Guest Blog: JM Hewitt on getting published

Delighted to have JM Hewitt, aka Jeanette, as my guest today. She’s been a strong contender in the Retreat West competitions and has just had her first crime novel published. She’s here talking about that experience and the book, which is set in Chernobyl. 

 

My debut crime fiction novel, Exclusion Zone, was released a couple of weeks ago. The days running up to the release were among the strangest I’ve experienced. I was nervous, in fact I was terrified. It’s all well and good sitting alone and writing a novel and there’s a glow of pleasure when the publishing offer comes through, but it’s a whole different ballgame when it is actually released onto the reading public.

What if it’s terrible? What if there’s some giant error that has slipped through the net? What if it doesn’t make sense? When I got word from the publisher that it was up on Amazon for sale I froze. I wanted to hold on to the general feeling of safety for a little while longer, but I tentatively contacted a very good friend who is a wonderful book blogger going by the name of Crime Book Junkie. She had been responsible for my cover reveal, and her natural enthusiasm and kindness made me take the leap of faith to tell the world that my book birthday had arrived.

It was then a case of playing the waiting game again, but on Wednesday I was checking it on Amazon, and I suddenly realised that the book was at number 156 in the International Mystery and Crime category. That was a stunning moment, it meant people were actually buying it, and then, when I woke up the next day to find it was at number 50, well, I couldn’t ask for much more. In the days following I’ve had my first four stars rating on Goodreads and two people have described it as “gripping”. So at the moment I feel that I can let myself breathe a little.

Exclusion Zone is a crime thriller based in Chernobyl and the research on this abandoned place has been absolutely fascinating. I didn’t want to let it go, and luckily, as I’ll be appearing at a few book festivals and events this year I didn’t have to. As 2016 is the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster I’ll be incorporating the facts in my presentations.

The more I delve into Chernobyl, the more it grabs me. One thing I keep talking about is the parallels between what was a man-made disaster and the subsequent effect it has had on the wildlife. Deserted Chernobyl is now effectively the largest nature reserve in the world. Undisturbed by human, animal has thrived. There’s been little detrimental health issues with them too, which is super interesting.

Of course, Exclusion Zone is also a crime thriller, and this was my first foray into the criminal world. I knew my protagonist was Alex Harvey, a private detective in his mid-thirties, I’d been building him in my mind for a long time. Alex is a loner, a playboy, somewhat flashy and money-orientated. And it’s the promise of a €30,000 retainer that tempts him to take on a job in the wilderness of Chernobyl.

My female lead is nineteen year old Elian Gould. She is the polar opposite to Alex; she has few friends, doesn’t care about money or material worth and prefers to stay under the radar. Inevitably when these two unlikely people are thrown together, well, let’s just say there are sparks!

My other characters have stayed with me too, how can they not? A writer doesn’t just write about these guys, we live and breathe them for many months or years. We learn how they would think, feel, react and live. And Exclusion Zone has many colourful characters. One of my favourites is a secondary character called Sol. He was never planned, but he popped up and before I knew it he had a whole life laid out on the pages. Luckily, I don’t have to let them go, at least not yet.

Exclusion Zone is the first in the Detective Alex Harvey series and I’ve already started work on the sequel in which Alex and a few others from Exclusion Zone appear. I don’t know how far this series will go, but I can say with certainty it will definitely be at least a trilogy.

In another strange parallel, my partner (who is responsible for the design of promotional items, sponsorship, and technology in the way of websites and all things computer-y as well as providing good old fashioned support) and I have been invited to Kiev by the guys who run Chernobyl Tour (www.chernobyl-tour.com). Once there I’ll be giving a talk on the book and its origins in a university and a bookstore. In return we will also get to go on the actual Chernobyl tour, which promises to be an ‘eye-opening experience of a post-Apocalyptic world’.

And when I mention this, I can’t help but think of Exclusion Zone, and how Alex and Elian went into Chernobyl and what happened there, and I sincerely hope that it won’t be a case of life imitating art…

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Thanks so much for your guest blog, Jeanette. As the launch of my debut novel approaches, I completely get the fear you talk about here! I’m looking forward to reading this book and the ones that follow in the series. Stay safe in Chernobyl!

