Feature on Ella Carey, her THE PARIS TIME CAPSULE and Giveaway!

Author Feature is on Australian author Ella Carey. And she's got a kindle copy giveaway of her debut release THE PARIS TIME CAPSULE to one commentator.
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 The Paris Time Capsule

Tell us about yourself?

 I have always loved reading; and I spent much of my childhood making up stories in my head! I have been writing women’s fiction seriously for several years now. I learned French growing up, and still have a love for France, art and history, so the story about the abandoned apartment in Paris was the perfect inspiration for me, and the more I looked into it, the more I was hooked!

What inspired you to be a writer?

I had a real passion for music when I was young. I wanted to play the piano, learned, and went to the conservatorium to do a music degree. I still love music. But, at uni, I also did an arts degree, majoring in English literature and history. One of my English lecturers (a wonderful woman, who often had her adorable King Charles Spaniels in a basket under her desk) told us to go to as many writing festivals as we could, and, you know, I just felt so at home in that world, hearing writers talk about their work … it felt right. I knew this was what I wanted to do.

How did you choose your genre?

That’s a great question. I do wonder if writers have much choice about what they write. For now, writing women’s fiction seems right for me. I start with an idea, then, perhaps, the way I write lends itself to the genre of women’s fiction. I am a hopeless romantic. At the moment, I can’t see that I would write a novel that lacked a romantic element, but you never know.

What made you tell this story and why did you write this book?

I first read the story of the abandoned apartment in Paris on a blog: www.messynessychic.com/2012/05/09/the-paris-time-capsule-apartment. I was fascinated with the idea of the beautiful apartment that had been left locked up for seventy years after the owner fled, just before the Nazi invasion in 1940. The fact that the portrait in the apartment was discovered to be by the leading Belle Epoque painter, Giovanni Boldini, was even more exciting. I read more online articles about the apartment. All that was known was that the owner was a Madame de Florian and her grandmother, Marthe de Florian, was the subject of the portrait. It turned out that Marthe was a courtesan during the Belle Epoque.

People were commenting on the blogs, saying that someone should write a novel. It seemed the perfect mystery. Why did the owner leave her treasure filled apartment, never to return? What a thing to do! Why was the apartment only re-opened after her death? Some of the elements in this story were so similar to a novel that I was refining with an agency in London at the time, that I dropped the other story, and wrote this one instead. It was set in Paris. I was in too deep

How did you come up with the title?

The working title of the novel was ‘The Sleeping Beauty Apartment.’ I loved the romantic sound of this. When the art expert entered the apartment, it is said that he described what he saw using these words. However, I decided in the end to call the novel ‘The Paris Time Capsule.’ The apartment was like a vault that had sat there, waiting, all through the 1950s, the 60s … and beyond. Then it was unlocked.

What is your favourite scene?

That is an interesting question! There is a very romantic scene in Sarlat. Sarlat is a market town in France. Cat’s search to find out why she inherited the apartment leads her there. But she is not alone, and … well. She is swept up. The other scene I loved writing was the scene where Cat walks into the apartment for the first time. Just visualizing what it must have been like for her was magical, like stepping into another, cloistered world that has gone forever now. I could see it, smell it. If only we could go back in time …

Tell us a little about your book?

Cat Jordan is a photographer living in New York. She battles with her past, but has sorted out a future for herself that she knows is going to work. However, when she receives a parcel from Paris, wrapped in brown paper and tied with an immaculate silk ribbon, she discovers that she is the sole inheritor of an apartment in the ninth arrondissement that has been abandoned for seventy years. When the grandson and rightful owner of the apartment appears, Cat knows that she has to find out why the apartment was left to her … and why the owner kept her Paris apartment a secret from her family. The novel delves into the past, but is set in the present.

I have a question for you. Anything in Paris enchants me, but is there a city that inspires you just as Paris inspires me?


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