Category Archives: Real Life

BUSINESS OF BOOKS: TAKE FOUR WRITERS – CONNECTING, SIGNING, RETREATING

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LUCY COLEMAN… CONNECTING

My second novel writing as Lucy Coleman for Aria Fiction is now staring back at me from my bookshelf. And I will admit that it’s still a huge thrill for me, even though it’s my thirteenth.

Snowflakes Over Holly Cove begins and ends at Christmas, but the year in between is an emotional rollercoaster.

The first reviews are in and one reviewer said it brought tears to her eyes. Why? Because of the mention of eggnog in one emotional scene.

In real life it’s the little memories that often attach themselves to the silliest of things. In this story, for the character Tia, it reminds her of her mother… and the sentiment and connection touched that reviewer’s heart, too.

An author can’t ask for any more than that. I’m feeling truly blessed and reminded why I write. And that is reader power. Reviews touch authors’ hearts, too!

 

ANGELA PETCH… SIGNING

Whoops! It’s been quite a month and I almost missed my Frost deadline. (Visions of ed, visor pulled down to cover glower, tapping fingers on her desk…sorry!)

I’m now officially a hybrid author. I can’t explain how happy I feel to have signed a two-book deal with the Bookouture “family”, as they describe their publishing team. My first novel is to be edited and reissued June 2019 and a new Tuscan novel, released April 2020. They have been understanding about deadlines. How lucky am I?

I’m exchanging ideas with my cover designer for “Mavis and Dot”, but as soon as I self-publish and launch on December 1st, then it is action stations with Bookouture. I’m so excited.

Other news: a successful first “Write Away in Tuscany” ended five days ago – exhausting but exhilarating. Eight writers travelled to our corner of Tuscany and we shared scrumptious Italian food and writing sessions. We are running it next year with modified content. Bring on 2019…

 

CLAIRE DYER… RETREATING

Last month I went on a writing retreat at Tŷ Newydd in North Wales (http://www.literaturewales.org/our-projects/ty-newydd/). It was the sixth time I’d spent time there, having previously attended both poetry and prose tutored workshops. This one was slightly different in that there was no formal element to the week. Our facilitator, Julia Forester, gently guided us, provided the chance to have one-on-one chats with her and ran a couple of sessions on submitting work and managing our time. The rest of the week was spent blissfully either working on our current projects, walking the footpath down to the beach, visiting local places of interest, chatting to one another over cups of tea or swimming in the sea. The food and company were both delicious.

My aim in going was to work on some poems I hope will form the basis of a new collection. The subject matter was hard and painful. In addition, my home life, rather than retreating to a safe distance and leaving me alone, intruded when both of my children had issues they wanted mum-input on and, seeing that being a mum is my main job and being a writer is my second job, I had to respond.

And what did this prove? We may go on retreat but we take our real lives with us. The writer’s life means we have to fit our writing in around other stuff and that this other stuff informs our writing. An ivory tower might sound a nice idea, but I think one would be both impractical and uninspiring!

 

JACKIE BALDWIN… DRAFTING

Hello again! Another busy month. I’ve been getting on with the first draft of book 3 in my DI Frank Farrell series. It always takes me a while to get into the rhythm of writing a new book but I’ve settled into it now and at the exciting stage where I don’t yet quite know what’s going to happen!

On 5th September, I was up in Edinburgh to read an extract from my work at’ Noir at the Bar.’ It was a criminally good night with a great variety of crime writers both published and unpublished.

This weekend I was at ‘Bloody Scotland’ in Stirling. It provides a great opportunity to catch up with old friends and make some new ones in the crime writing and crime reading fraternities. A particular highlight was the Pitch Perfect Session where eight writers have exactly three minutes to convince a panel of agents and publishers that they must read their book.

See you next month!

BUSINESS OF BOOKS: DIGGING AROUND

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Jane Cable leaves the comfort of her desk

Authors do many things in the name of research and some of them are definitely more fun than others. To be honest, most research these days is carried out hunched over a laptop, flicking from website to website, desperately trying not to be side-tracked. How historical novelists manage it I’ll never know, but I take my hat off to them.

The manuscript I’ve been struggling over for what feels like (and may even be) years has an archaeologist as its heroine. At the moment it’s undergoing a major, major rewrite – which started after a research visit to an antiques centre at a former RAF base – and Rachel’s job is actually less important, but I still wanted to know how it felt to be working in a trench.