If you’d like to win a signed copy of Exclusion Zone, leave a comment below telling us why you’d like to read it. I’ll pick a winner using the random number generator on 12th March 2016. 

If you’re not lucky enough to be the winner, then you can buy a copy here

FREE DRAW UPDATE: The random number generator picked number 3 so the winner of the free signed copy of Exclusion Zone is Bonnie McCulloch – congratulations Bonnie!

Author Interview: Jackie Buxton on Tea and Chemo

A big welcome to Jackie Buxton today, who’s been talking very frankly to me about her memoir, Tea and Chemo, which was recently published by Urbane Publications, and life after a cancer diagnosis.

This tale of Jackie’s treatment for breast cancer is a great read and all of the royalties are being donated to the three breast cancer charities that helped her, and many other women like her, during treatment. So please buy a copy! You can get one here direct from the publisher, or here through Amazon.

Jackie, despite the subject matter, your memoir about undergoing treatment for breast cancer is funny, uplifting and inspiring yet you talk in it about ‘The Fear’ that grips you sometimes. How do you keep yourself focused on the positives when the fear shows up?

I’m so pleased you saw all that in Tea & Chemo, Amanda. I wanted the book to be informative but positive so it’s wonderful to hear it described in this way. It seems to me that The Fear affects all cancer patients to a greater or lesser degree after treatment. It’s a sort of disbelief that the body which was caught napping when cancer called the first time, won’t get caught out again.

When you’re having active treatment, you’re invincible. Those operations to cut away the cancer are major surgery. If chemo makes you feel that bad, pah! pity those cancer cells. And then there’s radiotherapy, don’t be fooled by the pain free element and speed of implementation, that’s a big dose of radiation in your body. And then it all stops and suddenly, you, the ex-cancer patient, can feel very small and insipid in the fight to keep cancer from calling again.

Also, once active treatment finishes, aside from check-ups and ongoing medication, you are sent away to live your life – but with the voice of the medical profession constantly tapping in your ear: Be vigilant! Check for new lumps and bumps and get aches and pains checked out. So, as an ex-patient, on the one hand you’re trying to be rational and finally push the cancer thing to the back of your mind, on the other, you know that you are the first line of defence in spotting a new cancer forming or secondaries growing. It’s hard not to over-analyse and to let The Fear become all-consuming.

So, how do I cope with The Fear? That’s a great question! I think I batter it into submission with a hefty dose of logic, distraction and action. There are some questions to which nobody knows the answers, such as whether the cancer will come back, if secondaries are silently forming and for me, without any history of breast cancer in my family, whether my genetic make-up is nonetheless of the cancer forming kind and worse, have I developed a dodgy gene which I will pass on to my children?

The best I can do when these questions rear their awful heads, is to preach to myself what the brilliant medical profession has taught me. Cancer is the result of a perfect storm – all of the body’s defence systems have to be found wanting at the same time for a ‘bad cell’ to become cancerous, mutate and conquer. And I remind myself that for now, and that’s all we can deal with, I am one of the lucky ones because my treatment aim was cure without secondaries and other complications.

This generally works.

Otherwise, manic busy-ness is wonderful for distracting me. It’s really hard to dwell on the unknown when having fun with friends and family, when children need to be picked up simultaneously from opposite ends of Yorkshire, the spreadsheets don’t tally, a class starts in twenty minutes and my next deadline is one hundred pages and a week away. I am certainly someone who is happiest and most carefree when they are busy.

Sometimes The Fear might need addressing and so I take action forthwith. I used to be a little slap happy with my health. I’d have a headache for a few days before being bothered to walk to the medical box to find a couple of paracetamol, would deprive myself of sleep to meet a deadline and would make an appointment for my children to see the doctor when the request had barely left their lips whereas weeks would go by before I picked up the phone for myself.

Now I’m different. If there’s any chance of a sluggish, pit of the stomach sort of fear staying around, then I drop what I’m doing and get on and book an appointment with my long suffering GP practice. I am lucky because all the doctors there, without exception, are very, very understanding of the fact that when you’ve had cancer, every head ache means it’s gone to the brain. Every stomach ache means it’s made its way into your ovaries. Stiff legs and achy joints you say? No matter that you’ve just run twenty miles, swum the channel and ridden a bike (upside down) this can only be a sign of one thing: bone mets (secondary breast cancer in the bones). I joke but it feels seriously real at the time.

