Category Archives: Writer Interviews

RETREATING IS THE BEST STEP FORWARD BY CASS GRAFTON

Posted on by

One of the many things I’ve learned as a writer is the importance of location. This isn’t about the settings of novels so much, but rather places where it’s possible to escape from day-to-day life and become fully immersed in a story in the making.

Most authors, when at home, tend to write in whatever space they have created for the purpose, anything from a desk in the corner of a room to a dedicated office or (my personal dream) a writing hut in the garden. When the opportunity arises, though, the chance to go away—especially with other writers—is the perfect mix.

Although I’m lucky enough to ‘retreat’ with four of my writing friends each year, usually on an escape into the Shropshire Hills, I’ve also enjoyed a few Cornish writing experiences through The Writing Retreat, superbly run by Jane Moss and Kath Morgan, who not only offer their insight and experience through optional tutoring and one-to-ones they also provide plenty of personal time to write. I’m booked onto my third retreat with them next March and can’t wait—though I’ll have to diet before I go so that I can enjoy the delicious meals they dish up every day!

My most memorable stay with Jane and Kath so far took place a few years ago in a truly remarkable location: the Old Sawmills, a property situated on a secluded creek off the River Fowey in Cornwall.

I was deep into the writing of a book I hoped would be the first in a romance series, set in the fictitious town of Polkerran Point (also in Cornwall), which had several parallels with the town of Fowey and the village of Polruan, situated further down the river from the isolated creek that is home to Old Sawmills.

This fabulous property sits on a tidal inlet, only reachable by boat at high tide or by walking through the woods from Golant or uphill and down dale from Fowey (a much longer route).

The mill building has a fascinating history spanning centuries and was converted some years ago into accommodation, with a music studio built on the lower ground floor. Many musicians have stayed there over the years, and some iconic albums have been recorded in this distinctive location, including Oasis’s Definitely Maybe, and several by Muse, including Showbiz and Origin of Symmetry.

Stalled in my writing for months, once installed in my room at Old Sawmills, I quickly realised I’d found my happy place. My bedroom overlooked the top end of the creek, beautiful in any season, and sat in the window there or curled up on a squashy leather sofa in the light, bright sitting room, the words flowed.

Perhaps it’s not surprising. Not only had many musicians created their masterpieces there, but Kenneth Grahame is also believed to have been inspired to write Wind in the Willows after picnicking in a little creek off the River Fowey—allegedly this one—an experience that is reflected in the opening chapter and describes the setting perfectly.

For myself, not only did staying at Old Sawmills give me the space and opportunity to pour my heart into my book—now published as New Dreams at Polkerran Point—but the setting of the recording studio will be a key location in the third book in the series.

Currently for sale, who knows what the future holds for Old Sawmills? In my dreams, a reclusive writer will buy it and happily sit in the conservatory, nature all around, as they pen novel after novel, lost in a world of their own creation.

 

Visit https://www.thewritingretreat.co.uk/ for more information.

 

 

 

 

WHY GO ON A WRITING RETREAT BY JO THOMAS

Posted on by

To celebrate publication of  Countdown to Christmas, Jo Thomas shares the magic of writing retreats…

credit: Gemma Griffiths Photography

I love the chaos of busy family life. People coming and going. The dogs greeting everyone, tails wagging; the hustle and bustle in my kitchen. I thrive off it….most of the time. But sometimes I need everything a writer’s retreat gives me.

The first writing retreat I went on was a house in Scotland, Cliff Cottage, owned by a writer who enjoyed the company of other writers. It overlooked the sea and was a marvellous place to sit and work and leave daily life behind.

There is nothing like spending time with other writers to get the juices flowing, ideas bouncing, plots unblocked and for laughing together. Generally, writers get other writers.

I went on to go on writing courses in France with Anita Burgh, Veronica Henry and Jane Wenham Jones and eventually after years of trying and failing I got my first book, The Oyster Catcher written. After that, Chez Castillon become a place to go and get words on the page for me.

I love morning tea with writer friends…… drinking tea in your dressing gown and discussing a plot problem that’s holding you up or talk through an idea that’s come to you in the night.

Now that I run retreats in France, we generally meet on the morning of the first full day to introduce themselves, tell us why they’re there, what they’re writing and what they want to achieve in that week.

For many people making time to get away from everyday life has taken a lot of effort and juggling, not to mention organising travel and paying for that time away. I don’t want anyone to feel they haven’t achieved something by the time they’ve left. Even if it’s a plan for going forward.

