The Big Picture

Rosie Frost & the Falcon Queen is a fantasy adventure novel by Geri Halliwell-Horner that weaves real history into an exciting fictional story. Halliwell-Horner wanted to create a trilogy with this series and is currently working on Book 2. The author drew inspiration from personal experiences, including grief and standing up for oneself, while writing the story, and also wrote songs to accompany the book.

From Spice Girl, songwriter and author Geri Halliwell-Horner, the fantasy adventure novel Rosie Frost & the Falcon Queen follows the suddenly orphaned teen as she’s sent to Bloodstone Island. While navigating the mysterious school and the mean kids who don’t want her there, Rosie discovers that believing in herself is far more powerful than she had ever realized.

During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Halliwell-Horner talked about weaving real history into fantasy, wanting to create this story as a trilogy (she’s currently working on Book 2), the gratitude she felt holding the first copy of the book that she received, why it took so many years to create this world, what led to her restructuring the story, her husband’s reaction after reading it, drawing from personal pieces of her own life, whether she already knows the ending to Rosie’s story, how she came to write songs to accompany the book (all books contain a QR code with access to the original songs), and her desire to see this world adapted for film or TV.

Collider: I love that this story weaves real history into it. I was very excited about the tie to Anne Boleyn. I loved Six: The Musical as much as everyone else who’s seen it.

GERI HALLIWELL-HORNER: Let’s discuss this. I love Six: The Musical and I think it has its place, but Anne Boleyn is smart, and I didn’t see that when I went to the musical. She was not portrayed as that, but I know it’s all tongue-in-cheek.

Image via Chris Philippo

It’s hard when you only have a certain amount of minutes in a musical to convey everything and be entirely historically accurate. I saw Six: The Musical as a really fun interactive rock concert.

HALLIWELL-HORNER: Yeah, it’s actually a good way to remind us of these amazing queens. So, what did you think when you found out that I was leaning onto Anne Boleyn?

I loved that. I majored in journalism at university, but I minored in history for a bit, and specifically women in history, so I thought it was really cool that history was woven into this fantasy story.

HALLIWELL-HORNER: That’s good then. It sounds like it was your cup of tea.

Very much so. And clearly you love this world that you’ve created because, before the book is even out, you’ve already lined up a sequel. Did you know, from the beginning of writing this, that you would be continuing this story with other books?

HALLIWELL-HORNER: Yeah. First of all, I was creating a new hero. The world needs a new hero and someone ordinary. For me, a new superpower is vulnerability, and that’s what anyone can relate to. Maybe we can have a story where the DNA of it is finding the courage you never knew you had. Let’s put down the alpha males and the alpha girls, just for a minute. They have their place, but right now, I felt like this is what the world needs. We need to see it, so we can be it. The character was driving me first, and then her friends were always there, from different backgrounds. This world around Bloodstone Island that was created for her had so many facets and places to go with it that my aspiration was for it to be a trilogy.

As a book lover, what’s it like to receive your first copies of the book, to be able to hold it, to smell the pages, and to see the cover? What is that like?

HALLIWELL-HORNER: Oh, my God, it was absolutely amazing. I’ve written books before, like Ugenia Lavender, but that was for much younger. With this one, I have to say was like completely having a child, and then having it grow up and go out into the world. There’s that, if you can see it, you can be it. I kept on imagining that moment, seeing that cover and getting to open those pages. When I finally did, it was just that elation and gratitude that I was able to do that. It doesn’t matter who you are, at any time in life, you can pivot. You’re allowed to follow your dreams. I studied English literature. I thought about being a journalist, at some point prior to going into music. I’ve always loved music, but it was a progression of studying Hamlet, right before going into music. You can use language and the power of words in a condensed version in songwriting, but then have the ability and the opportunity to go into writing a novel. Those pages took me so long to do because I was learning as I went. I was just filled with absolute gratitude.

I read that it took you seven years to write this. Did you just want to take your time with it?

HALLIWELL-HORNER: No, I’m a very impatient person, but I felt compelled by her and by the story, and I just couldn’t let it go. What happened was that I wrote it in the first person and in the present tense. I showed it to a couple of publishers and I wasn’t getting, “Yeah, that’s amazing!” I was like, “Oh, God.” And then, I shared it with a guy called William Boyd, who’s the Beethoven of writing. He’s written Any Human Heart and he’s award-winning. It was like giving Humpty Dumpty to Beethoven. He said, “Rewrite it in the third person and the past tense because you’ve backed yourself into a corner.” I didn’t realize how hard I’d made it for myself. Everything was useful, that I did before. It gave me context and backstory. I was flushing out characters, in that process. I didn’t realize that, at the time. So, I just rewrote the whole thing, but in the third person in the past tense, and it was an easier read. You could navigate your way through easier. I was learning as I went, but I just couldn’t let it go. I feel incredibly grateful that there’s a real diversity of readers that have enjoyed this, whether it’s a teenage reader or 10-year-olds, and also my husband picked it up. I don’t know if you realize who my husband (Christian Horner) is, but he’s a team principal of a racing team, and he doesn’t really read. He kept watching me go off into my shed to write this and I said, “Would you read it?” And he said, “When it’s published.” And so, I finally gave him a book a few weeks ago and the first thing he said to me was, “Oh, it’s much better than I thought it would be.” He finished it a few days later and he said, “You know what? I couldn’t put it down. I just wanted to find out what happened next.” The fact that he liked it and really enjoyed it, I thought, “Okay, this is good.” I’ve had good feedback from the younger generation, but from him, a reluctant reader, I was like, “Yes!”