And you know, time helps. It’s two years on from diagnosis and I now recognise that I can get a cold, like anyone else, and it’s just a cold.

You said you wrote this book as you’d wanted to find one like it when you were diagnosed – what do you hope it will bring to other women who have to undergo treatment for breast cancer?

When I was diagnosed with cancer in December 2013, I found that there was a wealth of really well-written information about a cancer diagnosis and its treatments. However, I struggled to find much about how it would feel; what it was really like to go through treatment for cancer – emotionally, as well as physically. I also never read anywhere that it might be OK, bearable, even almost pleasant.

The morning spent in hospital being administered my chemo, for example, was thoroughly pleasant. It didn’t hurt, the nursing staff as well as being fantastically efficient and reassuring were also really good fun and while I was unable to go to work put on the washing, cook dinner… I read books, chatted, drank tea and ate sandwiches which other people had made for me. It would be churlish of me to pretend that the time wasn’t fun and hugely relaxing – and that was something I didn’t find written down anywhere.

I hope Tea & Chemo emphasises the lighter side of cancer and its treatments. I hope my experience and learning along the cancer road will help inform people further back in the process than me, but also leave them with the lasting impression that, if we’re lucky, the experience isn’t all bad.

If there was one thing you could go back and tell yourself in the week before your diagnosis what would it be?

Please can I have two?

  • You’re going to be one of the lucky ones: your treatment aim is cure.
  • You will survive the artery bleed after the mastectomy operation.

Ummm, three? Don’t try to keep your freelance work going during treatment. Enjoy the time when you feel well, and indulge yourself when you don’t! You’ll be back working full time soon enough.

Aside from your memoir, you also have your debut novel coming out in June 2016 – can you tell us a bit about that?

Glass Houses is about two women who make stupid mistakes and the massive ramifications not just for their lives but for those close to them. It’s about people in glass houses not throwing stones. It’s also about how if we smash up our lives, however hard we try to stick them back together again, they will never look the same as they did before. And maybe, just maybe this might not be such a bad thing.

Glass Houses is contemporary fiction so it’s a very different read to Tea & Chemo but I hope that there’s a similarity in that it tackles dark themes with a light touch.

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Thanks so much for your time and honesty, Jackie. I look forward to reading your novel. Glass Houses will be published by Urbane Publications on June 9th 2016 and is available to pre-order from Amazon.

Year of Indie Debuts: Freefall Into Us

Today’s indie debuts star is Tess Rosa, a fellow Urbane author whose collection of poetry and short stories is a truly lovely thing. I’m delighted to have her along to find out more about her and her writing. Warning – if swearing offends you then stop reading now!

You can win a paperback copy of Freefall Into Us by commenting on this blog to say why you’d like one. More details at the end of the post…

Tess, you’ve been compared to Kerouac and Rollins in a battle of words – how does it feel to be likened to such (in)famous writers with your debut collection?

I remember that day vividly. When I first read the blurb that would go on the back of my book jacket, and a few other places for that matter, I went nuts. I began to panic, swore for about five minutes then proceeded to call a fellow writer friend in NYC. “Jack Kerouac and Henry Rollins?” I screamed. “What the fuck? I mean, Henry, okay, (priding myself on being compared to the likes of him) but Kerouac? Have they lost their fucking minds?” I mean, come on, those are huge ass shoes to fill. I felt the reviewers would have a field day. You may as well put me and my book  out in a meadow and use us for target practice!

Well, a few writer friends talked me off the ledge and said “This is your time. This is your place. It will go down however you want it to go down. Stand tall, and take it with grace.” So, I had a huge glass of wine, smoked a pack of cigarettes and never looked back. Oddly enough, those that know me, know that I love Kerouac. But not so much for his writing, but for who he was and what he stood for as a writer. I did a lot of digging on him because I wrote a short story titled ‘Saving Jack’. I needed to know much about him if I was going to write him as a character. His awkwardness, his battle with alcoholism, his sex appeal, his writing, his hating to be in the limelight (interviews, etc.), his tragic death at a very young age.

