Category Archives: Writer Interviews

WRITING CAREER CROSSROADS BY SUE MOORCROFT: PART 3

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Working with my new agent

In my last two pieces, I explained how I’d set myself the goal of getting a publisher who could get my books into supermarkets, which had led to me finding a new agent. Telling my old publishers that I was now agented effectively changed our relationship because they didn’t work with agents. They would continue to publish my backlist but, inevitably, after the book we were working on, they’d concentrate on their front list authors.

Credit: Silvia Rosado Photography

I wrote the first few chapters of what became The Christmas Promise. I roughed out a few other things I thought would happen – more of a vision than an outline. Juliet offered to represent me! I was over the proverbial moon. I could not sign that Agreement letter fast enough. All the years of writing and running workshops and then, shazam! I was the client of a big agency.

All I had to do was:

  • write the rest of the book
  • whilst continuing to write short stories and serials, and run workshops for income to add to my royalties from my novels

An important note here: relaunching my novel-writing career eventuated in a distinct dip in income for two years. To have a spouse with a steady income and supportive attitude helped a lot. I also got the opportunity to convert my writing guide, Love Writing, into an online course. Though it felt as if I was spinning my wheels, I took it because every penny was welcome.

The novel was written. I sent it to Juliet. The editing process began – and it was rigorous. I think I did three structural edits, influenced not just by Juliet’s suggestions but by comments from other people in the agency who read the book too. For anyone who thinks of being edited as someone interfering or instructing, I should point out that a process like this is something likely to happen to any book in any publishing house. I think of editing as other people helping me write the best book I can. I listen. I negotiate. I talk through ideas.

Takeaways from the edit:

  • this deep-dive process is not for wimps
  • it feels like a lot of structural work yet, in the end, the changes are nuanced
  • the book is a lot better
  • I probably didn’t know as much as I’d thought
  • my agent is on my side (This has become so important to me)

I began the next book, which became Just for the Holidays, sparked by a friend saying to me, ‘Let me tell you about my summer holiday from hell,’ and me replying, ‘Yes, please!’

Juliet sent the first book out to editors. We got a lot of interest, only one flat ‘no’ and some meetings to attend. As an aside, just to let you know how character-building the process was, some major interest led nowhere because the editor in question was going on maternity leave and guess who was coming from another publishing house to cover? The one person who’d given the flat ‘no’. But I wouldn’t want an editor who wasn’t wowed by my writing, so I took that on the chin.

The exciting day of meetings dawned, and I turned up in London to meet Juliet who was, of course, coming with me. The first was with Avon Books UK, HarperCollins. Just as it had at that first meeting with Juliet, everything clicked. The Avon team and I got on well, we shared similar visions. They gave me chocolate cake. By a stroke of good fortune, a slot for an author writing a winter book followed by a summer book had arisen on their list, just as my agent rocked up with a winter book and a summer book! The winter book was ready and the summer book not, so that played into there being a longer dip in income than might otherwise have been the case but still, once outside I said, ‘I think it’s going to be Avon.’ Juliet got down to terms with them for a two-book contract.

WRITING CAREER CROSSROADS BY SUE MOORCROFT: PART 2

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Setting my goal

In my last article, I explained my self-coaching session that saw me dropping work that was problematic and/or didn’t earn me much money. With more time for my writing yet not losing much financially, my mental health improved! It was time to look at the other side of the coin. I now knew what I didn’t want – so what was it that I did want?

Credit: Silvia Rosado Photography

It was a question I found easy to answer as it hadn’t changed since the early nineties when I began to try and get published.

I wanted to earn my living from writing novels.

Not from writing novels and short stories, serials, courses, columns and writing how-to and judging competitions, appraising manuscripts and leading workshops. Just writing novels. Wouldn’t that be bliss?

How could I achieve this Utopia? I had a good, independent publisher, but their size limited their reach. I needed a publisher who would get my books into supermarkets.

Step one was to get a great agent, one who would love my books and be ambitious for me. I’d had an agent in the past, but we’d never completely gelled, and we’d eventually parted amicably, so for my last six books I’d dealt directly with my publisher.

Aiming high, I emailed Carole Blake of Blake Friedmann. I knew her slightly from writing conferences and social media – yes, friendly relationships can be forged on Twitter. The email began, ‘Dear Carole, I know you’re not taking anybody on but I’m going to ask you anyway.’ The short version of what happened next was that I was right – she wasn’t taking anybody on. But, happily for me, she showed my work to the wonderful Juliet Pickering at the same agency and Juliet wanted to talk to me as she was looking for authors writing commercial fiction. Would I like to talk to her?

