Category Archives: Writing

How I Got Published By Alec Marsh

Posted on by

Alec Marsh, writer, authorWhen I was 21 I started to write a novel. It wasn’t very good. I was working as a reporter for a local paper in Cornwall and my book… was about a reporter working for a local paper in Cornwall. 

Soon I moved to London to work for the Daily Telegraph and started writing a second novel. It was about a young journalist working for a newspaper in London. 

It wasn’t very good either. 

I met a top agent at a function and asked him if he’d see it. 

‘What’s it about?’ he asked.

After several seconds of flannelling he cut in: ‘If you can’t tell me in under 11 seconds then I’m not interested.’ 

I’d been introduced to the idea of the elevator pitch. If you can’t encapsulate your idea in a nutshell, you’ve had it.

I kept writing and the rejection slips (paper in those days) kept piling up.

Then one day a friend suggested I try my hand at historical fiction. ‘You’re obsessed about the past,’ he said. And it was true.

About a year later I read The Da Vinci Code, and was hooked. 

And I thought, “I can do that.”

So I started thinking about a historical mystery that could sit at the heart of a story, and some characters that would have sticking power.

That was around 2004. Before I knew it, I had started writing what would become my first novel, Rule Britannia. And I knew I was onto something, I could feel it in my fingertips. My characters – a historian and mountaineer Ernest Drabble and his pal, a journalist named Harris – were alive. And so was the story.

With a half-written book, I started polishing and went looking for an agent. Again the rejection slips piled up (still paper).

Then one day in 2008 an email landed at about 6pm on Saturday evening from an agent. Do you have any more, he asked?

I didn’t sleep that night. Soon I’d emailed the next three chapters, then we had a meeting. After that, I had an agent and went off to finish the book – armed with the self-confidence to finish it properly, to believe in myself and the benefits of his insights.

The agent then took it to market. But it was 2009 and e-readers, Amazon and the global financial crisis was hitting hard, and – for whatever reason – my book didn’t sell. After a dozen very polite rejections from major publishers, my agent suggested I try writing a different book. Which I did. 

For five years I wrote a book set in the First World War, but Drabble and Harris were still in the back of my mind, calling to me from the binary prison of a hard drive. 

By 2015 the First World War book was finished – but so was my relationship with my agent who finally spelled it out to me when he told me this was not a book that he could sell to his clients. We were finished.

Exhausted and disappointed, I stopped knocking on doors that wouldn’t open and focused instead on my day job. Every now and then someone would ask about Drabble and Harris; I would change the subject.

Then my son Herbie was born in 2016, and his arrival rekindled my ambition. So in the small hours, I dug out Rule Britannia and reread it, shook my head at parts that hadn’t aged well, and I polished it. And I pitched it again.

After a string of rejections (emails now), I went direct to publishers, finding an independent in Cardiff, named Accent Press. 

When the owner telephoned me and told me she’d take it – and she’d want two more books after – I was standing in a corridor at work. I didn’t punch the air, but a tear might have come to my eye. It had taken 20 years and I had endured numerous disappointments but it had finally happened. Drabble and Harris would get to their readers, and I was going to have a novel out. So what’s my advice for would-be authors. Don’t give up. And as Martin Amis once told me when I asked him for advice at book-signing: keep writing. After all, what else are you going to do?

Alec Marsh is author of the Drabble & Harris novels, published by Headline Accent. The latest book, ‘Ghosts of the West’ is published in original paperback and ebook on 9 September

 

EVA GLYN ON THE INSPIRATION BEHIND THE OLIVE GROVE

Posted on by

Sometimes an idea for a book creeps into your heart and stays there. That was how The Olive Grove started for me, with a story told by our tour guide when we were on holiday in Croatia.

We were on a small-boat cruise that began in Dubrovnik and after visiting the main islands off the Dalmatian coast and some interesting places on the mainland, ended up in Trogir. And when we were on board travelling there were talks we could listen to and to make our experience complete we wanted to lap up every one.