When I finished the story, I kid you not, I found the following quote from Kerouac. “I hope that it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others, but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.” Without giving much of the story away, it is about reincarnation. I brought back my beloved Jack. When I found that quote, I swore Jack himself had shown it to me. I had never come across it in all of his work. The coincidence of that moment astounded me.  I am getting off subject here, but, yea, it was a tough pill to swallow. But, as the reviews began coming in, I had also been compared to Raymond Carver, Paul Auster, John Cheever, with F.Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway sprinkled in. I guess now I take it with a grain of salt. We all have opinions and they all differ. If someone is reading my work and they think of another writer as they read me, well, I am honored and humbled. Incidentally, Rollins was changed to Anais Nin. Thank God, I needed a woman thrown in there!
For me you really seem to have captured the essence of life – moments of pure joy, despair, love, loss, grimness, romance and indifference, as well as some mind-blowing and some very mediocre sex. Did you set out to write this collection with that approach in mind or were all the pieces written at different times and these themes emerged as you brought them all together?

Tough question. Pause, ponder….Okay. The first story I wrote and finished quickly was ‘Crystal Blond Persuasion.’ My brother had just died as I had begun to write that story. I was grief stricken. Some of the scenes in that story were actually me, feeling extreme anguish and complete sadness. This will sound morbid to you, but I had thoughts of climbing into my brothers coffin and rotting right along with him. That pain propelled me forward like a rocket. After all, it was through my brother David that I had become an avid reader and writer. I kept diaries for years. Sadly, when I was 17, I burned them all.  Anyway, David was always reading and I followed suit. He hooked me onto Stephen King big time. My book is dedicated to my brother. Without his love, I wouldn’t be where I am today. There is also a lot of sex in that particular story. Sometimes we syphon our pain through sex or other addictions. I began drinking more than usual and ‘acting out.’

There is much pain, sadness, and loss in my book. Much of that stemmed from my brother’s death. A year after he died, I met a man that changed my life. I fell hard in love with him. The last story in the book which bears the title, ‘Freefall Into Us’ is our story. You will have to read it. It’s pretty messed up stuff but I was given barrels of fruit with which to write after all that shit went down. I believe you have to live, to write. I mean really, really live. I have always lived hard, loved hard and taken many risks with my heart. So, yes, there is pieces and fragments of me in those stories and the only way I could heal was to put them on paper. Oh, mediocre sex? I try to keep my relationships of my characters real,  not superficial. Mediocre sex has happened to each and everyone of us, and if one says no, they are full of shit.
Where do you feel happiest as a writer – in prose or poetry form? And why?

Just writing makes me happy. It is very therapeutic for me. I suffer from anxiety, panic and loneliness. Therefore, I feel the need to write. It brings me out of that funk. The poetry comes with experiences, so it is all true life. I can’t just sit down and write poetry. Poetry writes me. It moves through me and I never know when that is going to happen. When it does happen, I can’t stop it. It’s as if something is talking to me in my head and placing the words for me. When it is over, and I am finished, I usually feel extreme mental and physical exhaustion. Like I had just run a marathon or something. I am spent. I can’t think. I stare at nothing, my mind completely worn out and blank. Does that sound crazy to you? It’s hard to explain.

The short stories are always rolling around in my imagination. I will piece them together in my head for weeks, sometimes months, before I can actually start writing them. I am always throwing short story ideas at my daughters and friends. It helps to pitch it to someone. I am always looking for validation. I think a lot of writers do. Feelings of inadequacy and self doubt are always creeping around me. I try to stand strong and keep forging ahead. As long as I feel the ‘need’ the ‘want’ to write, I will continue to do so.

I get a lot of feedback regarding my poetry. I never looked at or thought of myself as a poet. In fact, when I sent my short story collection to Urbane there was poetry thrown along with it, which I told Matthew to ignore. He loved it. Said it was brilliant. After the book came out, I had people telling me when they read my poetry, they felt as if I had written it just for them. Statements like this made me cry. I write poetry to understand my pain, sadness, love, etc., and to hear someone say, that I made them cry, or that I expressed something that they never possessed the words to express, well that  is beyond comprehension. We are all connected and feel the same hurts, love, etc.  I feel I was given the ‘gift of poetry’ and it is simply my duty to give that gift away.  I wrote a very tough poem called ‘Shush’ about molestation that will be in my next book, ‘An American Slumber.’ It is a hard piece to read, but I think many will resonate with it. I feel I have really found my voice, through being a poet, and that makes me elated.

