26/10/07 - Santa Montefiore
On Friday 26th October at 7:30 pm the best selling novelist Santa Montefiore gave a very entertaining talk about her life and work to an audience of over 40 people at Ascot Heath Community Centre. Santa told of how she had always wanted to be a writer from being a small child. As a teenager, she wrote romantic stories for her school friends, imagining romances between them and the boys in the boys’ school. Although these stories were very popular amongst her friends, her attempt at a Mills and Boon novel was less well received by publishers. It was a year spent in Argentina that inspired Santa to write her first widely successful novel, ‘Meet me under the Ombu tree’, published in 2001. Six further best-selling novels followed, giving Santa the world wide acclaim she now has for her work.
Santa often bases the characters in her novels on people she knows and they are usually people who have either made a favourable impression on her or people who she feels need their ‘come uppance’ (in which case a thinly veiled disguise is necessary). Even her own relatives don’t escape featuring somewhere in her writing. Amusing events and larger than life characters she meets are stored in her memory bank for use at a later date!
Santa told her audience that she tries to transport the reader to exotic locations in her books, incorporating romance, history and mystery along the way. Santa’s latest novel, ‘Sea of Lost Love’ certainly includes all these trademarks of her success.
The audience were certainly enthralled by Santa and the many amusing anecdotes she was able to retell in such an entertaining fashion. Almost everyone went home with a copy of Santa’s latest novel, signed by her and many of them were determined to read her whole collection.
Santa, sister of the TV celebrity and journalist Tara Palmer Tomkinson, is the fastest growing name in Women's commercial fiction. Her books have sold over 2 million copies in Europe and have all been international best sellers.
Lots more information on Santa can be found on her website: http://www.santamontefiore.co.uk
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