Would I ever!

I met Juliet in London for lunch, and we got on wonderfully. I was transparent about what I wanted. She was equally transparent that that whilst was an agent’s job to help me achieve my ambitions, she couldn’t offer guarantees. She asked about ideas for future books, and I pitched three. She told me which of these she’d feel most confident in presenting to publishers and I had that happy feeling you get when something clicks into place, as it was the one I most wanted to write. It was an idea that had already received a green light from my old publisher, but they’d wanted a novella. I thought the idea had enough meat for a novel.

But I was deflated when Juliet didn’t offer to represent me. She asked me to write the book first. This is the book that eventually became The Christmas Promise.

The snag with that was by the time I’d spent a year on the book, my old publisher would be expecting it. It would be . . . awkward. I asked if I could send Juliet the traditional three chapters and outline instead. Would she make a decision on that basis? She agreed. She told me later she’d already made up her mind to offer to represent me but wanted to go through the process in the right way.

Takeaways from the meeting:

  • honesty and transparency on both sides is hugely productive
  • accepting the commercial realities of publishing is a must
  • listening to what’s on offer doesn’t prevent the putting forward of alternatives
  • take disappointment on the chin because, let’s face it, a writer’s life is full of it.

WRITING CAREER CROSSROADS BY SUE MOORCROFT: PART 1

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Recognising the crossroads

In my book Summer on a Sunny Island, Rosa and Zach stand at crossroads in their lives. In one scene on a sunny roof terrace, they attempt to coach each other over a beer. Is change necessary? If so, what does that look like and how can they effect it?

Credit: Silvia Rosado Photography

A few years ago, I felt at a crossroads. I wasn’t on a Maltese roof terrace overlooking the blue Mediterranean with a handy friend, so I coached myself. It had a profound effect on my writing career.

I’d published nine novels and a raft of short stories, serials, courses and columns; I was a creative writing tutor and writing-competition judge. I had what’s politely referred to as ‘a portfolio career’. Translation: I would take on most paid tasks if they related to writing and some that were unpaid if they might prove useful to my career or meant I was ‘giving back’.

I’d suffered a bereavement and felt unhappy, over-stressed and underpaid. I couldn’t change the bereavement (no matter how much I yearned to), so I assessed everything writing-connected under three headings, subdivided into good or bad.

Things that make me happy Things that make me unhappy Things that are good for me Things that are bad for me Things that earn me money Things that don’t earn me money

 

Two things were instant candidates for all three bold columns:

  • being a committee member and vice chair of an authors’ organisation
  • writing a column for a Formula 1 website

I was shocked to see volunteering for the authors’ organisation in all the wrong columns. But I had to accept that an organisation that has brought me a lot of joy and helped me professionally, was also sucking up hundreds of hours each year and causing anxiety. I emailed the chair, who’s one of my best friends, and said, ‘I don’t think I can be vice chair anymore.’ To her huge credit, she supported my decision and had me replaced without one word of reproach, though she could have felt immensely let down. After that, it was comparatively easy to email the Formula 1 website and gracefully retire from their list of writers. I think my son encapsulated this situation perfectly when he said, ‘You’d taken two of your greatest pleasures and made them into jobs.’

I felt tonnes lighter. I could read what I chose instead of books that needed appraising for awards. I could watch Formula 1 races without making notes or worrying about the angle the column I had to write.

Spurred by this success, I began to cut other things that appeared in negative columns. They earned me some money but not much:

  • appraising manuscripts
  • tutoring creative writing students
  • judging writing competitions – especially after a writing group ‘forgot’ to pay me a fee that was only ever nominal, even after three polite reminders

What made me unhappy about tutoring was not the students, who were fulfilling to work with, but the constant flow of work that piled up if I were ill or on holiday. The workflow was not within my control and kept me from my own stuff.

Sloughing off these two items gave me significant time for my own writing without losing me much money. A win-win.

Takeaways from the self-coaching:

  • recognise when self-coaching is necessary
  • recognise the results, even when shocking
  • act on them

WRITERS ON THE ROAD: KAREN KING

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Places I’ve been to or lived in often inspire my writing, as do people I meet, conversations I overhear, incidents that happen. They’re all fuel for an author’s imagination, as my family and friends know and say to me ‘you can put that in a book’ when we go to a particularly interesting place or something unusual happens – and I frequently do!