One of things I enjoyed most about the short stories in the collection is that they cross genres, and include one of my favourites, dystopia. As a writer are you drawn to experimenting in different genres and can we expect more of this from you?

Yes!! Absolutely. For instance,  I love horror but I can’t write it, try as I may.  Something you may or may not know about me. I belonged to a group years ago called WSPIR – Washington State Paranormal Investigative Research. It is hands down one of the most interesting things I have ever been involved in. Just the people I worked with were incredible in themselves! Psychics, mediums, clairvoyants, even the techies in the group!  As a child, I had many experiences with ghosts. As a teenager, I held seances and played with Oujia boards. Anyway, I saw something horrific and decided I couldn’t do that work anymore. Trust me, that kinda fucks with your psyche. I definitely miss the people I worked with though. (I smell a story about a clairvoyant for sure!)

Anyway, you would think I would be able to write a killer ghost story because of this, but honestly, I have no interest in doing that. I do write somewhat of a ghost story in ‘Gone Awry’ but I never looked at it as creepy (ghosts I mean) so therefore, I can’t make it scary because it’s not scary to me. Does that make sense? Although I LOVE scary stories. Go figure. You will never ever catch me writing a ‘Harlequin Romance’ type book. Let me make this perfectly clear. NEVER!!!  I felt my strangest story in the book was ‘Homeless Baby’. I mean, come on, rats cart off a newborn on the streets of Seattle? Again, though, this story is about reincarnation and being given another chance to make life right.

Many artists, writers, etc. believe that we have many lives. I feel as though the bad people (murderers) don’t get to hell. They come back instead as roaches, rats, or lice on pubic hair.  I mean come on, that is hell right there. I love the story ‘Homeless Baby’ because it explains the whole process of this. It seems far-fetched to some, but honestly to me it is possible. This was one of my favorite stories to write, hands down.
I can’t write spy thrillers. I don’t read them so maybe that is why. Basically, I can write anything that begins building in my head. I get a lot of feedback about the short story, ‘The Pasture/Europa, the dystopia that you mentioned. I never thought I would write a post-apocalyptic story, but boom, it happened. I think a lot about the super volcano(caldera)  that runs under Yellowstone National Park (Montana/Wyoming/Idaho border). I also heard about some underground shelters that were popping up in the United States. One that I stumbled upon, called Vivos, was intriguing as hell. My intrigue with this shelter catapulted into my brain and ‘The Pasture’ was born! Here’s a snippet with my favorite line in bold.  “As I said before, these shelters are popping up all over the place, but, as you can imagine, they’re very private. Heaven forbid would you want to save as many people as possible; poverty, class, social status and ethnicity being of no matter. These dwellings are only for the extremely wealthy. I think, honestly, I would rather die with the vast majority than live trapped underground with a bunch of pretentious motherfuckers with money stashed up their asses.” This sums up how I feel about being in one of those shelters should the ‘big one’ hit.

Some have thought my book was erotica. Let me be very clear here. It’s absolutely not erotica. I will never write a book of erotica, either. That’s been done, and I can’t top Anne RoqueIaure (Anne Rice) so I won’t even try. She is the goddess of erotica. Yes, there is sex in my book,  but isn’t sex a basic need and a realistic part of life.? A few have ridiculed me for all the sex, so I am assuming they have either never had it, or never enjoyed it. It happens to be one of the greatest perks in life in my opinion. Hell, even mediocre sex has it’s place. 😉 Basically, I try not to put my thoughts in a box. Leaving my mind open is best. Sometimes I surprise myself with the shit that I come up with. I will just keep on keeping on and though I am originally from Montana, you won’t find me writing a Western anytime soon. xoxo

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Thanks so much for this, Tess. It’s been fun and enlightening! Leave a comment below by 9pm (GMT) on 16th February for your chance to win a copy.