Step in DigVentures. For those who don’t know it’s a social enterprise that designs and delivers collaborative archaeology projects using community involvement, crowd funding and digital technology to enable public participation at every level. Including with a trowel. Which is mighty unusual as volunteers at many other digs are restricted to moving barrow-loads of earth or washing finds.

My husband’s always been interested in archaeology so when the call went out on Facebook for volunteers for a dig on the edge of Bodmin Moor we signed up with alacrity. Just as well we did, because there were very few places available. With mounting excitement we read the brief about a Bronze Age/Iron Age settlement, bought ourselves lightweight gardening gloves and packed enough picnic food to last a week.

Our fellow diggers and the professional archaeologists were a friendly lot, and most of them had already been at St Neot for almost two weeks. We were coming in right at the end of things, so after a briefing we were taken to a trench and set to work cleaning a small section. Looking back this could have been a test just to make sure we weren’t too cack-handed – a real possibility in my case – then we were moved to our very own area.

This was exciting. Under the watchful eye of trench supervisor Indie and constant visits from Bronze Age specialist Ed we were to scrape through an unusual hard, grey deposit and collect it in bags to be sampled. Indie explained that back in the lab it would be separated and tested in the hope that particles of vegetation or valuable dating evidence would be found.

The area we were digging was part of the bank surrounding the settlement and had a large ditch on the outer side. Behind us in the main trench were the clear remains of a roundhouse, marked out by stones. The earth there was a completely different colour – the orangey-brown ‘natural’ that we would need to scrape down to find. We filled our three bags and the charcoal we kept coming across took me back to my mother taking the ashes from the fire out and spreading them on the garden. It gave me goosebumps that people could have been doing the very same thing for thousands of years.

I learnt a great deal about archaeology. As Ed told us, we went straight from level one to level five in one fell swoop. But what did I learn of value for my book? Tiny things, but important things. How the rain soaks through your gloves and your fingers chafe. Which parts of your body ache the most. The dust that fills your nose and coats your hair. So many things that will help to make Rachel real.

As I shared the experience on social media many friends expressed envious interest, but really, DigVentures makes it possible for anyone to join in. We’ll certainly be back again. And again. And again.

Find out more about DigVentures and St Neot here: https://digventures.com/st-neot/

 

BUSINESS OF BOOKS: TAKE FOUR WRITERS – EVENTING, TALKING, PLAYING, UPLIFTING

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JACKIE BALDWIN… EVENTING

Hello, again! This month has been super busy as my son got married on the 11th August. The week before I was so stressed I thought I might spontaneously combust but the day itself was utterly magical! I am now trying to keep the peace between my son’s cat and our two dogs who are not his biggest fans.

On the writing front, the paperback of Perfect Dead will be released on Thursday 23rd August. I am not having a launch as the day before that I am doing an event in Waterstones, Dumfries, with the fabulous Lin Anderson, who is ‘Tartan Noir’ royalty. The event has only recently been confirmed, so imagine my shock when I was meandering along the High Street in Dumfries and came face to face with a large poster of myself and Lin Anderson out on the pavement!

After that, it will be time to knuckle down and get on with the next book in the series.

Have a great month!

 

CLAIRE DYER… TALKING

This month I want to talk about talking. I don’t mean chatting to our friends over coffee or a nice cool glass of Chablis but talking about our books on our hind legs in front of other people.

It’s a very odd thing to do. After all, most writers are notoriously private people and so, to be exposed to actual readers and other writers is odd. Well I find it so anyway.

Why should this be so? Well, I’ve grown used to my books. They are incredibly special but it’s kind of embarrassing to talk about something so familiar, it’s like describing an old pair of jeans, you wonder whether anyone else will really be interested.

After all, by the time a book is published, its author has read it about a million times (OK, I might be exaggerating, but it feels like it), it has been pulled apart, put back together, tweaked, cajoled, buffed and polished to within an inch of its life and therefore, when asked, ‘What’s your book about?’ or ‘How did you think up your main character?’ or ‘Why did you end the book that way?’, it is, strangely, sometimes hard to find the right words.