I often set my books in places that I’ve lived in or visited – many of my romances are set in Cornwall – where I lived for many years – or Spain – where I currently live.  Whereas my psychological thrillers are usually set in a city such as Birmingham where I was born and grew up or Worcester where I lived for several years before moving to Spain. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have to do any research though, as I like to revisit a place to check on some facts,  especially at a different time of day or a different month. A busy city, for example, will have a different feel to it during the daytime when it will be bustling with people going to work or shopping to the evening when it can sometimes feel dark and threating, whilst a holiday destination such as Cornwall can be teeming with life in the summer and almost deserted during the winter months. Unless you’ve actually experienced the difference between the crowded streets of a popular Cornish town in the summer months when sometimes you can barely put one foot in front of the other because of the throngs of people and cling tight to your child’s hands in case they wander off and you can’t find them, and the empty streets and closed shops of the winter, it can be difficult to write authentically about.

My latest romance, The Spanish Wedding Disaster, is partly set in Gibraltar, which I’ve visited several times, but I still made another visit to double check a few details for the book and went on both the dolphin spotting trip and the visit to the caves that feature in the book. I also stayed in a floating hotel as Steve and Kate do.

For my book, The Year of Starting Over, which again is set in Spain, I actually did the Camino del Rey walk which I mention in the book even though I’m terrified of heights.

Writing psychological thrillers and romance novels is like writing both sides of the same coin, in fact my tagline is ‘writing about the light and dark of relationships’ so I thought for my next thriller, which is out in October, I would do the dark side of The Year of Starting Over, which is partly set in a holiday retreat in Andalucia, Spain. It’s been interesting to turn the idea for my summer Spanish romance on its head and write it as a thriller. It meant looking at things from a different angle – in my romance novel the electricity going off sets of a romantic situation, in my thriller the consequences are more sinister. I can’t give much away at the moment as the book isn’t published yet but for a teaser let me tell you that my tagline is ‘Relaxation, Reconnection and … Revenge.’  And once again, it’s set in a location I know well.

 

If you want to find out more about me and my work, please visit my website at https://karenkingauthor.com/

 

 

 

 

WRITERS ON THE ROAD: CAROLINE JAMES

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Meet Venus. My writing retreat on wheels.

“Come and write in me!” Venus whispered when I reluctantly went to view her. I’d never had any desire to be a caravaner. It suggested too much Hi-de-Hi! But from the day I met Venus last summer, it was love at first sight.

She’s a big twin-axle unit and, combined with the car, as long as an articulated lorry. Spacious with bedroom, bathroom, kitchen-diner and lounge.

Our first few forays into caravanning were in the UK as we took in the delights of Wales and Northumberland, with only minor mishaps with awnings and wrong turnings. I could write in the peace of the countryside or overlooking a beach. Venus has few demands. There’s minimum cleaning and washing and no gardening – no distractions to stop me from writing.

Now we felt prepared for an overseas adventure. Unlike a motorhome, travelling with a large caravan needs plenty of planning. Would we get stuck in the Eurotunnel? Would our ‘BipandGo’ get us through tolls in each country automatically? Would the pitches be big enough for Venus? The list of checks was long. But most significantly, would all the travelling distract from my writing?

Leaving in mid-December to head south through France, the adventure began, and I was too distracted to write as the days progressed. We enjoyed many stop-offs along the way, including Christmas shopping in Lyon and being frozen to the bone in Beziers during the coldest temperatures for years. But once over the border to Spain, the weather warmed up, and we eventually settled for several weeks on the coast, south of Alicante. Now Venus became our Spanish home, and she adapted beautifully. The awning was up, the canopy open, and wine poured. With a novel to finish and perfect, the peace and tranquillity of my writing environment was a writer’s dream, and the words flowed. Distractions from our European neighbours were pleasant. Bonjour! Guten Morgen! They called out and encouraged me to write.

Travelling around Spain sparked many plot ideas. I know that I will have future characters enjoying the mud baths at Lo Pagan on the Costa Blanca and visiting the eclectic rastro market in Calpe or taking in the rich history of Alicante. With so many festivals to enjoy too, I made prolific notes as I planned the outline of a novel.

Heading home, we took a different route. Driving across Spain via Madrid, I saw how beautiful and rich the country is as we encountered miles of orange groves and vineyards. Every town and village seemed to have a castle built precariously high on a hill, or a medieval church tucked around a corner. Approaching the Pyrenees, bathed in glorious sunshine, the view was magnificent, and I didn’t give the drive a second thought.

But now, I know how to write about fear.

