Remember to sign up for the Wee Mailing List by the end of the month to discover Ailish’s top Ballet Dancer of All Time, until then sit back and enjoy her fifth choice.
Alessia Lugoboni of Lazy Dancer Tips.
Born in Verona, Italy and trained at New Zealand School of Dance and English National Ballet School. She offers ballet tutorials for all levels. It’s great fun; give it a try!
What Ho Wee Readers, and welcome to the first post in my new blog series Ailish Sinclair’s Top Six Ballet Dancers of All time – I know it’s a bit of a mouthful but that’s the name I settled on so you’re just gonna have to lump it. Made in collaboration once again with my good friend Ailish Sinclair, to celebrate the next book in her Dancer Series, Cabriole. It’s out today, go check it out. Also siign up for The Wee Mailing List to find out Ailish’s top most Ballet dancer of all time.
Amanda Schull, Ethan Stiefel and Sascha Radetsky in Center Stage
Amanda Schull – American, a actress and former professional ballet dancer. You may know her from her work on One Tree Hill and Pretty Little Liars, as well as her recurring role on the show Suits. But her most memorable role, at least to Ailish, is Jody Sawyer struggling ballet student in the film Centre Stage. Also fun fact, she is also the daughter of the current president of Ballet Hawaii, not really relevant to this post but interesting none the less.
Ethan Stiefel – American, a ballet dancer, director and choreographer and former principal Dancer with American Ballet Theatre and former artistic director of the royal New Zealand Ballet. Also his surname means boot in German, which isn’t relevant to anything but I thought was really interesting.
Sascha Radetsky – Another American, trained in the Moscow’s Bolshoi Academy under Pyotr Pestov. He performed as a soloist with American Ballet Theatre, and a principal with Dutch National Ballet. As of 2018 the Artistic Director for American Ballet Theatre. He also appeared on the show Flesh and Bone as someone called Ross.
And now the final blog post in the series – remember to sign up for the wee blog if you haven’t already to find out. And also, don’t forget to sign up for the Wee Mailing List to find out what the Eighth question might be.
1. And finally, Amalphia Tredwell – a high functioning Autistic dancer, just beginning her life in the world of ballet. She is a fascinating person from the get-go, and that’s before she heads off to the mysterious dance school in the North of Scotland. Even her name is wholly unique. I’d be fascinated to know if she was inspired by anyone real or if like Athena before her, she leapt fully formed from the creator’s mind and onto the page?
She pretty much appeared fully formed, not inspired by anyone. I’m not quite sure where the name Amalphia got plucked from. It had been in my head for a while before I started writing the book. I wanted her to have a specialsurname too and for it to have something that could be applied to dancing, hence Treadwell. She uses it here, in Fouetté, the third book in the Dancer’s Journey series:
I had to go back in. Tread carefully, Treadwell, I thought to myself. Eyes up. Toe in front of heel. I pressed the phone button to reactivate it as I reached the door and climbed through again, hoping to bring light to dark matters.
I love a good Byronic hero – remember to sign up for the wee blog if you haven’t already to find out. And also, don’t forget to sign up for the Wee Mailing List to find out what the Eighth question might be.
Aleks Zolotov is Amalphia’s primary Love interest within the pages of Tendu, the hero to her heroine – could you share with us some of the inspirations that helped form Aleks as a character?
Aleks, as he is in the beginning of the story (he will grow), is a type of man who is not uncommon in the theatrical world. He’s achieved great success; he’s handsome and admired. He’s also experienced the loss of his career, something that has left him with some insecurities. His ego and his behaviour can be out of control at times. Life is a bit of a performance, or even a game, to him, especially when he’s triggered or threatened. He will pay for his naughtiness, though. FOREVER…
And now, my most pretentious question yet – remember to sign up for the wee blog if you haven’t already to find out. And also, don’t forget to sign up for the Wee Mailing List to find out what the Eighth question might be.
Through the decade long process of writing and editing this series, would you say that it’s changed a great deal since its original conception? That is, the story, the messages, the themes – are they still what you first imagined they would be? And if they have changed, what do you think influenced that, other than the passage of time of course?
The basic story has stayed the same, though many, many details got altered as I went along. Simone, another antagonist from TENDU, was really sweet and nice in that first draft. And Will, a dear friend to Amalphia and a good guy, was a bit of a disrespectful idiot. Amalphia, Aleks and Justin came through fully formed from the start; their characters really haven’t changed. And I love them. Did I mention that I love them?
They do have minds of their own, though. They deviated far away from my planned plot in CABRIOLE, the second book in the series. I have to admit that what they did has made the story more unusual and interesting. Writing it any other way, as one publisher tried to get me to do, proved utterly impossible.
Two pretentious questions for the price of one – remember to sign up for the wee blog if you haven’t already to find out. And also, don’t forget to sign up for the Wee Mailing List to find out what the Eighth question might be.
Of all the characters to feature in the Dancer Series – of which there are many – which is your favourite to write and why?
I don’t know. I love them all. In fact, I think I may be in love with the whole lot of them, at least a little bit. So, just to mix things up, I’ll say Michelle. While she is very much the antagonist of TENDU, or, at least, one of them, I know why she is the way she is. Readers will learn more through the series as it progresses. She’s so very clever, quite brilliant in fact, and I love the absolute focus of her mind, even though it leads to terrible things.