What kind of writer are you? Are you someone who likes to meticulously plot ahead of time? Do you like to write and see where things go? Do you start knowing what your ending is?

HALLIWELL-HORNER: There are two ways to do it. Part of my challenge at the beginning was that I just wrote as I went. Sometimes you come up with ideas and go, “Oh, I didn’t even think of that, and now it’s happening.” When you get to play God with whether someone lives, dies, loves or cries, it’s amazing. So, when I went back to fix it, it was almost like doing surgery. It was William Boyd that said to me, there are two ways to write a book and the other way is to actually structure it, which I’ve done for book two. I’ve had a bit more structure, and that’s been a much more supportive way of writing. Having said that, if something happens, you allow it to happen, but it’s almost like having stabilizers on a bike or a sat nav. You know you’re going in this direction and suddenly there might be a bit of traffic, and then you deviate a little bit, so you have to open to that.

Are you at a point where you know what the ending of Rosie’s story is, or do you not want to know yet?

HALLIWELL-HORNER: I’ve got one scene in my head. Sometimes I write when I’m not writing. I’ve got this vision in my head of what I think it is, but what I’m doing all the time is collecting. My goodness, if anyone saw my [browser] history with the things that I’m searching, they’d think, “What the hell are you looking at?” It’s called icebergs. Your book should never smell of a library. I’ve learned that you don’t have to say it, so long as you know why your character is doing something. As long as it’s legitimate, why you’ve chosen that particular thing to happen, it’s fine.

I love music as much as I love reading, so I was thrilled to find out that we’re also getting songs that accompany this book. Did you always know that you wanted to write songs to go along with this story?

HALLIWELL-HORNER: I like the writing process and the songwriting process. I’ve never stopped writing songs. I’m no Mariah Carey. I think my range is probably one-tenth of hers. She’s amazing. She’s a very good songwriter, as well. But I’m confident in the songwriting, so I just kept that up. I want to share a whole world that’s an immersive world with the reader, so that they can really feel parts of it. You can always tell your audience, “We’re in this together.” And so, the plan for giving that bit of music is that gift of saying, “We’re in this together. I want you to feel it and live it.”

Would you like to see this turned into a movie or a TV show? Is this the kind of story that you’d want to see brought to life, in that way?

HALLIWELL-HORNER: Absolutely, yes.

I immediately started seeing it in my head.

HALLIWELL-HORNER: That’s the point. I’m a very visual person, so if you can see those scenes in your head when you’re reading something, that’s amazing. I would love to see it on the big screen.

It sounds like there are a lot of little personal pieces of yourself in Rosie. When you pull from personal aspects of your life, are you aware while you’re doing it? Are you intentionally looking to explore those things in a story, or is it only upon reflection that you realize they’re there?

HALLIWELL-HORNER: A bit of both. That’s very interesting. Certain things, I’ve found challenging throughout life, like standing up for yourself. I think anyone can relate to that, so I thought that was an important theme to put in. Also, with grief, my dad died when I was quite young and I felt quite embarrassed of my feelings. I didn’t know how to process it. So, I thought, can we lightly touch on it with the character? But then, after I wrote it, I was like, “Oh, my God, you’ve written the exact scene that’s happened to you. I gave the story to my publisher, and they give you loads and loads of notes that make you go, “Oh, my goodness.” She said, “I want you to do two things. I want you to write a new chapter one with backstory to show the reader where she came from and what happened before she got to Bloodstone.” And so, I did. I wrote that classroom scene where the teacher comes in, and that’s exactly what happened to me. The only difference was that I was looking at a different book. I was looking at Hamlet, and she’s looking at Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. That’s the only difference. It wasn’t until after that I realized what I’d done. It was glaring me in the face. I was like, “Oh, my goodness, talk about writing what you know.” Obviously, you manipulate it a little to fit the character and the story, but the feelings and the direction are there.

How cool is it to know that, because of the Spice Girls, you have such a diverse variety of fans, who are still your fans, all these years later?

HALLIWELL-HORNER: It’s amazing. It really makes me happy that it’s such a diverse group of people that connect with anything that I’ve done. What I love about America is that you can come back and say, “This is just a new chapter. Maybe that was Disney and now this is Pixar.” It’s just an evolution.

You maintain those fans, over the years, and then you can also reach new people with a book like this and a character like Rosie.

HALLIWELL-HORNER: It’s a dream come true. America has taught me that you’re allowed to follow your dreams. Why not?

Rosie Frost and the Falcon Queen is available everywhere books are sold.