Category Archives: Writing

RNA 60: ALISON MAY SIGNS OFF ON BEHALF OF THE ROMANTIC NOVELISTS’ ASSOCIATION

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Writing this piece for Frost turns out to be one of my very last duties as RNA Chair, as I’m standing down in January and handing over the reins. Being the Chair of the RNA is brilliant and overwhelming and challenging and wonderful and infuriating in roughly equal measures, and this year it’s been… well, it’s been 2020.

A year ago Bella Osborne and I shared some of our plans for the year with Frost readers. 2020 was the RNA’s Diamond Anniversary year and we had big ideas for a huge celebration event in June, alongside bigger and better versions of our regular conference, York Tea and Winter Party. As it turned out, of course, our awards ceremony at the beginning of March was our last physical event for the year, and probably our last event for a little while yet.

As Chair of the RNA the overriding feeling is that you’ve been handed custodianship of something very special, so the first priority is not to mess it up. There’s a rough calendar for the year that you expect to follow, and might then add to with special events for something like a big anniversary. When that calendar is suddenly completely empty and you know that the association has members across the country, and around the world, still keen to interact and develop as authors and network with industry professionals, the challenge of not breaking the organisation you’re charged with looking after can suddenly seem very large indeed.

But no good story reaches its resolution without some challenges and obstacles to overcome, and, in life as in writing, constraints bring forth creativity. So we might not have met up and celebrated 60 years of the RNA in the way that we hoped, but we did still hold our conference – albeit virtually -which opened up opportunities to members who might not normally be able to travel. In addition to our local chapter groups, many of whom have met up via Zoom during lockdown, we now have genre-based networking groups online to allow members to exchange ideas and get to know one another. And alongside our Rainbow Chapter, celebrating LGBTQIA+ romantic fiction and authors, we now have our DISCO Chapter, championing fiction from disabled and chronically ill authors, and representing disabled and chronically ill characters.

We presented our Joan Hessayon Award live in a webinar event, which means that our brilliant winner, Melissa Oliver’s, fantastic reaction is saved for posterity. We announced our Industry Award winners in a video presentation. We brought new opportunities for professional development to our members with the launch of our online RNA Learning programme. And we’ve continued to share ideas and articles on our blog and via our magazine, Romance Matters. Finally, in November we asked the wise people of Twitter to vote for their favourite romantic novel of the last 60 years. Take a bow Bridget Jones.

And our members have continued to write. Against the backdrop of 2020 it would be understandable to question whether telling beautiful stories really matters, but it does.

Romantic fiction is an escape. It’s an escape from a real world that can be overwhelming and unremitting. Romantic fiction is a place of safety. It offers the chance to cry your heart out within a bubble of an imaginary world. It offers catharsis and a space to explore fears and hopes. And, most importantly, romantic fiction is a promise. It’s a promise that obstacles can be overcome, that dark clouds will clear, and that better times will come.

Coronavirus will pass. The need for stories, and storytellers, never will.

 

Alison May is a novelist and short story writer and current Chair of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. Alison also writes as Juliet Bell (www.julietbell.co.uk and @JulietBellBooks).

 

 

 

SISTER SCRIBES: A LAST WORD FROM KITTY WILSON

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As this is my last Sister Scribes post I thought I would use it to update you on where I am now in terms of my writing career and what I have learnt along the way.

When the Sister Scribes started writing for Frost I had just published my second book in The Cornish Village School series and signed a contract for three more. Truthfully, it still hadn’t sunk in that I was a published writer.

Now two years on, all five books in the series are published digitally, available on audible and the final book, Happy Ever After, will be joining the others in paperback next month. I have loved writing this series although am still a little stunned that what began as a simple experiment in my living room – writing what I knew – has taken on a life of its own and spans five books.

I have spent this year writing a new romantic comedy, centred around the city of Bristol where I now live. Currently I am tweaking it and don’t know what changes will be made once my editor has read it but I do know that I was worried that the strength of community I had created in Penmenna would be hard to recreate in a city. I am so pleased to have been wrong. Community is alive and well in the area in which I live, and I hope I have managed to do it justice.

This book is for a different publisher with a brand-new editor and I am so excited, though I can’t tell you who just yet. The Cornish Village School had three different editors and I have learnt that each one has different ways of working, different priorities and will therefore teach you something new. Each one helps you to refine your writing and being published is the start of learning to write professionally. I think so many aspiring authors see publication as the end goal, I certainly did, but it really is a beginning rather than a finish. I feel that my writing has improved with each story and I hope it continues to do so.