If you can’t wait that long, then you can buy one here. And you can connect with Tess on Twitter.

Year of Indie Debuts: Jihadi

Today, I’m happy to welcome debut novelist, Yusuf Toropov, to the blog to talk about his thriller, Jihadi: A Love Story, that launched as an e-book on Christmas Eve and comes out in paperback shortly. It’s a challenging and gripping read that explores themes of love and whether what we think about a situation and people is ever the whole truth.

Yusuf, the title, which is pretty controversial, gives the impression that this is just going to be a novel about terrorism, but I found it to be so much more than that. It is about love, but also about understanding, and about being caught up in circumstances beyond your control. What do you hope that people will take from this novel when they read it?

The fiction that moves me most as a reader takes me into the mind and soul of someone I might not otherwise have imagined I had anything in common with, or even liked. Then the story finds a way to give me a sense of shared humanity with that person. Lolita was that kind of book for me. You don’t have to like Humbert Humbert or approve of his choices, and it’s best that you don’t, but you can feel what he feels, and you can go on a remarkable journey with him.

So a book like Jihadi, I think, I is trying to open up readers to experiences of love, as the title promises, but it’s asking you to go on some journeys you may not have gone on yet. It’s asking permission to introduce you to a pretty strange gathering of people on both sides of the so-called “war on terrorism,” and I made them strange because that war has been strange. So I like to think the book is there to help you get to know that strange experience and those strange people a little better on a personal level, laugh with them, cry with them, get hurt with them, move forward somehow with them. If the book makes you think twice or even three times about people and events you may have been told that you already know quite enough about, I consider a big part of the mission accomplished. That was one of the big objectives with the Fatima character: to show you someone you might have assumed at the beginning of the book that you knew all about already, and then show you sides of her that you hadn’t expected to see.

It’s billed as a love story, and the old saying that love is blind really seemed to apply to this for me. Many of the characters seemed to be blinded by their love for a religion, a cause, an organisation, another person. Was that the theme you set out to explore – that people are willing to do anything and justify it to themselves, and others, by calling it love?

There are definitely some wounded hearts in this novel, and there is some bloodletting as a result of those wounds. Love gets twisted around a lot, and I think love, once it’s twisted, can empty somebody out, can leave people hollower than they ought to be, can make all kinds of bad decisions seem good. I think twisted love is what turns some people into extremists. So yes, I was interested in how that worked, and I followed the book wherever it wanted to go when it came to people identifying what was and wasn’t worth loving.

I was also interested in how the collapse of a marriage could parallel the collapse of coexistence, on a global scale. I wanted to write about the kinds of decisions that made such collapses possible.

It was hard to know who to trust in your cast of characters and often someone who originally seemed to be on the side of good ended up doing bad things. Do you think this is a real reflection of humanity, that none of us are all ever one thing?

I think people are forgetful. I think we lose track of who we’re supposed to be sometimes. And I think appearances can be deceiving. Wars can talk you into assuming that people on a certain side, or aligned with a certain faction, are all good or all evil, and I think that’s a grotesque oversimplification that usually does much more harm than good. We live in a world of grays. There’s very little that’s clear black and clear white. It’s there. But it’s not the whole picture or even a majority of the picture.

Extremists have a way of painting things in such a way that the various hues of gray in a picture are replaced by All Black or All White. It took a while for me to figure out that was one of the themes. This book took a long time to write – eight years – and there were a lot of false starts. The novel only started accelerating and coming together once I acknowledged that the gray tones were very interesting, and that some of the characters were inclined to pretend things were All Black or All White. So I kept following that thread.

Can you tell us about the link with the Beatles’ White Album and why you chose to weave that through the story?

That’s hard to do without giving away some plot points, but I will say that I am a child of the Sixties, and a student of its history. If you look at the things people obsessed over and projected themselves onto during that period, certain albums rise to the top of the list very quickly. Since it’s a story about, among other things, people becoming obsessed, the connection kind of made itself. It helped that I happen to be a big Beatles fan.

What’s next from you?

I’m working on some short stories at the moment. One of them is A DEAL, which you can find on the Orenda web site.