 

ANGELA PETCH… PLAYING

This month, after the excitement of RNA Conference, I moved south to the Sussex Downs to stay with our eldest daughter, waiting for the birth of her third child. The heat was comparable to our hot weather in Tuscany but the surroundings very different. I had no time for writing, immersed as I was in the world of two and four-year old toddlers. Lego, cars, story reading, bottom wiping, cooking and washing filled my time. We played pretend games, which is not a million miles from being a writer, and all the while, I stored snippets in my head for future stories. It was a privilege to be in England when baby Finn arrived on August 1st.

Instead of creative writing, I’ve managed to squeeze in admin for the first Write Away in Tuscany that takes place at our Tuscan home from September 11th – 18th. I’m back in Italy now, finalising details. Mavis and Dot are being honed in the meantime and Cancer Research is supporting my campaign for funds for the launch of these two ladies.

 

LUCY COLEMAN… UPLIFTING

The arrival of the school holidays means coping with weekly sleepovers, then frenetically trying to catch up with a growing ‘to do’ list. But it’s important to me to grab as much quality family time as possible.

Writers spend a lot of their time living in a world they’ve created. I’m lucky in that I write about life, relationships and the pursuit of a happy ending. I set the mood by playing soft music and having an essential oil diffuser wafting out rose geranium and lavender. It’s uplifting.

This month has been all about preparing for the release of Lucy Coleman’s ‘Snowflakes Over Holly Cove’ on the 18 September 2018. But it’s also a nervous time for an author.

It’s a story about loss and finding love, and as cosy as a mug of hot chocolate! Set in Caswell Bay on the stunningly rugged Gower Coast, it’s one of my favourite places to walk…

 

BUSINESS OF BOOKS: FIRST, LAST, EVERYTHING – ROMANCE AUTHOR CASSANDRA GRAFTON

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What was the first writing advice you were ever given?

If I think back to when I started to seriously consider writing full-length stories, the first piece of advice I recall was ‘just keep putting the words on the page’. After all, you can’t polish and edit a blank page, can you?

At the time, I’d only ever completed short stories, mostly co-written, for online communities. A solo writing project was a challenge in itself, but I didn’t really think of it as ‘writing a novel’ because of the serial nature of posting online.

It was the encouragement (and above advice) from those communities that helped me to get started, and it’s down to their on-going support and feedback that I managed to keep going, no matter what life threw at me. I just kept putting one word after the other, until eventually I’d finished telling the story I wanted to share.

 

Photo copyright is Adrea Scheidler Photography

What was the most recent writing advice you were given?

I follow a lot of writing blogs on Twitter, and many of them have wonderful snippets of advice, one of the most practical of which in recent months was about removing redundant words from your manuscript.

I discovered there were plenty of lists out there, once I’d put ‘redundant words in your novel’ into Google, and soon I was working my way through my extremely long manuscript and culling them (thank you, Word, for the Search and Replace function). In the end, nearly 10,000 redundant words sailed off into the blue yonder; not one of them was missed!

It turns out, however, that my biggest overuse of anything is not a specific word, but a punctuation mark. It was pointed out to me at a writing retreat last year that I need to ‘kill the exclamation mark.’ When I looked into it, I was appalled by how often I used them. I did, indeed, have a bit of a fetish going on. Hopefully, I’ve managed to keep them to a minimum in this blog post!

 

What is the piece of advice you’d most like to pass on?

There are variations on these words, but it boils down “don’t wait for your boat to come in; row out to meet it”.

It’s something I wish I’d taken on-board (if you’ll excuse the pun) earlier in my life. It can, of course, relate to all aspects of life, but with regard to my writing, it translates into this: Don’t let time slip away from you.

I’d wanted to write all my life, but always I made excuses: “no time, children to look after, piles of marking to get through, got to work late, too tired”. Even when the children were teenagers and didn’t need the same level of attention, even when I had an unexpected year of not having to work full time, always I seemed to have an excuse for actually sitting down and doing it.

I was 50 before the realisation struck that I needed to heed this advice – when it almost felt too late. I’d had a recent run-in with cancer, which led to a couple of rather unpleasant years, and as my milestone birthday approached, I started to re-evaluate my life. If I didn’t get my act together and produce a book sometime soon, perhaps I would never fulfil my lifelong dream?

It would be another year (2013) before I finally took the plunge into publishing my first novel. The story had been seven years in the making, for all the aforementioned reasons, but I did it.

