Anyone who says that online friendships aren’t real friendships has obviously never had one.
Louise Bates and I met a lot of years ago. If I remember rightly it was via the blog of another writer (Lee Strauss, to be precise, who had just published her first book). Both Louise and I were in our early days as bloggers and writers, and had yet to publish our first pieces. Her comment on Lee’s blog post caught my interest—who was this E.L. Bates person? She sounded like we might have a few things in common.
So I toddled over to her blog and checked it out. Would anyone be interested in beta reading a couple of short stories she’d written, she asked on the blog; umm, sure? I said. Not that I had much experience, I gave her to understand, but I could read the stories and tell her my opinion. Which I did. And then I sent her my fairly recently completed first novel to read (“I just want to know if it’s any good…”), and she gave me her opinion in return.
And that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
We found that we loved each other’s work, and had very much the same approach and attitudes to writing and to literature. And then we started talking about everything under the sun. Homeschooling, life, religion, parenting, society, food, books, knitting—and always, always writing. The emails flew back and forth. Big changes happened in our lives, all of which we shared with each other as they happened. I went to grad school and got my Master’s degree; Louise and her family moved to England for her husband to study for his PhD at Cambridge, and then moved back to the States to take up their life there again. On the way, we published our first books. And then the second, and third, and fourth. We kept blogs, and changed blogs, and got our very own websites. And both of us went into business as professional editors.
Our friendship is as real as they come, even though we’ve always been separated by at least the width of a continent and for a while even an ocean as well. We always talked about how much we’d love to meet in real life, by preference in England where so many of our favourite stories are set. Just for fun, we’d sign our emails with “Some Day In Great Britain!”
And then one day that wish became reality. Planning a trip to Germany to visit family, I realized that it was cheaper to fly via London than to go to Germany directly. Well—it was the sensible thing to do then, wasn’t it? And while I was on English soil, I might as well make it a longer layover, and take in the sights. It was practically a duty. A day or two in London, and then—Cambridge!
A short 45-minute train ride from King’s Cross Station, I made my way to the Royal Cambridge Hotel, and Louise and her family came to meet me. I still remember going down to the lobby, and there she was, just as she looked in her photos. “There you are,” I said, “it’s you!” (or something equally profound and erudite), and about five minutes later it felt like we had known each other in person for years.
We proceeded to spend the most marvellous day and a half together. They took me to King’s College Chapel for Matins and to Jesus College for Evensong; we walked through the ancient streets of Cambridge and watched punts getting snarled on the River Cam by the Mathematical Bridge; we had a proper British cream tea in a café and supper in the pub where some famous scientists used to have a pint after making their famous discoveries (I can’t remember now what they were, but they were famous, yup).
Being in Cambridge with Louise was an experience I will never forget.
And now (drumroll please!) she’s written a book about the place!
I got to read the very first version of this story. But that was before February of 2019, before I had seen Cambridge. It was a good story (all her stories are), but it didn’t resonate as much with me then. She put the manuscript aside for quite some time. But then not long ago she took it back out, and completely re-wrote the story. Now, it’s suffused with Cambridge. It’s her homage to the place, and it’s a wonderful, fun, profound story.
Death by Disguise came out today! It’s Book 3 in Louise’s “Whitney and Davies” 1920’s Magical Mystery series—like Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers with magic.
“The walls of Saint Dorothea’s College in Cambridge hide more secrets than simply the existence of magic …” Are you intrigued? Of course you are. So I’ll stop talking at you. Go get a copy of the book, and dive into the world of E.L. Bates’ Cambridge—it’s magical all in its own right.
Life, the Universe, Friendship and Cambridge and Books. You’re in for a treat.