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Many thanks for coming along, Yusuf. You can win a paperback copy of Jihadi: A Love Story – just leave a comment below saying why you’d like to read it by 9pm on 29th January 2016. The winner will be picked by random number generator and announced here.

You can connect with Yusuf on Twitter.

Bright Stars

A big welcome back to Sophie Duffy today who has kindly returned to the blog to chat about her latest novel, Bright Stars, which came out late last year. It’s a great read about four friends who meet at university and looks at how the things we do when we’re young reverberate throughout our lives.

Sophie, you returned to your university town of Lancaster to tell the story of four students whose lives were changed forever when they were undergraduates there – is this a story that was inspired by something that happened when you were studying there?

Bright Stars is pure fiction but inspired by the landscape of wind-swept Bailrigg where Lancaster University is situated. I used Lancaster as the setting as I was both an undergrad and a postgrad there and it has played an important part in my life.

Your main character Cameron made me want to shake him so many times and tell him to stand up for himself! For me the central theme of the novel seemed to be based on this, and how some people let terrible things happen to them rather than upsetting people by saying no. Was this something you set out to explore when you started writing this novel?

I wanted to write a story about friendship and about the mistakes we make when we are young – mistakes that can have repercussions down the years. I wanted to ask if we can change the course of our life’s journey years after a wrong path taken in youth. Cameron is a plodder and it takes him a while to grow up and understand that he must take charge of his destiny.

His whole life has turned out to be something very different to what he’d envisaged and he dwells on it, lets it be the reason why he’s not achieved things. When you were discovering his character did you write an alternative narrative for him that shows what his life could have been if he hadn’t got involved with Bex, Tommo and Christie?

I actually wrote the first draft of Bright Stars in the third person from all four main characters’ viewpoints, but something wasn’t quite working. I realised it was Cameron’s story and so I retold it from his point of view in the first person. I wouldn’t have set out to write in the voice of a Scottish man but that is how it panned out and I have grown very fond of him.

Although the four friends all had the potential to be bright stars it wasn’t realised by three of them because of what happened – a story probably all too true about many people’s lives. Regret imbues the whole story but it is also filled with humour. Do you think this is reflective of most people’s lives?

Despite what Edith Piaf says, I think we all have regrets. But it is what we do about those regrets that counts. Do we live our lives in their shadow? Or do we strive to walk in the sunshine? We might not live the life we planned in our youth but it can still be a good and satisfying life. I didn’t become that ballerina – because I was too shy to perform – but I became a writer, which I love.

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Many thanks, Sophie. I find it fascinating to hear how other writers find their way into their stories. Telling it from the wrong point of view seems to be a common one!

You can follow Sophie on Twitter to keep up with her writing news.

You can get a free paperback copy of Bright Stars (UK readers only) by telling us what you dreamed of being when you were young and whether you are that now. Just leave a comment below by 9pm on Wednesday 27th January 2016. The winner will be picked by random number generator and announced here.

Just Keep Going

I’m thrilled to have Angela Marsons as a guest blogger today. Her story of success is truly inspirational and a must-read for all novelists whatever stage they are at with their writing and however many rejections they’ve had…

 

In January 2015 I was working 12 hour night shifts in a job that I hated. Fast forward to January 2016 and I have sold more than one million books, signed eleven foreign rights deals and in addition to my publishing contract with Bookouture for 8 books have signed with Bonnier Publishing for paperback rights on my first three Kim Stone novels.

I have to smile when I read of my ‘overnight’ success. It is a night that has lasted for twenty five years. In the publishing world I appear to have been born this year but I have been trying for a quarter of a century to share my work.

In that time I have started many books, finished some and abandoned others. I have worn a ridge on the shoulder of my postman from carrying the A4 brown envelopes of rejection. There were days I swear I could see the pity in his eyes as he dropped five or more such packages on my doormat in one go.

And the response from the publishers was always the same (if there was any response at all) which was ‘we like it but we just don’t love it’. It was a phrase that would haunt me for years. But I never stopped sending work out. Although the rejection was hard to bear, while there were submissions out in the world there was still hope. Once all of them were back I would dust myself down and send off a whole new batch.