There are many things I wish I had known or been more secure in with my first book. But I am forever telling my children that we aren’t born knowing how to do things, that it takes time and patience and practice and the same is absolutely true of writing. I enjoy studying the craft and think it’s important to maintain. I am currently working my way through John Truby’s The Anatomy of a Story and whilst dense it’s remarkably helpful. For those starting out I highly recommend Emma Darwin’s This Itch of Writing blog and Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat Writes a Novel. Every other profession has Continuing Professional Development at its core and I think writing should be no different.

The other thing to learn is that writing is a business. You have not been published because people want to be your friend or are being kind, you have been (or will be) published because a publisher can see potential profit. Thus, rejections aren’t personal they are professional and the same applies for contracts. Make sure you recognise your own value and don’t put your success down to others just being nice. I’m giggling as I type this because I do it all the time. Maybe I’ll get better at that one in 2021.

 

Merry Christmas everybody, thanks so much for supporting all of us at Sister Scribes, we’re wishing you all a very happy 2021.

Kitty x

 

 

 

 

 

 

SISTER SCRIBES: OVER AND OUT FROM KIRSTEN HESKETH

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My last ever Sister Scribes post – and what a blast it has been!

And, my, what a lot has happened in the two years since the five of us named ourselves the Sister Scribes and banded together as friends and fellow writers. We’ve written before about how we went to stay at a wonderful house – Darcy’s Abode! – in Bath and spent a few fabulous days writing, sightseeing, eating and getting to know each other better. Back then, getting published was just a twinkle in my eye –  a twinkle that I feared might be extinguished at any moment – and how in awe I was of my fellow Scribes with their launches and their multiple deals. Would it ever happen for me too?

Fast forward two short years – and so much has changed. My debut, Another Us, was published by Canelo this year. It came out in in ebook in May and I had the loveliest of Zoom launches, complete with dying my hair red to match the cover and to raise money for Mind. And then, in August, it came out in paperback. I originally had a digital only deal with Canelo and the fact they had enough faith in me and my book to then invest in a paperback in this most difficult of years really was the icing on the cake. Thank you so much, Canelo, you really have been fabulous to work with. As has my wonderful agent, Felicity Trew.

And, basically, it’s been brilliant ever since. Another Us (very briefly) had bestseller flags in the UK, Canada and Australia, which was totally beyond my wildest dreams. It’s been featured in Woman and Home, Women’s Weekly, Woman (there’s a theme here!) More, Pick Me Up, Waitrose magazine … the list goes on. It was longlisted for The Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize and was a contender for the RNA’s Joan Hessayon award. But best of all have been the dozens of messages I’ve received from readers all around the world telling me how much Another Us has touched, informed, amused or plain old entertained them. I think that has been the very best bit of all. That and getting to know a whole host of other debuts – including my lovely Sister Scribes – because no one understands quite what it’s like to have your debut come out in a global pandemic than someone who is going through exactly the same thing ….

And now it’s time to look forward. I have been lucky enough to secure a two-book deal with Hodder and Stoughton for a series set in London in WW1. The Post Office Girls follows the experiences of three girls who join the Army Post Office – in a huge, wooden, building which was been hastily thrown up in Regent’s Park to cope with the sheer volume of mail being sent to the various fronts. My grandfather – who himself served in WW1 – worked for the post office in London his whole life – and the first book is dedicated to him. It will be published in May next year and the second book – A Post Office Christmas – follows the November afterwards. I wrote the first 50,000 words of that during Nano (success – hurrah!) and am now feeling deliciously Christmassy – if absolutely exhausted!

So, all that remains to be said is a huge Merry Christmas to each and every one of you. Thank you for following our adventures over the past couple of years and best wishes for a safe and happy 2021.

Over and out x

 

           

 

 

 

HOW AUTHOR LOUISE MUMFORD TURNED FORTY AND CHANGED HER LIFE

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Guest article by Louise Mumford to celebrate publication of her debut thriller

You haven’t turned forty until you’ve turned forty at the start of a lockdown during the outbreak of a worldwide pandemic. It certainly added a level of drama: I started a new decade and the world stilled.

Forty is a milestone birthday, whether you get to party with a massive group of friends in your favourite pub or not. For me, it was doubly important because I’d made a promise to myself a few years before: by forty my life would be different.

It was a promise I kept.

