Guest Post: Linda Holeman shares what Inspired her to write The Devil on Her Tongue

After the 2012 publication of my last book, The Lost Souls of Angelkov, I had rolled up my sleeves and started work on what I thought would be the next book. But the topic I had chosen proved to be unruly and impossible to rein in, and I had to abandon it. During much teeth-gnashing and hair-pulling, small and what I now call serendipitous events were unfolding.

One of my daughters went to Portugal, and sent me a postcard of beautiful blue tiles from Lisbon. I kept it on my desk for a long time, glancing at it often. Something about it was soothing.

Shortly after that a friend came over and brought a bottle of ruby port, made in Porto, in the Douro Valley. It wasn’t my usual choice of beverage, but I enjoyed it, and then, just for my own interest, I did some research on the making of wines and port in Portugal. The island of Madeira – with its own grape varietals and very rich history of wine making and exporting, as well as slavery and British colonialism – kept popping up. I hadn’t known anything about Madeira, mid-way between Portugal and North Africa in the Atlantic, and I was intrigued by it.

When my daughter returned from Portugal she brought me a CD by Amália Rodrigues. The CD had been remade from old recordings of fado – Portuguese music characterized by mournful tunes and lyrics, often about the sea or the life of the poor. Amália had recorded these songs in the 1940s and 50s. While finding out more about fado, I came across the word saudade. There’s no tidy English translation, but the word reflects a deep emotional state of nostalgia or profound longing for someone. It also carries a repressed knowledge that the loved one may never return. It felt sad and beautiful. I thought it would be the perfect book title*.

My interest grew as I researched more of Portugal’s history. There was little 17^th and 18^th century Portuguese fiction to be found, but this challenge only fuelled me. I was excited to uncover a slim volume entitled The Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun. Written originally in French by Gabriel de Lavergne after the discovery of a cache of passionate, raw letters from the nun Mariana Acoforado to an unnamed French officer, it was published in 1669. I also found the related novel, Letters of a Portuguese Nun, contemporary author Myriam Cyr’s imagined unfolding of this story, subtitled Uncovering the Mystery Behind a 17th Century Forbidden Love.

Now I was deep in the weeds, and knew with certainty that 18^th century Portugal would be the setting for my next novel. I traveled to Portugal, and while in Lisbon, walking the streets, taking photos and making notes, I randomly picked through the piles of old treasures – or junk, depending on your attitude – in the open air Thieves Market. I bought a beautiful old tile from an elderly, dignified gentleman, and, to celebrate that tiny sale, he offered me a thimble-full of what he called Ginja. It was a cherry liqueur, and I later found out it had once been very popular on both the mainland and on Madeira. There it was again, that enigmatic-sounding island in the Madeira archipelago.

Another day I went to Belém, on the outskirts of Lisbon, after being told I had to sample one of Portugal’s most famous pastries, the pastel de nata. It’s an egg tart, first created by 17^th century nuns in what was then known as the civil parish of Santa Marie de Belém. Because they needed so many egg whites to starch their wimples, they used the left-over egg yolks to make pastries. I loved that! As I ate more than my share of the pastéis in Belém, again musing on the lives of Portuguese nuns, I walked to the amazing Mosteiro dos Jerónimos. Because of its proximity to what was once a small beach providing safe anchorage and protection from the winds, Belém was used by ships entering and leaving the Tagus River. The monks at Mosteiro dos Jerónimos provided spiritual assistance to navigators and sailors for over four centuries. In the hush of that elaborate cathedral, it was easy to imagine kneeling sailors, praying for a safe journey before heading back to sea.

I was still uncertain about the shape of my story, but with the heady taste of Portuguese wines and pastries on my tongue, and all I had seen, my mind was thrumming with thoughts of sailors, the dangers of the sea, and saudade. I could only imagine the emotions of those 18th century boys and men as they raised the sails: excitement and anticipation, threaded with the fear they might never again see home or those they loved. How many of them even knew with precision where they were going, or what they would find?

From Lisbon I travelled south, into the glorious Algarve, the southern coast that runs along the Atlantic. I drove to Sagres, where the first nautical school was started by Henry the Navigator in the 15^th century. And just six kilometres from Sagres I discovered Cabo de São Vicente, the most southwestern point of Europe, and a landmark once known as the “End of the World” to the sailors leaving from Sagres. That haunting tip of land was the last piece of Portugal they would see as they set sail. Standing on that wild and windy cliff that rose almost vertically out of the Atlantic, I visualized the opening scene for my novel.

That night I wrote about a sailor who washes up on a beach in the Madeira archipelago. Before too long, I would take another trip to Portugal, this time to the islands of Madeira and Porto Santo. But for now, my story had begun.