In an act of defiance and after many years of trying to write the books I thought publishers would like, I decided to write a book just for me. I wrote Silent Scream about the character that had been in my head for years and set it in my local area of the Black Country. I expected to hit a brick wall at around 20,000 words but at least I would have known I’d tried.

It was at that point that the pencil took over and I simply couldn’t stop. I was getting up at five in the morning to write before I went to work and then straight back to it once I got home. Eventually in 2012 I secured a top London agent. I was delirious and thought my dreams were about to come true. Two years later we parted company, plunging me into the depths of despair. If this man couldn’t sell my work then no-one could. I’d had my chance and now it was over and I could barely look at a pencil never mind start a new book.

I had taken voluntary redundancy to give my writing a real opportunity and I had failed. I couldn’t find work and was rejected for a job as a warehouse operative at an Amazon fulfilment centre. My partner and I were selling our belongings to pay the mortgage. It was by far the darkest time of my life.

The next part is a bit like a fairytale.

From nowhere I received a call from an editor I’d worked with when I was with the London agency. She had also left the agency but had never forgotten about me or my character Kim Stone. Without my knowledge she had submitted Silent Scream to a small, young and dynamic digital imprint called Bookouture. I accepted this news very calmly as I was too scared to hope. I had just started a new job as a night supervisor in an alarm receiving centre and had to put all my energy into that.

A few days later I was contacted by Bookouture who said ‘they loved it’. I scoured the email for the inevitable words of ‘but not enough’. But they weren’t there. They simply loved it and wanted to sign me for four Kim Stone books. There were tears, lots of them and they weren’t small and dainty sniffles. They were big, fat, loud messy sobs.

To say that I could not believe it is a total understatement and even now some aspects of the last year have not yet found their way to my conscious mind. Silent Scream was published in February 2015 and within a few days of release hit the number one spot on Kindle and stayed there for a month. A week or so after that Bookouture asked me to sign with them for a further four books making eight in total and I couldn’t say yes quickly enough.

Subsequently Evil Games was published in May and Lost Girls was released in November and the first draft of book 4 has just been completed. Throughout last year I received interest from literary agents and publishers but I will be a Bookouture author for as long as they want me. Loyalty is very important to me and I will never forget that this small and driven team shared my passion for Kim Stone and her stories.

The lady responsible for sending in the manuscript is now my editor at Bookouture and we work closely together on every Kim Stone story. So, in a nutshell, that is my story and the advice I would offer to any aspiring author is this.

  1. Don’t write about what you know. Write about what you’d like to know. Every one of my books contains subject matter that interests me. Evil Games was written because I am intrigued by the sociopathic personality. The research for the book was fascinating and it is a long, lonely journey if the subject matter is not important to you.
  2. Never forget why you started writing in the first place. As a child I would pretend that my father had left us so that I could explore the way I felt about it. He’d only gone to the pub for an hour. I began to write because I wanted to explore the complexity of human relationships.
  3. Don’t show anyone your first draft. There may be a chapter or a passage or a sentence that you’re dying to share. You may just want an opinion on the story or characters. I would say, Don’t do it. For me, the first draft is my sandpit, it’s my playground. It is my opportunity to write what I want without the reader, editor, critic on my back. If it’s awful, it’s fine because there’s always the second draft and the third. But you don’t know the story yourself until you’ve reached the end of that first journey.
  4. Trust your own instinct. I have come to learn that my gut is the most reliable organ in my body. There is the head and the heart and I firmly believe that my gut is a good mixture of the two. Not all recommendations for change are right.

But, the single most important thing I can say to anyone is to just keep writing. And especially when things are tough and you feel there’s no hope, write some more. There is always hope and you simply never know what’s going to happen next.

***

Thanks so much, Angela. Really great to hear your story and know that things can turn around at any moment no matter how unlikely it seems that you’re going to get anywhere with your writing. So writers everywhere, take heed – keep on keeping on!

Tell us below how you keep motivated to just keep going and you could win a review of your short story (up to 2,500 words). The deadline for entering is 9pm on Sunday 24th January. The winner will be picked by random number generator and announced here on the 25th.

You can find out more about Angela on her website and connect with her on Twitter. All of the DI Stone novels to date can be found on Amazon.