Suddenly, the temperature dropped to sub-zero, and driving snow became a blinding blizzard as darkness fell. Venus is a heavy vehicle, and as we drove along the top of mountains with nowhere to shelter and a hundred miles to go, I thought I was going to die. Look out for a scene in a future novel when the terrified characters disappear into a wintery Spanish night – the story will write itself!

Our next trip will avoid the mountains in winter.

Happy travels everyone!

With love,

Caroline

 

Out now – THE CRUISE

 

PUBLICATION DAY SPECIAL: THE SECRET SHORE BY LIZ FENWICK

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I’ll say up front that for me, this is Liz Fenwick’s best book yet. It is just so very rich in everything; the sense of the era, the superbly described settings, the characters that refuse to leave your side.

The Secret Shore is also Liz’s first fully historical novel and her research is impeccable. Not only that, it is used so sparingly in both tiny period details and sweeping events, it whisks you back the Second World War in an entirely credible and unsentimental fashion that never gets in the way of the story.

The entire narrative is carried by the main character, Merry, an Oxford geography lecturer recruited to help the war effort. Merry is an expert in maps and they stretch into every corner of her world; her vital work, her hobbies, and even her personal life. If there is something she cannot map she is deeply uncomfortable. Liz uses the metaphor well and it never seems overdone.

War, however, throws up the unforeseen; the unmappable, the unfathomable, the tragic, the moments of laughter and intense joy. But it is also a time of transit, impermanence, the last time of all that career-minded Merry would want to listen to her heart.

Set mainly around Liz’s beloved Helford River, this book is a treat not to be missed.

When Liz told me in passing she had read forty books in the name of research, I had to ask more about how she set about that gargantuan task:

If I had known beforehand that it would require me to read forty books and multiple academic papers in order to write The Secret Shore, would I have done it? Yes. This story was one I had to write because I love the Helford River so much. The story of the secret flotillas in WW2 is part of the history of the river and I have wanted to write about them for ages. But I struggled to find a way until the character of Meredith Tremayne, a cartographer, came to me.

The starting point for my research was the book The Secret Flotillas by Brooks Richards. In the course of writing The Secret Shore, I reread his book three times just to keep straight the different operations running the routes from Devon and Cornwall to Brittany. After learning of the teams’ immense bravery, I made the decision to use the names of the real people in my novel and this led to more books to research… from general history, to biography, to memoirs, and finally to obscure titles to find the small details. Some I had also read previously while researching for The Returning Tide, such as the personal memoir of the woman who managed the Ferryboat Inn during the war.

In all this fascinating background work the key thing for me was to digest the information and then to step away. It’s far too easy to want to squeeze in all the riveting facts, but that would have dragged the story down. By the end of my research, I may have done the equivalent of a Geography A level, but more akin to the study of geography as taught in the 1930s.

For The Secret Shore I stuck to my tried and tested method of doing my research in chunks. To begin with, only enough to write the first draft, then as the story develops I commence the deep dive for the right information. I can if I’m not careful become easily led astray down the many rabbit holes of research. Through the ensuing drafts I keep seeing the need for further information and will keep reading more to add subtle layers, without overloading it, hopefully bringing the story alive for my readers.

Now the big question is where to put all the books?

 

 

 

ANGELA PETCH ON THE WEIGHT OF RESPONSIBILITY OF RESEARCH

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I felt a weight of responsibility to get my research right for The Girl who Escaped. A main male protagonist is based on my Italian grandfather-in-law and I wanted to respect Luigi’s courage, as well as accurately represent the plight of Jews in Italy.

The first book I consulted was: It happened in Italy, written by an Italo-American lady. Elizabeth Bettina wrote of an internment camp for Jews near her grandparents’ village of Campagna. They’d been treated with kindness and respect. This was a revelation. I had only come across stories of gruesome concentration camps. Did camps like Campagna exist in Tuscany?

I found a camp called Villa Oliveto where archives for internment camps were stored. Brilliant! The hunt was on! I found accounts and photos of this place in the 1940s.

We travelled to the picturesque location set in olive groves near Civitella in Val di Chiana, but the villa, a former orphanage, was closed and archives no longer stored there.

All was not lost, however. I wandered around the building, taking photographs and notes. Then, I came across a puzzling, fading plaque, which told me the villa had once housed British Jews. Extremely puzzled, I asked a local woman who was walking past. But she had no idea. I speak fluent Italian and this helps when researching.