Then I’ll make time to meet with everyone, one to one. It may be over a coffee in café in the town, by the pool in the shade of the covered terrace or over a gin and tonic in the bar across the road. Somewhere we can talk about the path forwards; talking ideas, finishing the book, finding an agent. Anything.  A week away is like a fullstop on busy everyday life and whilst you may not write a book in that week I do want everyone to go home feeling they know how to keep going.

And so we leave with plans, food memories from meals out at the bistro or the restaurant by the river or oyster tastings on a Sunday morning, with new clothes bought from the linen lady at the Monday morning market, shoved into our already tightly packed cases. We have laughed together, swapped stories, even cried in some cases as we support and encourage each other in our writing. We swap email addresses, make WhatsApp groups and new friends. And we promise to meet again, same time, same place….. new words to go on the page. It’s a place of support, encouragement, celebration and laughter. A little pause on everyday life to keep the wheels of our writing routine turning as we go back to everyday life and I return to busy kitchen, happy dogs and family life around the table.

 

Countdown to Christmas by Jo Thomas is published by Penguin (£8.99)

PUBLICATION DAY SPECIAL: UNDER A GILDED SKY BY IMOGEN MARTIN

Posted on by

Where do I start with this wonderful novel? With the sense of place and time, I guess, because it was so very brilliant. It’s set in rural Missouri in the 1870s and reminded me greatly of the childhood books I adored by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

The story opens when, much to her older sister Ginny’s horror, teenager Mary-Lou brings home an injured drifter. The sisters pretend their father is still alive, just sick upstairs, to keep themselves safe while Lex heals, but running the farm is a struggle in financial terms, although they cope on every practical level.

Then Lex leaves, and it isn’t giving too much away to say that a sweeping love story ensues. Beautifully done, but not overdone, embedded in both the social mores of the time and the freedoms of homestead life. The characterisation – and I mean all the characterisation, right done to the couple Ginny meets on a train – is wonderful, and I genuinely struggled to put this book down.

A strong contender for one of my books of the year and I just had to ask Imogen how she had placed her reader in the American Midwest in the 1870s, when she lives in twenty-first century Wales:

Credit: Faye Chamberlain

The story for Under a Gilded Sky had been in my mind for a long time. The first and most important thing was how my protagonists, Ginny and Lex, would get to know each other and fall in love. I hope their characters drive the story. Once I had written the first draft, I zoned in on the exact time and place. The novel is set in the Midwest and Boston, and begins in 1874, 9 years after the Civil War.  Although I have travelled in the States, I needed to do deep research. Luckily, the internet is a treasure trove of maps, photographs, academic papers, newspaper articles.

I’m a visual person and I needed to see my characters in their settings. Ginny’s homestead is the classic layout in the Midwest: what’s known as the I-House, with two rooms, a passage between, and the kitchen at the back. Not many remain, but Jessie James’ family home in Missouri survives because of his notoriety, so that was a great visual cue.

I wanted the size and price of Ginny’s farm to be accurate so I poured over the beautiful copperplate writing of page after page of the 1880 Agricultural Census for Missouri. I used William Strassburg’s farm in Pulaski County as a guide.

The episode in the Missouri Governor’s Mansion (my heroine has a rich cousin who is determined to find a rich suitor for her) uses the exact layout and décor of the real Mansion, using the rich details on their website.

The moments of research I most loved was when I found a nugget that would enhance the story. For example, I read on a history website about the devastating grasshopper plague of 1874 and 1875 which afflicted western Missouri and created financial strains. An academic from University of Missouri wrote a paper about the Missouri Banking Fraud of 1861, so I threaded this into Ginny’s aunt’s story.

I tried to capture train journeys of that time. Charles Dickens wrote letters about travelling on a train in Massachusetts and, although earlier than my setting, I used snippets such as his description of orange peel and nuts on the floor.  My best research moment was when, after hours of Googling, I discovered the exact timetable for Ginny’s journey from St Louis to Boston. She leaves at 7.20am, because that is the accurate time from 1875.

Looking back on my notes now, I see a huge level of detail. My hope is that this has made the story feel authentic, without the reader thinking they are walking through a museum.

 

 

TEN YEARS AN AUTHOR… JANE CABLE SHARES HER MOST IMPORTANT LESSONS

Posted on by

Jane Cable self published her first book in 2013, after it reached the final of a major national competition sponsored by Harper Collins. After a brief flirtation with an agent and another publisher, in 2018 she signed to Sapere Books, for whom she writes haunting romances. Two years later she achieved her dream of becoming an Harper Collins author, writing as Eva Glyn. So far four women’s fiction titles have been published by One More Chapter, three of them set in Croatia.