I have never been able to sleep well. Insomnia has been my constant companion since I was a child. When I was young, I didn’t really see the point of sleep. Why would people do that and miss out on all the marvellous things that could happen whilst they were dozing? I couldn’t understand it. Fast forward a few years and I would be the one at house parties who would still be awake at 4 a.m. tidying up the kitchen and flicking through the books in an unfamiliar bookcase to keep myself entertained whilst everyone else slept. Now I’m much older I watch the way my husband drifts off to sleep within minutes of putting his head on the pillow and, to me, it is a magic trick I will never learn.

I’ve always thought that this never really affected my day-to-day life. I thought I coped. I was wrong.

In the opening chapter of my new book, ‘Sleepless’, the main character, Thea, has a car accident after yet another poor night’s sleep. They say write what you know. Well, I know that car accident very well. It is mine. I had got through my first day back in the new term as a teacher, a job I’d been doing for around ten years or so, and in the car I’d been congratulating myself about how well I’d coped, despite the lack of sleep. I was smug.

That was when I realised the car in front of me on the dual carriageway slip road had stopped. I crashed into it and another car crashed into me. Miraculously, nobody was badly injured. My own car was a crumpled thing and smoke wreathed around the twisted metal like a bad Eighties pop video. I remember sitting in the ambulance listening to the radio announce major tailbacks because of me and knowing that I had to change my life. I gave myself the deadline of turning forty to accomplish it.

I have always wanted to be a published author. So, I took a deep breath and left my teaching job, a job that was slowly eating away at me due to the early morning starts. My body clock eventually found a rhythm that had probably always been its own, but which modern working life didn’t allow for: a much later bedtime and a later morning. I’m a night owl at heart and, though the early bird apparently catches the worm, I’ve got myself something else, much better. I concentrated on writing and that book will be out on December 11th this year: ‘Sleepless’. I didn’t have to look far for inspiration.

Life begins at forty, so the greeting cards say, and my whole new life has just begun.

 

Louise’s debut thriller ‘Sleepless’ will be published on 11th of December as ebook and audio. Ebook is currently 99p on Amazon, Kobo and Apple. Paperback to follow in February.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MULTI-TALENTED WOMEN’S FICTION AUTHOR CAROLINE JAMES ON MENTORING

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I first started writing eight years ago and one of the biggest things that hit me was how lonely a business I’d chosen. Sitting on your own, hour after hour, day after day, was the most isolating thing I had ever done. I had a very busy time in my ‘other working life’ with lots of travel and constant client meetings. Motivating myself to work alone wasn’t easy, combined with internal fears that anything I wrote wouldn’t be good enough and no one would want to read it. It took me a year to write my first novel and as many authors know, the task of submitting with high hopes and expectation soon becomes humiliation. The manuscript was rejected by agents and publishers time after time.

In those days self-publishing was very new to me and I had to learn fast. It became the life-line that ultimately connected me to the publishing world. But I still found it a lonely experience in cyber space. How I longed to be part of publishing a team with meetings, mentoring and lunches and all the fun that other authors seemed to be experiencing once they’d signed that golden contract and committed to a book deal.

Sitting on your bum feeling sorry for yourself achieves nothing, as my mother always told me, so I decided to do something about it. My debut novel had done surprisingly well and reached #3 in women’s fiction on Amazon. This gave me confidence to contact other authors in my area via social media. We set up a group and met every month and the kindness and help I found there was like being wrapped in a warm writing blanket. My life changed and I moved away but I consider two of those authors as very close friends and we still meet to help each other.

The years have moved on and several novels later I am now both traditionally and self-published and during this time I have mentored other authors, who like me in the beginning, hadn’t a clue where to start. Little did I know the huge importance of for example, editing or of having a social media profile and the zillion things that a savvy author in 2020 needs to get a grip of.

It began with a couple of authors, through Facebook, asking for advice. The hand-holding process began and it felt good to be able to give something back and watch the blossoming process develop as they realised their writing dream and ultimately produced their very own novel. Now, I have put together a group of other like-minded writing professionals who want to give something back and through a small business community we mentor, motivate and give of our time to help authors who are in the very same position that I naively found myself in when I first started writing. It does surprise me that with all the information freely available on the internet that this is something that is in demand. But I know how it feels to be on your own, wondering if you are good enough to write and if you can trust your instincts. Having a comforting virtual hand on your shoulder saying, ‘Yes, you can and this is how you can do it,’ is a very empowering process and I am hugely humbled to be in a position where I can offer help to anyone who asks and has the determination to achieve their writing dream.