I enjoy a research puzzle and when I discovered the explanation later, it inspired a new character. Bear with me…

A young woman called Shira is a Cyreneican Jew from eastern Libya. (A former Italian colony). After Italy joined the Germans in 1940, many Libyan Jews were sent to concentration camps where they were treated abominably.  Jews lost trust in the Italian government, and began to support the British. The British had first conquered Cyrenaica in December 1940 and abolished Mussolini’s racial laws. Many Jewish men joined the British army and were granted British citizenship. Here was the link I needed.

On April 3rd 1941, Italian and German forces pushed British forces from Benghazi. Jews were arrested by the Italians, especially those who had allied themselves with the enemy, and were sent to the notorious Giado camp. Some Libyan Jews, however, were sent back to Italian camps. I’ve never found the exact reason, but have allowed myself artistic license through detective work. In a brilliant Italian book covering the persecution of Jews in Italy I found possible explanations of why Shira and other Libyan Jews might have landed in Italy, instead of elsewhere.

The Italian government knew about extermination of Jews already by the second half of 1942 – when they’d heard of massacres of Jews in Russia, from word sent home by Italian officers operating on the Eastern front. And foreign Jews who had arrived in Italy, including Hersz Kawa from Siedlce, Poland, had also talked of atrocious treatment too. He and two others had managed to escape in an empty wagon of a train bound for Italy. They spoke to Italian guards who made sure they were sent to an Italian camp, rather than German.  Similar events happened in Vichy France, when French Jews escaped to Italy because they felt they would be better treated.

I’m hoping that the same thing might have happened to those British Libyan Jews mentioned on the plaque. Saved by Italian soldiers acting with conscience.

 

The Girl Who Escaped:  https://geni.us/B0BYC1V9NHcover

 

 

 

 

WRITERS ON THE ROAD: ALISON MORTON

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A small child, curls bobbing on a head she’s forgotten to cover with the sunhat her mother insists on, crouched down on a Roman mosaic floor in north-east Spain. Mesmerised by the purity of the pattern, and the tiny marble squares, she almost didn’t hear her father calling her to the next one.

Jumping up, she eagerly ran to him, babbling questions like many eleven-year-olds do: who were the people who lived here, what were they called, what did they do, where did they come from, where have they gone?

The father, a numismatist and senior ‘Roman nut’, told her about the Greek town founded 575 BC which became Roman Emporiæ in 218 BC, where traders sailed in and out with their cargoes of olive oil, wine, textiles, glass and metals; where people lived in higgledy-piggledy houses, traded from little shops; where the Roman army based its operations; where money was minted. And the people came from every corner of the Roman Empire to live and work. Boys went to schools and girls learnt to be good wives and mothers.

The little girl listened carefully to every word, sifting the information. Her hand in his, she turned as they left, looked back at the mosaics and asked her father:.

“What would it be like if Roman women were in charge, instead of the men?”
Clever man, my father replied:
“What do you think it would be like?”

I thought about it for nearly five decades, then poured it all into my first book.

Since that first Roman road trip in Spain, I’ve clambered over bridges, explored former bathhouses, barracks and forts and wondered at theatres and amphitheatres in different parts of France, Germany, Britain, Italy, even former Yugoslavia. And I’ve walked on Roman roads connecting these sites and settlements across Europe.

The via Domitia running along the coast from Spain to Italy provided a fast and sure link between the key province of Hispania and the imperial centre in Rome. Built in 118 BC, it’s still with us, wheel ruts included, over 2,000 years later. At Ambrussum in southern France, it formed a junction with the route northwards up the Rhone Valley into central Gaul. I stood on those slabs, where those three roads met, closed my eyes and ‘saw’ thousands of people, carts, mules, legionaries and the odd imperial courier, many of them shouting at me to get out of their way. The Romans were busy people, much like us today.

When writing my latest story set in AD 370 – itself a Roman ‘road trip’– I discovered how common it was for current routes to bear the names given to them two thousand years ago. The strada stalale 3 entering Rome from the north is still called the Via Flaminia; from the northwest, the Via Cassia (strada regionale 2) enters Rome heading for the Milvian Bridge as it did in Augustus’s day.  And you can still walk (or in some parts) even ride in your car along the via Appia.

The persistence of these road names seems romantic, but the Romans were hard-headed military engineers. For them, it was a question of reaching B from A in the fastest, most efficient and logical way. Small wonder than very many countries in Europe built their road networks following the same routes.

Travel on the ground is exciting, eye-opening and educational, but seeing and touching the roads, floors and walls and looking at their glassware, pottery, household equipment and thus imagining the people who walked, lived, and worked in those places takes us on a very different journey – the one into time.

 

If you’d like to learn more about my alternative Roman novels, Roman life and a journey through time, please come and visit me at alison-morton.com.