The war in Yugoslavia was perhaps not a particularly enticing topic when the alternative was to sit on deck, watching the glistening sea ripple alongside the boat while soaking up some sun, but I remembered hearing about the war on the news at the time and was keen to know more. And then, somewhere between the dates, whys and wherefores, our guide Darko began to tell an incredible story. His own.

I suppose I had assumed Darko was Croatian, but he is in fact Bosnian and grew up in Mostar, one of the towns that was to be worst hit by the fighting. His father was a soldier in the Yugoslav army, but when everything fractured and splintered he followed his ethnicity and joined the Croatian side, having to leave his Serbian wife (and Serbia was now the enemy) at home with their sons.

I will never forget the silence in the room at the horror of what we were told. No electricity, no water, bombs raining down, queuing for food at the community organisation – life as we would all recognise it wiped out over the course of a few days in a war that would last for years. Darko’s life moved underground to the shelters, because they were the only safe place. And he was one of the lucky ones, because living in the army housing meant the shelters were purpose-built, deep and strong.

There were moments to awful to contemplate. Darko’s mother actually disappeared, as many people did during ethnic cleansing, but he was one of the few lucky ones because she actually came back. But there were moments of light too; finding a food parcel dropped by the UN and hoping it was one with chocolate inside.

These incidents and more form the kernel of The Olive Grove, but viewed through the prism of time by my proud Croatian character Damir. Orphaned during the war he was brought up by his aunt on the beautiful island of Korcula (which we visited during our trip); brought up to forget everything about his life before he came to the island. But when she dies, the past creeps back to find him.

While Darko wears his wartime past with relative ease (which is often the case when everyone around the child is having the same experiences, when the awfulness becomes a sort of normal), fictional Damir no longer can. And help comes from a surprising quarter. A middle aged English woman called Antonia who feels she has messed up her life so badly she takes a job on the island to take stock and to heal.

And that’s what The Olive Grove is really about. It’s about healing and friendship. Like Darko’s childhood memories there is sunshine and shade. And unlike them there is the most incredibly beautiful setting.

With Darko’s help over countless Zoom meetings during lockdown I have been able to create authentic Croatian characters and culture, so as well as the initial inspiration, there are many other reasons why The Olive Grove could not have been written without him. And what’s even better, we have become friends across the miles too.

How I Got Published Jenny O’Brien

Posted on by

There are many roads to publication. But as a forty-year-old with three kids of three and under, including twins and a busy job as a nurse, none of them were for me – or so I thought. Then a character popped into my mind. An earworm that wouldn’t go away. A little boy called Dai Monday. It took me a year to find the courage to pick up a pen. With no time to write at home and a busy day job, I took to carrying a notebook around in my scrub top. This notebook got filled during my 15 minute coffee breaks. Within 6 weeks I had a very poor, first draft of my first book.

Jenny O'Brien , author, writer, how I got published ,

Fast forward five years. I was still writing but with no thought of publishing until peer pressure and a bullying incident at school led me to self-publish Boy Brainy. Six more years quickly followed in tandem with a box full of rejection letters. I’m not sure how many rejections—too many to count but not so many as to blunt my determination to succeed.

It took twelve years to find a home for my writing. Twelve years when my writing improved, but also the quality of my query letters. Never underestimate the importance of a well-crafted query letter!

But, in the end, the years didn’t count for much. It was a few quirks of fate that pushed me over the finishing line. A change in genre from children’s books to romance and finally crime fiction. BookBub accepting me for a book promotion the first time I applied. One last push to secure a publisher and, finally, engineering the date of the BookBub promotion to coincide with my query letter arriving at HQ Digital, an imprint of Harper Collins.