It had still been a challenge. I was working full time, long hours, and any writing time was limited to weekends and holidays (thankfully I have a very patient and supportive husband, who would hoover around my chair at weekends as I sat at the computer, or read the paper in a pub when we were on holiday as I scribbled away at scenes in my notebook).

In more recent years, having moved to Switzerland and no longer having a day job, I have had the time to write, but still I procrastinate. My New Year’s Resolution this year was to treat my writing like a job, not a hobby, and I’m improving, but there’s a way to go yet.

So please don’t do as I do, do as I say: don’t let the time slip away from you!

 

Cassandra has published two historical romances and has co-written and published a contemporary cosy mystery/romance. She is currently working on a series of contemporary feel-good romances set in Cornwall. She loves traveling, reading, cats and dry wine and splits her time between Switzerland, where she lives with her husband, and England, where she lives with her characters.

 

https://cassandragrafton.com

BUSINESS OF BOOKS: SENIOR SERVICE

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Jane Cable gives a talk at a local retirement community and finds the learning experience is mutual

It was Liz Fenwick who put me up to it. Since moving to Cornwall I’ve been lucky enough to fall in with a fabulous group of writers who give each other a great deal of support in every conceivable way.

When Liz told our little band she’d had a wonderful afternoon giving a talk at an independent living retirement community and they were looking for more speakers, I jumped at the chance. For two reasons, really; it was just down the road and Liz used those incredibly motivational words: “They give you cake – and they buy books.”

Luckily the talk was to be an informal one. I say luckily because I was also in the middle of preparing for an appearance at Helly’s International Festival with another of our happy Cornish band, historical fiction writer Victoria Cornwall. We’re tackling the serious subject of setting in novels and that’s required thinking, research – and rehearsal.

So on a Thursday afternoon a couple of weeks ago I pottered up the road with a few notes and a rucksack of books on my back. I arrived early and was welcomed by the book club organiser and the community manager and given a Jackanory (for those old enough to remember) style armchair in front of several rows of seats in the elegant dayroom. Slowly but surely the rows started to fill and looking around the room I wondered if I would be able to keep so many elderly people awake.

I needn’t have worried. After my brief introduction and a slightly stuttering start, the questions flowed. When did I write? What was my inspiration? What about editing? There was quite a lively discussion about the use of commas at one point – lively and well informed. These people were serious readers.

But when I mentioned I was researching World War 2 the tables turned and I was the one asking the questions. Some of the residents had very clear memories and two had actually been in Lincolnshire at the time – which made me very excited because it’s where I’m setting my book. Listening to their tales of watching for returning planes from Lincoln Castle, or visiting a cousin based at RAF Scampton, brought the war alive in the way no other research could have done.

This is a generation we’re on the verge of losing. Or if not losing, writing off as too geriatric to make a contribution. How very, very wrong. They were interesting, amusing and fun to be with. Not only do they want to read, but some of them want to write as well. Rather rashly I volunteered to help them start a creative writing group and there are already ten people signed up for the autumn. To be honest I’m feeling just a little out of my depth but I know if I go in with the attitude we’ll all learn from each other then we’ll have a fabulous time.

At the end of the talk I was given tea and the promised cake. Gluten free cake, which the community manager had gone to the trouble of buying specially. I spent so long chatting and signing books that I had a text from my husband asking where I was. I sold so many I had to go back the next day to fulfil the orders.

Since then I have persuaded three more of my Cornish writer friends to book themselves in and the book club calendar’s full until Christmas. And then, I hope they have a party. And I hope I’m invited!

TAKE FOUR WRITERS: CELEBRATING, RESEARCHING, WEEDING, WAITING

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JACKIE BALDWIN… CELEBRATING

A very exciting month! Publication Day of Perfect Dead came and went in a blur. I embarked on a blog tour organised by the fabulous Love Books Group. I’d already submitted the guest posts and extracts in advance so all that remained was trying to keep up with all the posts on social media. I also managed to trip over a boulder and smash up my face again, leaving me looking like I had taken up cage fighting!

I have to say, though, that publication day was not even close to being the highlight of my month. My proudest moment by far was watching my lovely daughter graduate in zoology from Aberdeen University. It was such a special day for all of us. I’m now home catching up on my blog tour before escaping to a Greek island on Friday to try and calm down!

