02 Feb Anna M Holmes Dance of the Earth #HistoricalFiction #BalletHistory #BalletsRusses #TheatreHistory #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub @AnnaMHolmes_ @cathiedunn

FEATURED AUTHOR: ANNA M. HOLMES

I’m delighted to feature Anna M. Holmes as the featured author in The Coffee Pot Book Club Blog Tour being held between January 20th –  February 10th, 2026. Anna M. Holmes is the author of the Historical Fiction, Dance of the Earth, published by The Book Guild on 28 October 2025 (456 pages).

Below are highlights of Dance of the Earth, author bio for Anna M. Holmes, and techniques she used to research the historical background of her novel.

Tour Schedule Page: https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2025/11/blog-tour-dance-of-earth-by-anna-m-holmes.html

HIGHLIGHTS: DANCE OF THE EARTH

Dance of the Earth
by Anna M Holmes

Blurb:

From world stages to theatres of war, Dance of the Earth is a sweeping family saga.

Set against the backdrops of London’s gilded Alhambra music hall, Diaghilev’s dazzling Ballets Russes, and the upheavals of the First World War, Rose and her children, Nina and Walter, pursue their ambitions, loves, and dreams. Dance and music shape their identities, helping each to find their place in the world.

Spanning the years 1875 to 1921—an era of profound artistic and social change—fact and fiction interweave in this tapestry of birth, sacrifice, and renewal. Art—both serious and comic—is at the story’s beating heart.

Any Triggers: war injury

Buy Link:

Universal Buy Link:  https://books2read.com/u/mdJR2d

AUTHOR BIO: ANNA M. HOLMES

Stories with big themes written as page-turners are Anna M Holmes’s speciality.

With an extensive background in dance and theatre, Dance of the Earth is a story she has longed to write. Her novels—The Find, Wayward Voyage, and Blind Eye—are all typified by deep research.

Anna worked as a radio journalist before embarking on a career in arts management. Originally from New Zealand, she now lives in South-West London.

Author Links:

Website     Twitter / X     Facebook     Instagram     Bluesky

TikTok     Amazon Author Page     Goodreads

HISTORICAL RESEARCH: DANCE OF THE EARTH

Dance of the Earth is a backstage to centre stage and theatres of war family saga following Rose and her children, Nina and Walter. I have a lifelong involvement in dance as a practitioner, teacher, lecturer in dance history, and, on the administrative side, as an Arts Council specialist officer and reviewer. Still, I needed to know so much more.

Research for historical fiction is like a good corset giving shape to a garment.

Dance of the Earth spans late Victorian London to the early 1920s during which time seismic changes took place in the arts and in society. We journey from music hall revues to avant-garde ballets and the beginnings of the jazz age; from romantic compositions of Ravel and Debussy to fractured sounds scores of Stravinsky and those following. And there was Picasso and those Cubists deconstructing and reconfiguring.

At the start of my story, it is only horses and horse-drawn vehicles on the roads. But we travel through the dawn and development of automobiles and London’s Underground railways. Aeroplanes were invented, becoming, within a matter of years, war machines.

Gas light was giving way to electricity. Telephones and telegraphs were in the world.

Women were demanding the vote and, with the Great War, increasingly into the workforce. Women’s fashion went from tight corsets, bustle cages and sweeping dresses to sleek above-the-knee numbers.

The Timetables of History, by Bernard Grun, is a useful, weighty, reference book. It lists key developments in any given year: politics, literature and arts, religion & philosophy, science and technology, daily life. Almost none of this made it onto the page, but a writer needs to know what’s going on and what shapes your characters.

I find research falls into three broad categories: desk research, specialist advice, direct experience.  Here’s a roundup of how I set about constructing the corset that underpins Dance of the Earth.

Desk Research

Books and more books: dance and theatre history, military history, battlefields and Homefront. 

Internet searches: theatre playbills, photos of old London; postcards of Monte Carlo; military war diaries of specific platoons. YouTube for so much.

Check language usage of a given period to avoid today’s colloquial expressions.

Specialist journalists and newspapers.  I signed up to access the British Newspaper archives, meaning I could search for key words and dates in any publication in the UK. I could check what was showing at theatres on any given day.

• KEY TAKE AWAY You can google anything!

Specialist advice

The V&A’s Dance Curator provided articles from the 1890s on Alhambra Ballets and checked scenes I’d written, then the entire manuscript, to ensure I’d made no blunders.

A curator at the Imperial War Museum assisted with information on the musical score that musicians played at the 1916 Battle of the Somme film.

Librarians and archivists at key institutions helped. The boarding school my character Walter attended provided the exam curriculum for years in question. I have the syllabus of the Royal Academy of Music when Walter attended. The Royal Academy of Dance library was a great place to spend a day browsing.

• KEY TAKE AWAY. Don’t be shy to reach out.

Direct experience

It can be useful walking in the footsteps of your characters. On a public open day, I visited the Surrey boarding school Walter attended and came away with photos and scraps of information that made their way into my story.

I visited North France World War One battlefield sites and goosebumps seeing the (now) quiet ridge of land the East Surrey Regiment fought to gain control of and visited cemeteries where thousands of soldiers lay.

London West End theatres and Royal Opera House I know well. Even so, I looked at details with fresh eyes.  I drew on my own childhood experience of backstage life and the excitement it aroused.

• KEY TAKE AWAY. Being somewhere you can use all your senses to experience that environment to inspire a scene.

When writing Dance of the Earth I aimed for authenticity rather than outright veracity. So once knowing a ‘fact’ I might choose to smudge it a little bit to further my story.

I invite you to share the world I have created.

To find out more about Anna M Holmes and Dance of the Earth – available internationally as paperback and ebook – visit www.annamholmes.com

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