I said at the start that there are many roads to publication. While I wouldn’t recommend mine to anyone, there are lessons to be learnt. If you are struggling to find the time to write, change how you view time. Chunk it into 15-minute sessions instead of hours. Those few minutes add up. It might mean writing in transit but that’s easily catered for with a notebook or even a mobile phone. To rephrase a well-known saying. There is always a way, but first you must find the will. My BookBub deal was a fluke, but what followed wasn’t. There’s nothing wrong with nudging luck along with a little gentle manoeuvring.

Good luck!

Jenny O’Brien is an Irish writer of the Detective Gaby Darin series published by HQ Digital.

My Writing Process Ray Star

Posted on by

Ray Star, author, writer, how I write, my writing processWhat you have written, past and present

I wrote my first story when I was ten, scribbled untidily onto folded green paper, unevenly stapled together with crayon illustrations on every other page. My teacher had tasked our class with writing a story to include three things: a waiting room, a light switch and a wish. I opted to write a tale of a young girl who found herself in a magic waiting room that gave those worthy a wish, if fate called upon them to use the light switch. I received my first A+ and have wanted to be an author ever since.

After my school years, I dabbled in freelance journalism, covering ‘real life’ stories for tabloids and the women’s weekly’s in my twenties but found this mind numbingly painful. To the point, it put me off writing for a while. I ended up starting my own PR firm and then, life got in the way, as it so often does, and my dream of one day becoming a successful author was lost to the 9 to 5 routine and all that falls in between.

It wasn’t until quite recently in 2018 that the idea for a story found me, and it wouldn’t let me be. It would find me just before I fell asleep at night, an array of nameless faces that needed their stories to be read, heard and understood. The title came to me when I was at lunch with my mother one afternoon, and a year later, my first draft copy of Earthlings – The Beginning was ready.

  • What you are promoting now

My debut novel Earthlings – The Beginning, is book one of a YA Fantasy trilogy with a message to the narrative, and launches on August 12th, this year.

Earthlings is the story of a young girl named Peridot, raised with the realities of her world hidden from her by an overbearing mother. One day, a young boy Euan unexpectedly comes into her life only for him to leave as quickly as he came, from that moment onwards, her world is never the same. Peridot leaves the clutches of her mother’s home in the hopes of finding her friend, only to discover all she believed to be true, to be something else entirely. 

We follow her journey into a world filled with magick (yes magick with a ‘K’), wonders and horrors that Peridot couldn’t have fathomed in her wildest dreams – or nightmares. For every step she manages to get closer to her friend, something new and unknown gets in her way. There are many twists and turns in the Earthlings tale but ultimately Peridot’s story is one of finding friendship against all odds and trying to do the right thing – no matter the consequence.

www.raystarbooks.com

  • A bit about your process of writing

I’m going to be completely honest with you – I have no process! I wrote most of Earthlings when I was pregnant with my first born, which was utter bliss. Just me and my bump and a fresh pot of tea, writing away by an open window with the breeze fluttering past to keep us company.

The remainder of Earthlings was written with a new-born, which never in my wildest dreams could I have fathomed would be as hard as it was, but I did it, and then, just to make things that little bit harder for myself, another bump came along. Bump number one is now aged two, and his brother, is eight months.

Writing time now, is done in the rare moments of quiet, which admittedly, are far and few, but when they find me, the story flows and I find ‘the zone’ as I call it, quite easily. Writing is the one thing in this world, other than my boys and a good strong cuppa coupled with dark chocolate digestives, that brings me peace.

  • Do you plan or just write?

Planning to write when you have children, is like planning to have an early night when you have children. It does not happen. It works in my favour to not make plans, and then by not making plans, enables the possibility of that plan taking place… if you follow!

  • What about word count?

For a story to be the best it can be, I have to allow it to flow naturally. If I force myself to write a set number of words, they become in danger of becoming precisely that – just words. I used to set the target of writing 200 words a day but by doing that, I did the opposite. Word counts seem to be counterproductive for my style of writing and I prefer to enjoy the story as I write it, whether its 50 words or 500. The story will write itself if you give it time.

  • How do you do your structure?

