Marion L Eaton

Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Now semi-retired, in my time I’ve been a fruit picker, bus conductress, Solicitor (Attorney), a practitioner of complementary medicine, especially aromatherapy and Reiki, and a teacher. As well as being a wife and mother, I have run my own legal practice and a complementary health centre with 16 practitioners, but what I have enjoyed most is writing.

To date, I’ve written 10 books.
I started with a fictionalised memoir along the lines of James Heriot’s Vet series but set in the 1970s and relating to setting up a legal practice.
This gave me the idea for my Mysterious Marsh Series of mystery legal thrillers with elements of history, time-slip and the supernatural.
My children asked me to write fictionalised memoirs of the stories they heard from their grandparents and so the three books in the Faraway Lands Series were born.
In between I wrote a ghost novelette entitled ‘Norfolk Twilight’ which is based on a true story.
Next I wrote ‘Spinning into Form’ a non-fiction book of meditations that also explains subtle energy. The meditations it contains are also available on CD and MP3.
Finally, I have just released an anthology of photographs and poetry by my grandmother, my mother and myself. It’s entitled ‘I Kiss Cold Glass’, after the opening line of one of my mother’s poems.
I currently have three projects ‘on the go’ and am not sure which one will be finished soonest.

What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book in the Mysterious Marsh series is ‘When the Earth Cracked’, a time-slip mystery thriller set on Romney Marsh in 1977.
Inspired by my discovery of a Roman altar to Mithras in the belfry of a church that overlooks the Marsh, it includes a time-slip element back into the time of The Roman occupation of Britain.

My poetry book ‘I Kiss Cold Glass: or Love in a Myriad Forms’ is the latest of all my releases and represents a different departure for me. It is a collection of poems written by three generations of women in my family over a period 92 years.

Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I wish I had something eccentric to confess, but in reality I write on my garden deck in the summer and in a cosy study in the winter. My dog, Poppy, a 15 year old Saluki, is always somewhere near.

What authors, or books have influenced you?
So many that it’s impossible to list them all. As I child I read anything that can to hand and loved all the classics.
I love Barbara Erskine, Kate Mosse, Manda Scott and Diana Gabaldon
Now I enjoy discovering new authors. At present my two favourites are Amber Foxx and Virginia King

What are you working on now?
Another mystery thriller in my Mysterious Marsh Series. This one is entitled ‘When the Wind Changed’. Hazel Dawkins sets out to unravel a crime and, as usual becomes swept up in events, one of which is the great storm of 1287 which altered the whole landscape in the space of a single night (That much is true).

I’m also playing with a volume of short stories, and a love story set in the late 1930s.

What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I have found several websites that are really helpful, including Goodreads, but the one I like best is the Book Marketing Club

Do you have any advice for new authors?
Just write! Then edit, edit, edit and edit before you decide whether to seek an agent and a publisher or to self-publish.
I write in Scrivener and thoroughly recommend it.

What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Feel the fear and do it anyway!

What are you reading now?
Shaman’s Blues by Amber Foxx

What’s next for you as a writer?
Next is … recording my books for audio. Fingers crossed!

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Of course, I’m allowed the Bible and the whole of Shakespeare, so for well-written, well researched and well thought out entertainment I’d take the longest of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander Series

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