The Silver Cross - Guest Post from Author June Winton

The Silver Cross

Some people have asked me whether The Silver Cross was based on a real story.  It's about a young girl who uncovers a web of lies, deceit and murder dating from World War II to the present day.

Well, the truth is that I think every author draws on their own life experiences when writing a story.  The main character, Lacy, is brought up by a single mum and has no contact with her father.  Without going too much into detail, yes, that runs true.

My mother also has one eye blue and one green, and claims to be psychic.  I feel I may have this gift to a degree.  I believe we all have this ability but because science can't explain it, it is classed as 'paranormal'.  I disagree, I think one day we will find a scientific answer, as I do believe the human brain holds a lot more ability than we know.

When I was a child I was brought up in Battersea, which had been considerably flattened by war time bombing.  I can remember seeing the gaps in rows of terraced houses where a house used to be and was now in ruins, not even cleared away.  We are talking early 60s here, London was still in ruins from the war even then.   I also witnessed and personally suffered a lot of poverty.  I don't believe Britain has ever fully recovered from two world wars, and I blame politicians completely for this.

Unscrupulous Council officials – yes, an old next door neighbour of mine told me about a well-known one at our local council who during the war profited from repossessing homes of injured and dead people.  She, herself, had been a victim of a bombing and was in hospital for six months completely unable to look after her affairs.  When she got out her house had been repossessed by the council and nobody had told her.

My own mother was born in a house in Battersea which was bombed out during the war.  Although she had married and moved away by then, the house was now demolished and was the site of a massive Council housing block.  I looked into what happened re compensation, and have only recently established that my mother's family did not own their house but rented it.  But I do urge everyone to look into their past and find out what really happened during the war because some unethical things definitely occurred.

Moving on to The Golden Horn, my next book, this is also based on fact but it would be a spoiler to go into too much detail.  Suffice to say, when we  moved out of Battersea to Morden, a suburb of London, a house a few doors down had been bombed in the war.  I discovered in the library that a family had died there.  And when I was about six years old I started digging in the garden for treasure and I found – well, I can't tell you that, but the story is in the book.

Book three, The Silver Bell, is again going to be about finding long lost people, which seems to be a theme of mine.  And also about tracing your family tree.  I had tried but not got very far, but then some Canadian people with the same surname tracked me down on Facebook.  In fact, they had contacted every person on FB with the same surname and asked whether they could be related, and in my case the answer was yes!  They already had a long family tree going back to Winton in East Sussex, where an Anglo-Saxon settlement was found dating back to 4AD.  The bones are in Lewes Museum.  I asked them for DNA testing, which they refused to allow.  But I am sure they are my far distant relatives, and one day hope to prove it.

All the best for 2014!

Meet June Winton

My name is June Winton (a.k.a. J L Winton and J Winton) and I have always enjoyed writing stories and poems. I have kept a diary from the age of 12 and it was something I wanted to do more of. Mostly it was for my own amusement but since joining a Writing Group I have been encouraged to share some of my long forgotten stories. The Stolen Christmas was written for my daughter when she was 9 nine years old and had stopped believing in Father Christmas. It was originally typed on a manual typewriter before technology allowed me to publish my work on the internet.

I wrote Blue Angel after I broke my arm in 2009 and released that here was the chance to do a bit more writing while I was off work. The idea had been bubbling away for a long time, so I had the opportunity to finally write down my ideas. The Silver Cross is selling very well, next year I intend to bring out a sequel, The Silver Bell. Until then, I've just released a new book, The Mystery on the Miniature Railway, which is a men's adventure story, I would suggest - although women who enjoy a good read, would like it.

Connect with June Winton

                                                                         @junewinton on Twitter

June Winton on Wattpad

Amazon Author Page

Read more guest posts from your favorite artists here

Get Free Kindle Books Everywhere You Go By Clicking the Icons Below:

Get This Post & Every Free Kindle Book Sent Right to Your Amazon Kindle Device

You can easily get every book, guest post and featured book sent right to your Amazon Kindle device by subscribing to the Free Book Dude Kindle blog. For less than $1 a month, you can have 48 free Amazon Kindle books wirelessly sent to your device every single day. Check it out for free today.