 

LUCY COLEMAN… RESEARCHING

I’m a Gemini, so when asked what I wanted for my birthday I said ‘A trip to Versailles’ because I have an idea for a contemporary love story. I’ve been there twice before but I needed to soak up the ambience again – and grab photographs!

The final proof read of my next book, due to be released by Aria Fiction on 4 September 2018, arrived the day before I left for my holiday. But authors take their work with them, anyway, so after foot-wearying days my bedtime reading was sorted.

The palace at Versailles is enchanting, opulent and the stuff that dreams are made of – I fell in love with it all over again. Coming home I had to hit the ground running. New graphics to produce, two work-in-progresses on the go and a contract to sign … exciting times! But now I want to write about Versailles …

 

ANGELA PETCH… WEEDING

Suddenly, the writing road ahead is a flat path through wild flower meadows instead of a craggy climb. I always find calm in Tuscany where we live for six months each summer. After an initial panic over the edits needed for “Mavis and Dot”, I went for a long walk to untangle my thoughts and to face reality. I’m now acting on comments from my editor and Beta readers and rewriting sections. I’ve got my trowel out and I’m digging out the weeds, rearranging the beds. And I want “Mavis and Dot” to be as perfect as I can manage.

My husband helped devise a spread sheet for my illustrator. Her main job is busy editor of a Sussex based Arts Magazine called Ingenue, so she was pleased to work to a schedule. She hit the bullseye with two illustrations she subsequently sent and produced smiles of delight and relief.

 

CLAIRE DYER… WAITING

This month I want to talk about waiting. As a poet and an author I, like many others in the same fields, do a lot of it!

Consider this: I submitted some poems to a well-known literary journal in March of 2017. They accepted one of those poems in February: that’s eleven months of waiting. Also, I sent my agent a manuscript last September and waited for her valued and considered feedback which I got in December and it was well worth the wait! That manuscript then went on journeys out and about into the big wide world and there was more waiting and, as I write this, I still don’t know where its future might lie.

There are many more examples. In answer to the usual, ‘Where are you at the moment?’ the standard writer’s reply is ‘I’m waiting for my agent/editor/publicist/’ and/or, ‘I’m waiting to see the cover/get my first reviews/hear about a TV deal.’

Then there’s the fictional world of say, ‘The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair’ by Joël Dicker where the fictional author is hounded by his fictional agent who calls constantly asking, ‘Where is the manuscript you promised me?’

I’m not sure how one goes from the one who waits to the one who is awaited, but there’s something tantalising about imagining this. Just think, one day I may get an email which says, ‘Dear Claire, We were wondering if your new book is ready as we have the perfect cover for it.’

 

 

 

TAKE FOUR WRITERS: JUGGLING, REVEALING, PARTYING, BALANCING

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CLAIRE DYER… JUGGLING

This month I want to talk about loyalty; not to our nearest and dearest, nor our publishers and/or agents but to our books.

Consider this: I have a book that’s just been published and I’m busy talking about it on social media, to library audiences and writers’ groups. I love this book. I have also written another one which is with my agent and which we’re still discussing and editing. I love this book too. And, I’m writing a new book and am at the brick wall that is 60,000 words. I don’t love this book very much at the moment but I should do, and hopefully I will when I’ve climbed over the wall and seen what’s on the other side.

So I’m carrying three books in my head all the time and this isn’t unusual, it’s par for the course for authors. Indeed, some carry even more and/or are different stages of the above process which will require them to concentrate on the intricacies of multiple novels at the same time.

And what does this mean in reality? It means we’re constantly torn; we juggle characters and settings, we have to remember who has which pet, what our heroine’s favourite food is, her deepest fear. Not only this but we have to remember with pinpoint clarity our plot lines and at all times believe in the magic: the alchemy that is writing. There are some days when my brain feels like scrambled egg, but then when it’s just me and screen and I’m back in the zone and it’s making sense, then it’s all worthwhile, believe me.

 

JACKIE BALDWIN… REVEALING

Hello, lots of excitement for me to report this month! First of all there was the Killer Reads Cover Reveal for Perfect Dead. I absolutely love the design! I’ve been getting ready for my Blog Tour, organised by Love Books Group so I’ve been busy writing guest posts, providing extracts etc.