 

Find out more about Caroline at https://www.carolinejamesauthor.co.uk/

 

 

SISTER SCRIBES’ GUEST: MORTON S GRAY ON WRITING AS A MUM AND A CARER

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Today I’m joined by author friend Morton S Gray who writes romance with a mystery to solve for Choc Lit all set in her fictional seaside town of Borteen. The better I get to know Morton, the more we seem to have in common, but I am frankly in awe of her daily regime – it’s an absolute inspiration!

I often hear people say that they could write a book, but they’re too busy. So, how do you fit writing into a busy day? I thought I’d give blog readers an idea of how I personally do it. Don’t get me wrong, there are days when I don’t manage a word, but here is an example of a good day!

When I started to compose this post, I realised how important thinking time contributes to the number of words I manage to get down.

Alarm sounds at six o’clock, ten minutes thinking time about latest work in progress, book seven, a Christmas novella for November 2021 publication. Continue thinking in the shower where ideas really begin to flow stimulated somehow by the scents of the shower products. Dressing, I jot down ideas from the shower so I don’t forget, e.g. “dancing on the beach scene” “shock event near the Christmas tree”.

Drive son to station and on way back mull over how to write on from my earlier writing prompts. Breakfast, sit at pc and type. I’m now so ready to write that I can produce about 800 words really quickly.

Tidy house, washing, dishwasher. Early walk with homeworking hubbie. Maybe float a few ideas about my plot to see what he can add. He works in IT but can often give a different and male perspective. We once outlined a complete murder mystery on our walk, but I’m yet to write that one. Other ideas often come to me when walking too.

Back to computer and write. Around 400 words this time.

I visit my mother who has dementia every day after lunch. Sort out problems, shopping and tablets. Mom is a surprisingly good sounding board for my writing too. She’s usually reading one of my books and the plots are always new because she can’t remember the stories.

Once home I tackle admin, phone calls, tweeting, Facebooking and emails. If I’m lucky another quick writing session, let’s say100 words.

Back to station to collect son, listen to music on the way back as lyrics will jump out at me to use as writing prompts. I’ll make notes on my phone waiting at the station, but little time to write until after our evening meal.

Usually add another 300 words in the evening with my laptop on my knee and one eye on a television programme. After writing from notes on phone, I’ll review what I’ve written so far, add extra words and description.

So, by bedtime I should have an extra 1,600 words to show for my day. If it’s a good day sometimes nearer 2,000. Off to bed, but crucially before I turn out the light, I think about any sticky points in the manuscript and often have an answer in my head by morning.

Sleep and repeat.

Morton S Gray’s fifth book, Christmas at the Little Beach Café, was published in November. You can catch up with Morton, her blog and her books on her website www.mortonsgray.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5 Books That Changed Me: CJ Daugherty

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CJ Daugherty The Secret History, by Donna Tartt

This fast-paced but dreamy novel set at a private university in the New England mountains, starts with a murder and tells the story of how it happened in reverse, as a group of elegant young friends obsessed with Greek mythology take everything too far, and close friendships fall to pieces. In her most restrained and elegant book, Tartt performs a magic trick by inventing fascinating characters who are capable of cold-blooded murder, and then making you like them. You know from the start they are killers, and yet you still want to be their friend. I re-read this book regularly.

The Likeness, by Tana French

This Irish crime novel by Tana French is one of my all-time favorite books. I’ve read it multiple times. It follows a female detective as she investigates a murder victim who looks exactly like her. Using their alikeness as a weapon, she takes over the dead woman’s life – moving in with her friends into a house in the countryside outside Dublin. She begins investigating them from within but then, slowly becomes seduced by them, and the rambling mansion where they live. Unfortunately, this is a very dangerous decision. Because one of them is a killer.

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern

This is an elegant, wandering, multi-strand tale of a mysterious circus that travels in secrecy and arrives without warning. Nobody knows when or where it will appear, or how long it will stay. The tents are filled with magical, mysterious displays. People are obsessed with it, and for good reason. It could be dangerous or simply wonderful — even after reading the book it’s hard to know which. Either way it doesn’t matter. It’s so beautifully written, I long to wake up one morning, as dawn washes the dark from the sky, to find the circus has appeared in my town. 