Alike the above, I had no set structure for Earthlings, I sat down and wrote the story as it came to me when I was in the moment. Although, Earthlings is book one of a trilogy and with book two, there are specific moments that needed to happen, so I made a point of having a list of key events that I ticked off as they were complete. 

Editing wise; I tend to write a chapter or two, read through and do a light edit, then keep writing. This way, when I come to edit properly when my first draft is complete, most of the leg work is done and the editing process isn’t as daunting.  

  • What do you find hard about writing?

The environmental cost of books plays on my mind a lot. Whilst I’m over the moon to finally be an author, it bothers me that my work comes at the cost of trees. Beautiful beings that have lived on this planet longer than I have are sacrificed for the literature we know and love. This bothers me more than I can put into words. 

My publisher, Chronos Publishing, thankfully, is very supportive of my concerns and has ensured that Earthlings, where possible, is to be printed on recycled paper. However, we were unable to get this secured with one distributor (Amazon) so I have recently launched the #ReadGreen campaign to hopefully encourage Amazon to offer sustainable printing options to the publishing industry.

You can support the Read Green campaign with a simple signature via www.change.org/read_green/ 

I have also pledged to plant 1 tree per book sale via Ecologi to combat any Amazon sales of my book, the Earthlings forest is available to view via my website.

  • What do you love about writing?

Everything. Writing to me, is as wonderous as magick. It is the ability to make your wildest dreams a reality. The ability to breathe life into beings, places and creatures that we dismiss as unbelievable. Pure escapism. If you’re a good enough writer. Anything is believable. If it harm none, so mote it be.

Love and light

Ray Star

@RayStarBooks

www.raystarbooks.com

Earthlings by Ray Star is out now by Chronos Publishing, £8.99

How I got published Dougie Brimson

Posted on by
Back in 1995, I had an idea for a book about the culture of football and after working on it for a while with my younger brother, started to think about how we could get it published.
Dougie BrimsonNever having written anything before, and not knowing any other authors, I walked into W.H Smiths, picked up a football book and wrote to the publisher who happened to be Hodder-Headline.

After a week or so, they wrote back and asked for a sample of our work and so we sent them 3000 words and waited. They came back and asked for some more and so we sent them another 3000.

This went on a few times and in the end, I said to them ‘either you want this or you don’t. If you don’t, then let us know and we’ll try someone else.’
Dougie Brimson
Within a few days, they’d made us an offer to publish which included a nice advance. It was only about a year later that we realised that it didn’t work like that for everyone.

The book was called Everywhere We Go. It was published in early 1996 and was a massive success. So much so that it kick started a career which has resulted in a further 16 books, sales of over 1,500,000 worldwide and being lead writer on three award winning feature films with more on the way.
Ironically, despite all that success, I’ve never been able to find an agent to take me on so have ended up doing it all myself.
www.dougiebrimson.com

WELSH WRITING WEDNESDAYS: JANE CABLE ON HER FATHER POET, MERCER SIMPSON

Posted on by

As I have written in Frost before, my formative years were spent in and around the vibrant Anglo-Welsh poetry scene. Writers such as Tony Curtis, Dannie Abse and Gillian Clarke were taking over the mantle from the Dylan Thomas generation and my father Mercer Simpson was in the thick of it.

First as an expert on the genre – he wrote the section on it in The Bloomsbury Guide to Literature – and a reviewer. Then as poet himself. Except he wasn’t Welsh by birth – he was English, although in the end he lived in Cardiff for the last 55 years of his life. His first – and last – collections were through Rockingham Press in East Anglia, but I think the one of which he was always most proud was Rain From a Clear Blue Sky which was published by Gomer with the help of Welsh Arts Council funding.

Having a poet as a father gives a unique insight into their lives. This is not to say all poetry is autobiographical – it’s certainly not – but my father was very clear that some of his were and there is a section in Rain From a Clear Blue Sky that deals with childhood memories. All this was easy to accept as my father’s past, but when the present reared its head, it could be harder. Or simply incredibly beautiful, like these lines about a rose bush that stood in my parents’ garden.

