although she, like me, was partial to the idea of a story set in a hotel.
I wanted the novel to be called High Tea at the Duchess Hotel because I really liked the sound of it, but I hadn’t quite considered how to make high tea hold a novel together until I began making notes and realised it was limited. My publisher knew that already and suggested that another device was needed.
Around the time of the original Duchess idea I had also come up with a story about artists. It was inspired by Curlew Camp, an artists camp on Sirius Cove in Sydney Harbour in the late nineteenth century that was home to Arthur Streeton, amongst others. I live about fifteen minutes’ walk from the site of Curlew Camp and know it well.
I started to think about a novel with a parallel storyline: one set in the 1890s in and around the camp, and one present day. I mentioned the idea to my publisher but she wasn’t keen on the historical aspect. It didn’t go any further after that.
Except it did. Sitting in the back of my brain, it came forth to form the missing piece of the Duchess Hotel puzzle that enabled the story to come together. Joan lives near Curlew Camp. She is an artist who has not lifted a paintbrush in decades. And the reason why – which you’ll know if you’ve read the novel – is my only nod to the original dark manuscript and its storyline.
So it became Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel. That didn’t mean the cover was going to be all paint splodges and brushes and a canvas. We still wanted to have flowers, and I had already written the trees and bushes and colours of the Mornington Peninsula into the story, after spending a few hours there observing how the greens were different to those near home. How the light was different. Joan’s artist’s eye would notice such things, so I had to. Thus the flowers on the cover better suit the peninsula. And there’s a bird, of course.
Listen to the first chapter of Art Hour at the Duchess Hotel
Some people see the cover colour as pink but it’s purple, and it’s the purple we didn’t use for The Bellbird River Country Choir. I didn’t forget it, so when the publisher asked if I had a colour in mind I plucked out the purple Bellbird concept and asked if we could use that hue.
The B format (smaller than the original C) has a paler colour on it – the first time one of the B formats has changed from the original – and you can compare them below.
All of my books’ covers were designed by Christa Moffitt of Christabella Designs and I love them all – each new one is my favourite, then it becomes an old one and I love them all equally. If you have a favourite please let me know in the comments.
Thank you for coming with me ‘behind the cover’ for each book.
Love,
Sophie
What I’m reading
When the Going Was Good by Graydon Carter
Graydon Carter was the editor of Vanity Fair magazine for many years and as a longtime VF reader (since my school years) I had to read this book, and consider it a worthy companion to Tina Brown’s The Vanity Fair Diaries (Carter succeeded Brown at the magazine). It is charming and insightful and funny. Carter was a hands-on editor, going over every word that went into the magazine, so there’s quite a lot in this book for those interested in editorial process, as well as writing, for he’s obviously a writer too. I particularly like this quote: ‘An editor’s job is … also about being appreciative of how difficult it is to be a writer. Much more challenging, certainly, than being an editor - editors never have to stare down a blank piece of paper.’
What I’m listening to
The playlists I’m creating for my next novel, Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon, which will be released on 30 July. I have one of 1980s hits and one of contemporary Australian country music tracks that are companions to the storylines. I want to make sure the order of the songs works, hence me listening to the playlists.
(In case you’re new to The Sunshine Society, I also have a whole country music life at
– the Substack is new but my website has existed in one form or another since 2011. SCM is also on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.)
Love reading how each novel comes about and the beautiful covers designed 😍