Station 11, by Emily St John Mandel

I bought this book after everyone I trust in the world told me it was amazing, and they were ALL right. It starts in a pandemic apocalypse (sound familiar?) and then jumps forward in time to follow a group of survivors who are exploring the remains of America in a roving band of Shakespearean actors, travelling from settlement to settlement performing plays for people who can barely remember a time before life was like this. It’s both scary and thoughtful, and ultimately filled with hope. Maybe just skim the first chapter while we’re all locked in our houses, but the rest will lift you.

Circe, by Madeline Miller

This feminist reinterpretation of The Odyssey told from the perspective of the banished witch, Circe, is the most beautiful, heartbreaking, glorious look at the Greek myths in all of time. Circe’s story is bittersweet. She’s young and voiceless, expected to be nothing but beautiful and compliant. Because she isn’t either of those things, she’s punished by being banished to an island to live completely alone. There, in isolation, she finds herself. The tale is told with wonderful compassion. It’s funny and dry, and terribly poignant in places. I cried 3 times listening to the audiobook. Honestly, it’s so gorgeously written I don’t know why I bother.

 

Number 10 by CJ Daugherty is out now, £9.99 from Moonflower Books available on Amazon here.

 

My Writing Process Leith MacArthur

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Leith MacArthur, author, writerMy Writing Routine:

I write every day for 2-4 hours, from roughly 8am to 11am, depending on how open my creative flow remains. I consider the “flow” to be a kind of pathway or conduit to the Infinite, where all events, thoughts, problems, solutions, lives and deaths occur, whether past, present, or future.

A Bit About Me:

I began writing when I was about ten years old. Short stories, poems, and a children’s book about a germ who saves the world. When I was introduced to alcohol and drugs at the age of fourteen, I became instantly addicted and my internal writer went into a coma. I wrote not another word until my mid-thirties when a novel burst out of me. I continued to write novels, but everything I expressed, whether it was through writing or raging, was being forced through a translation device, fueled and energized by drugs and booze. I drank, drugged and wrote for a total of forty-seven years. When, at the age of 66, I finally got clean, my writing began to take on a life of its own: it began to mature in the process. In essence, the act of writing became “natural” and, for the first time in my life, I realized I had been born with the gift of expression. My recently released novel, The Death of Harry Crow, is my best work. I’m now hard at work on the sequel, and the writing continues to flow with ease and assurance. 

What I Have Written, Past and Present:

Various poems and short stories; a children’s book called, Gerry the Germ; a supernatural thriller called, The Duplicating Man;  a book specifically for women called How To Buy An Excellent Used Car; a biographical novel (part memoir) about my life called, An Artificial Life;  five novels in The William Snow Series, Beneath the Bridge, The Stones of Mirabella, The Barnes and Blackwell Affair, The Finding Man, and (the only one published from the series) The Death of Harry Crow. I am currently at work putting the finishing touches on the sequel to Harry Crow, called The Man in the Moon. It’s good stuff.

What I Am Promoting Now:

The Death of Harry Crow

A bit about the process of writing:

I write directly from my thoughts. No plan. If I don’t happen to have any interesting thoughts that are worthy of words, I put down words anyway. Random words. Misspelled words. Incomplete sentences. It doesn’t matter. Eventually, something readable comes out.

How Do I Do My Structure:

These days I write only novels. I have no plan and I use no outline. Because I write straight out of the Infinite, I have no real structure; I just write until the work announces to me that it’s done. However, because I write thrillers, I do prefer to write short, impactful chapters that keep the action going, a bit like a Gatling gun.

What Do I Find Hard About Writing:

The toughest thing for me is dealing with Creep, the ungrateful primate who lives in a cave at the back of my skull. When Creep comes lumbering out of his cave with his knuckles dragging along my brain pan, he has but one purpose: to keep me from becoming a self-supporting writer. Creep came close to killing me (his true objective) by convincing me, across a span of 47 years, that drugs were the only way to deal with pain. Creep almost won, but when I learned that expressing pain is the only way to heal it, he lost most of his power over me. He’s still there, but I know how to deal with him now: I write.

What Do I Love About Writing:

I love that I can leave. When I write, I leave the world behind me: it’s only me, the words, and the fantasy in my head. I have unlimited power. I can do anything.

Advice For Other Writers:

Do these three things: read, read, and read. If you are meant to write, the words will follow.

The Death of Harry Crow by Leith MacArthur available in paperback, £9.99, via Amazon or to order in any good bookshop.