It’s a month today until ‘The Courtesan’s Lover’ is published – I thought I’d share a few thoughts about how the novel came about.

When you’re writing a novel, your characters do have this habit of filling up your head-space.  You find yourself thinking about them, talking to yourself  about them (or to anyone else who will listen), trying out snatches of dialogue with them when alone in the car (well I do – this is possibly just me, though!)  quite as much as writing about them.  You get to know them as well, or possibly better, than members of your family – after all, as their author, you have privileged access to the inside of their heads in a way that you’ll never ever have with real people.

I found this to be the case right the way through the writing of my first book, ‘His Last Duchess’ and I absolutely loved it –  but the odd thing was, that as soon as I knew I had finished that story, that constant communication with my characters died down, almost straight away.  I knew as much as I wanted to know about them.  I was happy with where I had left them all at the end of the novel, and I really didn’t need to know any more about them.  I was ready to say goodbye to them.

But I had reckoned without Francesca Felizzi. 

At this point, I hadn’t planned a second novel at all, let alone one about her, but I just couldn’t get her out of my head.   She just kept on and on intruding, interrupting, elbowing her way to the front of my thoughts, and demanding to be given more space to exist.  It dawned on me pretty quickly that I was going to have to listen to her, and to give her a narrative of her own.

Francesca first appears as a secondary character in ‘His Last Duchess’.  She is the paid mistress of the eponymous duke;  she’s a feisty, resourceful woman, which she certainly needs to be.  The duke is a damaged and difficult man, and coping with so volatile and dangerous a lover takes a great deal of energy – which is exactly what Francesca possesses.  Spotted by the duke and rescued by him from life as a street-whore in Ferrara, she spends the best part of eight years as his paid mistress, and learns much about survival and self-preservation along the way.  Francesca is beautiful and sexy and clever and fundamentally adaptable, and she uses all these attributes shamelessly, both in ‘His Last Duchess’ and ‘The Courtesan’s Lover’.

I was really happy at the idea of writing a new book all about Francesca.   It took time to discover what she was going to be doing in the course of this new story in which she was going to play the starring role, though.   I knew this much from the outset:  she was going to be fighting hard to become a courtesan – a cortigiana onesta - and she was going to be doing this in Naples, alongside coping with all the problems that come with being a single mother in a precarious world.    In his book ‘On Becoming a Novelist’, John Gardner says that ‘setting exists so that the character has some place to stand, something that can help define him.’     I had to stand Francesca somewhere, and it had to be somewhere new, away from the setting of the previous novel.  The Naples of the sixteenth century, unwillingly under Spanish rule, was a chaotic, anarchic, ebullient melting-pot of a city- a perfect place in which to allow my complex, confused courtesan to tackle her problems.  

As you can imagine, I read and read and read about the great courtesans of history – Veronica Franco, Ninon de l’Enclos, Harriette Wilson and Cora Pearl amongst others  – and I was simply blown away by the courage and independence of these extraordinary women, who basically functioned in society as autonomous, successful businesswomen in centuries in which their more virtuous sisters had little or no freedom, either financially, socially or sexually.

I was anxious not to allow myself to be too caught up in the romantic exuberance of the great courtesans, though, and wanted to be certain that the potential danger and degradation of Francesca’s situation would not be overlooked as I began to tell her story.  Life as a courtesan was never easy, for even the most successful.  Penury, danger and disease lay in wait around every corner and many of them – even the most well known and successful – ended their lives in anonymous poverty.  As Renaissance Venetian courtesan, Veronica Franco says, (in a quote I decided to include at the beginning of my book) “It is too miserable, and contrary to human reason, to force your body and energy into such slavery:  terrifying even to think about.”  She goes into graphic detail about the terrors that await the unwary courtesan – not least of which was the ever-present fear of going to hell.    Then, to bring myself still further back down to earth, I read a number of accounts written by modern, contemporary sex-workers:   lap dancers, street walkers, strippers, masseuses, escorts.  These were frank, honest, vulgar,  frightening, touching, funny, heartbreaking descriptions of a way of life most of us can’t actually even contemplate.  It was sobering and shocking and moving, and it provided the contrast I needed. 

I felt I understood Francesca better, for having heard in such detail from her modern counterparts.  I hope, if any of them read the book, they will feel I’ve understood them. 

Like so many novels, The Courtesan’s Lover took time to grow – many things happened between that initial decision to tell Francesca’s story, and the book’s completion.  I’ll tell you all about its journey next time.