Fruhlingsgold
shakes her
curling-papered head,
the wind’s
premature blow-drier
scattering news
of dispersed beauty,
the white petals
leaving the golden heart
on each stem…

But there were certainly times when the insights seemed far too close to home and I still find parts of his last two collections difficult. Not just because I helped him to correct the proofs of the last one when he was in a nursing home, dying. It wasn’t a bad time – apart from the obvious – we became even closer over those galleys – and we were able to discuss what was going to happen surprisingly easily.

Six months before the Welsh Academy had put on an eightieth birthday reception for him in the Norwegian Church in Cardiff Bay. For him it was the pinnacle of his acceptance as an Anglo-Welsh poet and I will never forget how much it meant to him. I was more than proud to be at his side as we listened to Tony Curtis, Ruth Bidgood and others read from their own work and celebrate my father’s. And he read himself – of course he did – he had been a lecturer, had even taught public speaking, so he was a consummate performer.

There was a humour in his work, even in the most serious of subjects, particularly in Honest to God, a poem he read that night and I read at his funeral. And pathos too. As the child of a poet, there are times you get to look inside your parent’s soul.

Dear God
I hope I’ve got your correct address:
with so much mail going astray these days I wouldn’t want this letter
to get lost in the post.

I hope you don’t mind me leaving the writing of it rather late
but I felt I had to thank you for letting me stay in your house for so long.
I know I haven’t been the easiest of guests,
stealing your son’s bread and helping myself to his wine…

…Now that my time is nearly over
I insist on having the last word which must be gratitude:
gratitude for the miracle of your world that I, who might have died at birth,
was spared to live in…

…So please forgive me if I seem impertinent
in asking if I may come back and visit you again some time?

 

 

 

Anna Kent My Writing Process

Posted on by

Anna Kent, author, writer, What you have written, past and present?

I was a journalist before I became an author, so I’ve written an awful lot of articles for publications in the UK and the UAE, and I was also a columnist for The Telegraph for six years and for Stylist Arabia for a year.

In terms of fiction, I have four psychological suspense novels out under my own name, Annabel Kantaria. They are Coming Home, The Disappearance, The One That Got Away and I Know You.

My fifth novel, called The House of Whispers under the pen name of Anna Kent, is due to be published on August 5.

I’m currently writing my sixth novel. It’s yet to get a title but I’m really excited about the premise!

What you are promoting now?

I’m promoting The House of Whispers by Anna Kent.

Tell us a bit about your process of writing?

I try to treat writing as I would an office job, so I have a strict routine: I put in about three or four solid hours in the morning, then I try to go to the gym or do an exercise class before lunch, then I fit in another hour or so of writing before it’s time to pick up my son from school. 

If I can, I’ll work again in the afternoon but it’s not always possible. I never work at night and I try not to work at the weekend, too.

In terms of the writing process, every book begins with the seed of an idea: sometimes it’s the ending, sometimes the twist, or, in the case of the book I’m currently working on, it was the inciting incident – the event that kicks off the whole story. I try and flesh this out, sketching out how the character will change throughout the story, and working out a plot that will carry that internal change and also allow room for a few duplicitous scenes, red herrings and twists.

I try to use a system where I write scenes on index cards and move them about but, generally, once I’ve got a foggy idea of the story in my head, I just want to start writing. It’s a mistake to start too soon, though, as I invariably then get stuck about 20,000 words in because I haven’t planned enough.

There’s always a point, about halfway or three quarters of the way into a manuscript that I lose faith and start to doubt myself. Writing is a solitary process and it can be a challenge to keep up both the momentum and the self-belief. You just have to push on through and trust the process. Having a good support network of friends and family really helps.

How do you do structure your books?

They’re all different. Most of them have multiple viewpoints because I love seeing events through different people’s eyes. 

