Snow Moon at Eyre Hall, is not the last novel in the series (I’m in the process of writing Book 6), and although it’s Book 5, I realised as I wrote it that Snow Moon is the most important novel in The Eyre Hall Series, because it contains the climax and resolution of the Blood Moon Prophecy announced in Blood Moon at Eyre Hall.
Its dramatic and cathartic moments make it the most gut wrenching and revealing novel of them all. Snow Moon at Eyre Hall is free today, but In this case, I strongly suggest you read the previous novels in the series first. But that’s no excuse not to download the novel today! Once you start this unputdownable series, you’ll get to Book 5 in no time!
There have been plenty of morally unforgiveable and legally criminal actions, malicious lies and dark secrets revealed in The Eyre Hall Series. But they didn’t all come exclusively from my own overactive imagination. Many of them were inspired directly from the evidence, clues, and hints I found rereading the many spaces between the lines of Jane Eyre.
From Pantser to Plotter and back to Pantser
As I told you in a previous post, All Hallows was unplotted. I just followed my character’s needs, feelings, and instructions, most of the time. The following novels were plotted, in my mind mostly. I knew what was going to happen from start to finish, because before I started writing I had ‘spoken’ to the characters and woven my story. Snow Moon was different. I was writing with no specific preconceived plan. By then, I knew my characters so well, it was easy and liberating to just ‘let them get on with their lives‘.
I soon realised that the characters and events in Snow Moon were taking me to a dark place, one that had been expecting me from the beginning: the attic at Thornfield Hall. And it all clicked; I understood that Bertha Antoinetta, mostly silent in my novel, needed to be heard and reinstated after centuries of physical and emotional abuse and accusations of madness (Although in Blood Moon, we read part of her diary, but I don’t want to give away too much!).
When I finished writing Snow Moon, I realised events narrated in this novel are the real reason I wrote this series. They contain the secret to understanding Jane Eyre, the novel, and Bertha Antoinetta Mason, the silent, invisible, abused, ignored, yet ever present, essential character. There is no Jane Eyre without Jane, but there is no Jane Eyre without Bertha Antoinetta, Jane’s emotional, psychological and material antagonist, and her dark double.
I decided to extend the initial Trilogy, because I realised it was incomplete, but I didn’t understand why until I finished writing Snow Moon. The circle has finally closed and the amends Bertha Antoinetta deserved are made.
Book six, Midsummer at Eyre Hall, fulfils other aspects of the characters evolution and needs, and moves the story on in a new direction, but more about Midsummer in future posts.
I hope to have the chance to read Snow Moon, and if so, I’d love to know your opinion on Bertha Antoinetta Mason and her retribution in this novel.
Happy reading,
Lucy xx