This week, lessons eight to ten:

Publishing deals are increasingly hard to find

One thing I really wish I had been able to tell my twenty-something self was to prioritise my writing then, because publishing would become an increasingly tough business. Sadly that still holds true today.

Think about it; when one of the mainstays of your business plan is the 99p ebook (of which the platform selling it will take a very large share), a huge number will need to be sold to make anything like a profit. And it seems to me a bit of a fallacy that the costs involved are lower; the only thing missing are printing and physical distribution, and those can be done very cheaply in bulk, especially when you consider the differential in price.

So publishers have to be incredibly careful about what they acquire. Celebrity authors are bankers who bank roll the rest of us, but very little else is certain. Even authors with contracts can find themselves in choppy waters if the first book of a deal does not sell well. It’s brutal, but it’s a business. And sadly, with a cost of living crisis gripping the country and beyond, I can’t see it getting better any time soon. Sorry.

 

You will spend more time marketing your books than you ever imagined

When new authors blithely ask what they need to do to make sure their book sells I do have a wry little smile to myself. If there was a magic bullet and I knew what is was, I would be top of the Amazon rankings.

The one thing I can say with a degree of certainly is that you need to choose your marketing channels and stick with them consistently. I can tell when some authors have a book out in the near future because suddenly they pop up on social media, after an absence of months or even years. In that time all but your closest contacts are going to forget you.

Of course marketing takes time. I spend at least an hour on it each day, mainly on social media, but also looking at other promotional opportunities such as advertising, preparing new graphics, polishing up my website and Amazon pages, writing guest blogs… The list is pretty endless, but it’s only by trial and error you will discover what works for you.

 

A good edit is the best learning experience you can have

The first book I wrote for One More Chapter was The Olive Grove, and when the structural edit came back it wasn’t so much a case of ‘could do better’ as ‘must do better’. I was devastated, but the notes I was given were so detailed they provided a roadmap for how to improve the book, so it could become the best seller that it has.

I learnt so much from that experience. How to fill the pages with wonderful settings and deep, credible emotions. How to take a reader inside the story and keep them there, turning every page. It was the most valuable learning experience of my entire writing life, and I have pumped what I learnt into everything I’ve written since. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m perfect and every time I receive an edit back from One More Chapter I am trembling not only with fear, but with anticipation.

Each and every one has made me a better writer. And that’s very exciting indeed.

 

Lessons one to seven have been published on the previous two Wednesdays.

 

TEN YEARS AN AUTHOR… JANE CABLE SHARES HER MOST IMPORTANT LESSONS

Posted on by

Jane Cable self published her first book in 2013, after it reached the final of a major national competition sponsored by Harper Collins. After a brief flirtation with an agent and another publisher, in 2018 she signed to Sapere Books, for whom she writes haunting romances. Two years later she achieved her dream of becoming an Harper Collins author, writing as Eva Glyn. So far four women’s fiction titles have been published by One More Chapter, three of them set in Croatia.

This week, lessons five to seven:

Writers who have successfully self published tend to be more savvy

I started out by self publishing my first novel, The Cheesemaker’s House, because at that time in particular, publishers were afraid of ghosts. In romance books anyway. I knew nothing about the process, so put in into the capable hands of assisted publisher Matador, but even so it was a very steep learning curve.

I needed to understand retail distribution, I didn’t know book bloggers existed, and barely anything at all about Amazon categories, let alone going wide or narrow. The whole process of publishing and marketing baffled me, but I had to learn pretty quick. Also to moderate my expectations about the sales the book might achieve, although the ebook at least vastly exceeded them.

All of these were important lessons to take with me when I found a publisher. Everything from assessing the contract to understanding the control I would be giving up, and the promotion I would still need to do. If I hadn’t indie published first I would have been clueless.

 

Writer friends you really trust are invaluable

Ten years ago I had only one writer friend, introduced to me by a neighbour, and that was Claire Dyer. Through getting to know her I learnt the value of having someone to talk to about all aspects of our craft and of the crazy world of publishing we operate in, and we are friends to this day.

Writers talk about ‘finding their tribe’, and I found mine first in Chindi, a group of independently publishing authors in Chichester, where I was living at the time. Three of us moved on to find deals more or less together and we have remained close, but I learnt so much from almost every member of that group I will be forever in their debt.

As my career has changed, I have made many new writer friends, but there is a solid core of those I trust implicitly; people I can turn to when times are tough, and celebrate the successes too. Without them, being an author would be a very lonely business.
When you’re in the publishing wilderness, keep writing if you can

Overnight success in publishing is rare and most authors have periods they either feel they are never going to make it, or that they have been in the wilderness so long there is no possible way of crawling back.