In The House of Whispers, interviews with one of the characters are interlaced throughout the narrative, only you don’t know who is interviewing the person, nor why – you just know that something major has happened. The Disappearance started half-way through then tracked back, and it also had two timelines set about 50 years apart. I Know You was told with the benefit of hindsight, which allowed me to do a lot of foreshadowing to keep up the suspense, and The One That Got Away had alternate chapters from the points of view of a husband and wife. 

I do love a clever structure, but they can be very tricky to pull off.

What do you find hard about writing?

The hardest thing for me is trying to come up with that million-dollar best-selling idea: the high-concept story that becomes the most talked-about book of the year!

I also hate it when I get stuck in my plot. It happens at some point in every book, and I’m antsy and stressed until I get through that block and start writing properly again.

Other than that, just trying to be creative, day in, day out, with little or no feedback on how I’m doing, and no colleagues to bounce ideas off. Keeping faith in myself that I can do it. Not knowing if my book is any good or not until I submit it to my agent when it’s finished. That’s tough. 

What do you love about writing?

I love the creative freedom at the start of a new book, when the world really is your oyster. It’s like playing God. You have the power to create a whole world, and to populate it with whomever you like, and to make whatever you want happen to those people. There’s nothing like starting a fresh story. Even better if you know it’s a really fabulous idea! 

Days when the words flow and the story just comes flying out through my fingers are also fabulous. There’s no feeling like it.

 

THE DIARY OF A BOOK, JULY 2021

Posted on by

At the end of June Jane Cable was poised to start writing The Lost Heir. Did it happen? Not a bit of it…

There were several reasons for my lack of progress, most of which I can share. We had a week or so’s holiday planned early in the month, and publication of The Missing Pieces of Us, my first title writing as Eva Glyn, was scheduled for the 21st. What I wasn’t anticipating were the scale of the structural edits for The Olive Grove, Eva’s second book.

Let me explain a little about this process. As an author you submit a final draft manuscript to the publisher, and your editor reviews it with the objective of making it better. My editor at Sapere Books does most of the work for me, so basically my input is to read, negotiate, and perhaps add a few extra tweaks. Eva is signed to a bigger publishing house (0ne More Chapter is a division of Harper Collins) and the system is entirely different.

So I received an editorial letter telling me in some detail what they would like me to do to improve the book. At this point people often ask questions along the lines of ‘don’t you mind?’. Of course I don’t mind – it is absolutely fantastic to have detailed feedback that will make the book a real joy for readers and a story that will stay with them long after they have finished it.

You lose perspective on your own book – or at least I do. Just before the submission deadline it seems common amongst authors to loath your manuscript, but even once you are over that you still need to accept that you probably can’t see the wood for the trees.

The problem was that I needed to juggle the edits not only with a full on holiday – a historical tour of Hadrian’s Wall – but also with our nephew coming to stay. This meant everything else had to be swept to one side, but my husband was magnificent, taking over all the domestic duties (he does most of them anyway as I am so useless!). And I suspect he enjoyed some ‘boy time’ with our nephew too.

So in the main I have spent a large chunk of July editing The Olive Grove and I absolutely know I have a better book, which I can’t wait for you to be able to read in September. And the last few days I’ve been running around like a headless chicken on social media, what with the launch of The Missing Pieces of Us, and The Forgotten Maid being on Netgalley ready for publication next month.

But I also had a holiday. We had intended to do a long distance walk but instead found ourselves drawn to a historical tour led by a university professor, where we would learn so much about the Romans who built and defended Hadrian’s Wall. It was a fascinating week when we went from one end of the wall to the other – and beyond it to outposts in the north. We visited all the famous sites; Vindolanda, Housesteads, and were shown around Birdoswald by Tony Wilmot, the archaeologist responsible for digging most of the fort over the years. It wasn’t only fabulous, but a break I needed to return refreshed and hit the ground running.

And as for The Lost Heir? This month I’m going to wise up and make no promises in that respect at all!