Lift-off! Website re-launched!

My website, barbaramutch.com, has been going for a decade, and with the arrival of The Fire Portrait, it required a fresh boost - and a facelift! 

A new section explores how I decided on the plot for The Fire Portrait and then dives into some of the key elements like the town of Aloe Glen, the role that art plays in the book, the railway line that wanders through the story, and the response so far in terms of media coverage. 

Readers have asked me why I chose to make Aloe Glen a fictional hamlet rather a real place, as is the case in my previous books. Well... a shocking event occurs in the novel and I reckoned that siting it in an existing community that might have had an unblemished history would not endear me to the locals! But I did identify where the hamlet would probably be located: Follow the railway line from Cape Town, pass through Worcester in the Breede River Valley, keep going into the Hex River valley, look for the area where the original rail tunnels were bored through the mountains, and somewhere in the vicinity you will find a spot where the land levels out, overlooked by what must surely be Aloe Peak... 

Talking of the railway, did you know that laying a route through the terrain in the 1870s was so demanding that a new gauge of railway had to be adopted to accommodate the steepness and the curves? Read more about this, and its implications on rail transport to the present day. If you're curious about the art in the book, take a look at the type of botanical illustrations that Frances would have painted, through the beautiful work of artist Betty Bowker. And if you like to listen or watch, then head for Media and News, where you'll find me in radio interviews, reviews and on video. 

Enjoy this peek into the background, research and response to The Fire Portrait!