It is so important to keep writing. One famous author described her work as her life raft when her publisher dumped her, and I totally understand that. Writing is as much a vocation as it is a profession, and without it many of us would feel even more lost. It can be a life, and mental health saver, but if you take a break then that is fine too. Your brain and body will tell you what you need to do if you listen to them.

Of course you also need to keep writing to have something to submit. Or even a drawer full of somethings, so that when that deal arrives you can offer more than one book, because you’re going to need it. It proves you have the work ethic, commitment and ideas it takes to succeed now it’s your turn to shine.

Lessons one to four were published last Wednesday, and lessons eight to ten will be published next week.

 

TEN YEARS AN AUTHOR… JANE CABLE SHARES HER MOST IMPORTANT LESSONS

Posted on by

Jane Cable self published her first book in 2013, after it reached the final of a major national competition sponsored by Harper Collins. After a brief flirtation with an agent and another publisher, in 2018 she signed to Sapere Books, for whom she writes haunting romances. Two years later she achieved her dream of becoming an Harper Collins author, writing as Eva Glyn. So far four women’s fiction titles have been published by One More Chapter, three of them set in Croatia.

Today, lessons one to four:

Making connections through social media is fun

I know social media isn’t for everyone, but I do feel sad when authors say they hate it. I love interacting with other writers, bloggers and readers, chatting about books in general and hunting around for interesting content to post on my feed. On Twitter especially there are people from around the world who share my posts most days, and I of course reciprocate. I even feel I know them quite well.In my business life I used to do a fair bit of face to face networking, which being a shy person I did not always enjoy, but it taught me to treat my virtual networks in the same way; that to make it enjoyable (and successful) you need to put in more than you hope to get out. Although some days it seems like a uphill struggle to think of something to say, if I keep this in mind I still enjoy the interaction.

Twitter is LinkedIn for writers

So often people dismiss Twitter as ‘just talking to other writers’. Firstly, I don’t see the problem with that. Writers are readers too, and big recommenders of books other than their own. They have blogs and mailing lists you can swap with, and what’s even better is that their natural audience is the same as yours.But more than that, there are a large number of book reviewers and publishing professionals using Twitter every day. Pitches are announced, book deals, new publishers even. By connecting with these people they at least know your name. And you never know when that could be important.

You never stop honing your craft

And you never should. Every single book you write is a learning experience. If I had the time I would love to go back and rewrite my first novel, The Cheesemaker’s House – my skills as an author have improved so much. But perhaps I’m being too fussy, because readers still absolutely love it.Like most authors I take great pride in everything I produce. And I want that pride to be justified. After all, I am asking readers to invest not only their money, but their valuable leisure time, and in return they deserve my best.

 

Publishers acquire books because they think they will sell

There is no other agenda here. It doesn’t matter how beautifully you write, or how lovely a person you are; publishing is a business and money talks. Of course your contacts and reputation as a writer will put you a notch further up the slush pile, but without a book that will work in the market of the moment (which of course changes all the time), you will still be rejected. It’s nothing personal.It is the way of the world, and understanding this will help to protect your mental health. I’m lucky that I have a reasonably thick skin, but of course rejections still hurt. I have just learnt not to dwell on them. It only takes one book to land on one desk at the right time. Keep believing.

Lessons five to seven will be published next Wednesday.

 

 

 

WRITING CAREER CROSSROADS BY SUE MOORCROFT: PART 4

Posted on by

The happy-ever-after ending

This is the fourth and final instalment in my journey from the crossroads in my career to becoming a best-selling, award-winning author. After securing Juliet Pickering of Blake Friedmann Literary Agency as my agent and Avon HarperCollins offering me a two-book contract, The Christmas Promise went into production while I finished writing Just for the Holidays.

Credit: Silvia Rosado Photography

The Christmas Promise came out. Joy of joys, my original goal was met when supermarkets took the paperback, although Tesco was a little late to the party and only took it for the last couple of weeks before Christmas after they’d seen the performance of the ebook.

The ebook was going crazy.

For five days in the run-up to Christmas 2016, it was at number one on Kindle UK.

It’s hard to describe the joy and euphoria, mixed with disbelief. I laughed and cried. Twitter went mad with big-hearted compliments from other authors, from my agent and editor jumping in with their own cries of joy. My book had outsold every other ebook on sale in the UK. I don’t know about pinching myself – I felt as if I had to punch myself in the face to make sure it wasn’t a dream.