My favourite is Justin.
Now the Dancer Series is actually set in the same continuity as your historical romances, I hear. So, tell us Ailish, should we expecting to see the return of any familiar faces or names?
Well, there is the anomaly of Crispin Truelove, but I never speak about that. Readers of my historical fiction have so far enjoyed the brief mentions of the Mermaid and the Bear in the pages of TENDU. There will be more of that in the next series – Castle Dancers – as a television documentary is being made about the history of the castle in the second book, and two of the main characters will play Isobell and Thomas from Mermaid. That was great fun to write, and I hope it’ll be good to read too.
Onwards to the Question – remember to sign up for the wee blog if you haven’t already to find out. And also, don’t forget to sign up for the Wee Mailing List to find out what the Eighth question will be.
Tendu is not the first of your books to have an Autistic character at the forefront – the main character of Sisters at the Edge of the World, was certainly heavily on the spectrum. Though because of her time period she would never have been diagnosed as such. However, Amalphia is the first of your characters to be outright stated in the narrative as Autistic, and it effects many aspects of her life within the pages of Tendu.
From friendships, to relationships, to her placement in her original dancing college; all the way up to her involvement in the mysterious and, slightly sketchy, research of the unsettling Michelle. Obviously, her Autism is not a minor element of her character. Or the story itself.
So, tell me what was the inspiration for this particular character choice? Was this the plan from the start, her Autism diagnosis, or did it come about naturally through writing the character?
It was while writing these books that I found out that I,myself, am on the autistic spectrum. Though Amalphia is a very different person to me, I realised that she was neurodivergent too, and the discovery added a richness to the writing of her character and adventures. I suppose it made it all more intensely personal.
But do remember that she’s not me, with all that’s to come; she has way more energy!
And now I give you my pretentious question – remember to sign up for the wee blog if you haven’t already to find out. And also, don’t forget to sign up for the Wee Mailing List to find out what the Eighth question will be.
Amalphia’s story takes place in the beautiful and cutthroat world of professional ballet – what inspired the decision to set her story in that particular backdrop?
When I was first considering writing a contemporary romance, I was unsure exactly where to place it. Inspiration struck while I was lying in the bath contemplating the issue. I saw a line of dancers in my mind. They were at the barre performing ronde de jambe, a circular leg exercise, and I knew the ballet world would be the setting for the story. My own dance training and career provided many of the details,and everything grew from there.
What Ho wee readers and welcome to the first of my blog series to feature the collaboration of Ailish Sinclair. If you’re familiar with the formula already you should know this week I’ll be releasing a blog post a day – each one taking the form, as the title might suggest, of a question . An overly pretentious question. Which hopefully Ailish will oblige me by answering – remember to sign up for the wee blog if you haven’t already to find out. And also, don’t forget to sign up for the Wee Mailing List to find out what the Eighth question might be.
Well, there was no need for years of research, especially as I have a dance background and the castle was fully formed in my mind from the previous books. It was actually a fun change to write the modern world. The characters have phones and watch TV. They go to Chinese restaurants and walk through present-day London. The castle has a swimming pool and a theatre and dance studios.
Though, essentially, at their core, relationships and love are the same throughout time. Misunderstandings happen. People behave badly or well. They fall in love. They try to make it work. They worry that it won’t. These things remain. They are timeless. And I love writing them.
Wow! I mean I did already know she had a dance background, but that was a really good reply.
At the end of my original post – read here if you’re interested – I realised that Ailish Sinclair had stepped into the witch’s stone, using it to travel through time to research her historical romances. I concluded that this was cheating and then ran away screaming for all my life was worth – I didn’t reveal that last part but that’s what happened. Of course, you can’t publish books if you’re traveling through the eras they’re set in, at least not by your real name – so of course Ailish did not stay away long. She has denied that she is a mermaid, and that she has a pet bear in her own blog here. But notice that she does not deny the time travel accusation. This filled me with new hope, so determined to prove that I was neither crazy nor stalking her, I decided to conduct an interview with the time traveling author. Below are the four questions she agreed to answer on the subject.
4. Now that you have returned from your adventures in time, what have you most enjoyed about being back in the 21stcentury?
Writing historical fiction certainly is rather like adventuring through time, you’re right. I love the periods my characters inhabit, but chocolate cake and flushing toilets are great bonuses of the modern world.
3.When did you first realize that you could travel through time using the Witch Stone?
Emm… I do contemplate my writing as I walk in the woods and sit by the stone. I’ve been doing that for over ten years.
2. What Era have you most enjoyed travelling through?
It’s quite hard to pick one. I loved the medieval world and the 18th century, but 1st century Scotland is my current favorite, maybe just because it’s the most recent time that I’ve written, or as you say, travelled through. There’s a natural wildness to it that I love. I may have to go back there again… in writing, you understand.
1.Now that you’re back, what can we expect next from Ailish Sinclair.
My feet are firmly back in the current day now as I edit a series of three very naughty and dark contemporary romance novels. There’s no research needed to know what people might be eating or wearing, but there are other *blushes* tricky and intricate scenes to work through.
That’s is all very well, but I know what I saw…
Ailish Sinclair refused to answer anymore of my questions on the grounds that they were becoming “ridiculous” and or “insane”.
The Wee Writing Lassie 