I won’t take you through every rung on my ladder, nor pretend that it has been an uninterrupted upward trajectory, but the milestones continued. Just for the Holidays was nominated for a Romantic Novel Award. A new contract was offered – three books, this time – and my editor Helen Huthwaite stated that her next goal was to make me a Sunday Times bestseller. I laughed out loud and said, ‘Well, good luck with that!’ The very next book, The Little Village Christmas, was a Sunday Times bestseller. The rights team at Blake Friedmann sold my books into translation and The Christmas Promise became a paperback bestseller in Germany. My books charted in the Top Fifty and even the Top Twenty. Avon extended the scope of my contract to include Canada and the US. A Summer to Remember won the Goldsboro Books Contemporary Romantic Novel Award and One Summer in Italy scored me my first Top 100 position in the Amazon Kindle US chart. My books have also appeared in the Kindle top 100 in Canada, Italy and Germany. Research trips have taken me to France, Italy, Malta, Sweden and Switzerland. My very first published book, Uphill all the Way, originally published in 2005, was rewritten by me, then rejacketed and relaunched by Avon as A Home in the Sun. It did well in the UK and was #1 in Malta (where much of the book is set) for most of summer 2022. That gave me particular satisfaction, as I lived in Malta as a child and part of my heart will always be there.

I won’t kid you – publishing two books a year takes hard work, not just from me but from everyone at Blake Friedmann and Avon. But it’s wonderful. Even the editing and the promo is wonderful.

I set out to earn my living from writing novels and I that is what I do. An Italian Island Summer is my fifteenth book with Avon and The Christmas Love Letters will come out later this year. A further three books are contracted.

Takeaways:

  • work hard and work with the right people
  • aim high
  • never give up

PUBLICATION DAY SPECIAL: THE GILDED CAGE BY LUISA A JONES

Posted on by

The Gilded Cage emphatically introduces Luisa A Jones as a fresh and modern voice in historical fiction. It’s hard-hitting, pulling no punches in the way it deals with the domestic violence that is at the heart of this Edwardian story, and the author doesn’t hold back when it comes to the love scenes either.

When Rosamund’s circumstances force her into marriage with Sir Lucien Fitznorton she is too young and innocent to even imagine the horrors that await, sharing her life with this controlling man. At the beginning of the story she is broken, with no allies, but that slowly begins to change when she uses Sir Lucien’s absence to learn to drive. Society and the servants consider her a little mad, but to her it represents a freedom she could never have imagined and she begins to recover at least a little confidence.

Although the story is a little slow to start, later it rattles along, its depiction of life in an Edwardian country house meticulously drawn, and by the end I was quite breathless to know what would happen.

What lingers most in the memory about this book are the brutally realistic depictions of the violence Rosamund has to suffer, particularly contrasted with the tenderness in some of the scenes which follow as she discovers her sexuality for the first time. I asked Luisa why she had chosen to write the book this way.

I was aware when approaching publishers for this book that certain aspects would be too strong for some readers, but I felt it was essential to tell Rosamund’s story honestly, and not to shrink away from depicting the harrowing impact of abuse. It was important to me to have her ultimately finding her own agency, and for her to experience tenderness and pleasure, despite her earlier dreadful experiences.

Rosamund’s story was inspired by several people I know well who have been raped and/or otherwise abused. I was, and always will be, incensed by the idea of anyone deliberately subjecting another person to sexual, mental or physical harm. A disturbingly high proportion of women report that they have experienced at least one incident of sexual assault in their lifetime. Rape within marriage was only made illegal in Britain under the Sexual Offences Act of 2003, and until at least the 1990s the law held that by marrying, a wife was effectively consenting to sex whenever her husband wanted it. Marital rape is still legal in many countries.

Alarmingly, a survey in 2018 by YouGov revealed that a third of British people believed non-consensual sex wasn’t rape if it didn’t involve violence, even though anyone with any understanding of psychology will tell you that freezing and flopping are common responses to threat, along with the perhaps more well-known responses of fight or flight. The same survey showed that a quarter of Britons believed non-consensual sex within marriage isn’t rape. I can’t read those statistics and not feel deeply angry.

I am aware that many will find aspects of Rosamund’s experience uncomfortable to read. If I upset any reader, I feel for them. Those scenes are included in the hope that her story will challenge people to rethink, and highlight that nobody should be used as another person’s sexual plaything. Everyone should have the right to decide who touches their body, whatever they wore when they went out for the evening, no matter whether they’ve flirted with the other person, and whether or not they once agreed to marry them.

Most of all, I hope I have honoured the real-life survivors I know and love, and that readers will not perceive Rosamund solely as a victim. I hope they will rejoice with her when she experiences kindness and feel uplifted at the end of the novel. For me, she is a victor.