I also had the most unexpected thing happen this month. My first novel, Dead Man’s Prayer had a one day Book Bub promotion and, to my surprise and delight, became an Amazon UK Kindle bestseller in two categories. I was absolutely over the moon! As I write this it is only three weeks until publication day on 15th June. This is always a nail-biting time for an author as you wait with baited breath for those reviews to start trickling in. Wish me luck!

See you next month!

 

LUCY COLEMAN… PARTYING

May has been an exciting month! The Romantic Novelists’ Association Summer Party prompted a trip to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It was great to meet up with writerly friends old and new. Which, I might add, included fellow Frost Musketeer, lovely Claire Dyer.

A pre-party meet-up with a group of Aria Fiction authors, my lovely editor – Lucy Gilmore – and Melanie Price (who is a whizz on social media) was accompanied by Prosecco. It was a great start to the evening.

The week prior to that, structural edits arrived for the second manuscript in my four-book contract with Aria fiction, writing as Lucy Coleman. I despatched those very quickly and I’m now waiting to see the cover for this Christmas novel, set in Caswell Bay on the Gower coast.

Then back to work on book no. 4 which currently stands at around fifty-thousand words. Never a dull moment!

 

ANGELA PETCH… BALANCING

On May Bank Holiday, we loaded our car and set off for our six-month stay in our Tuscan home, stopping overnight in beautiful Alsace (I am itching to include this location in my next Tuscan novel … bizarre, but I have an idea).

May has been productive. “Mavis and Dot” are with my editor and while I wait for feedback, I have sent off a serial to The People’s Friend. My wonderful editor there instils calm, reiterating that good writing comes when you are at peace with yourself. Tomorrow I should receive my illustrator’s first designs for M and D. I have organised new covers for my two earlier novels. I have an appointment with a special Museum of the Diary in the valley for research for my third Tuscan novel. And, finally, I have been approached by a publisher for my Italian books. Decisions, decisions… but, ringing in my ears are my husband’s words: “Don’t take all the fun out of your writing.” Watch this space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BUSINESS OF BOOKS: THE KITCHEN CLASS OF 2017

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Jane Cable catches up with RNA friends

There is a tradition at Romantic Novelists’ Association conferences that the really important stuff happens in the kitchens of the shared accommodation. And for me (and I’m sure I’m not alone) the really important stuff was making friends with other writers. Almost a year later most of us have kept in touch and there have been many successes to celebrate. To be honest, I haven’t had the best year of my writing career but being able to cheer on my new friends had been a pleasure which has kept me going.

Jan Baynham, another writer from my home city of Cardiff feels the same: “No exciting publisher or agent news from me, I’m afraid, but I’ve been delighted to read about others’ successes this year. There’s been so much to celebrate! I’ve spent the time since the Conference submitting my first novel to publishers. Two recent rejections have given me very encouraging feedback and spurred me on. One editor said my novel fell into ‘the nearly-but-not-quite’ category, telling me why, but said she would be happy to consider further submissions from me. A second was even more complimentary about the quality of the writing and has asked to see my second mother-daughter saga that’s partly set in Greece. I’m working hard to get Whispering Olive Trees ready to submit to her.”

Jan’s travelling companion last year was Sue McDonagh whose debut novel has just been published by Choc Lit, but it hasn’t always been an easy road. “I wrote, learned and submitted until that magical ‘Yes’. There was joy – until the edits came in. Christmas to February, Writing Boot Camp, I rewrote almost every word, hacked back rookie errors of over-blown baddies and plot lines that went nowhere. My timeline was a joke.  I despaired that the ending would ever work. I couldn’t do it. I could, and it did, miraculously. I painted the front cover, another highlight. Published five days ago, Summer at the Art Café is already earning a slew of 5* reviews. I’m still learning – it’s a steep curve!”

Another kitchen compatriot discovering the joy of a publishing deal was Cornwall based Kitty Wilson. “My writing life has been a whirlwind since we all sat around the kitchen table at the RNA conference last year. I have gone from wannabe novelist used to micro-expressions that flashed sympathy and suggested delusion to fully fledged author. By January I had landed myself my dream agent, had to choose which publisher to go with and spent a lot of time pinching myself – it was all so dreamlike. With my first book coming out next month, the second nearly completed and a whole series to write, 2018 is going to be a very busy, but very happy, year.” The cover of the first of her Cornish Village School books has just been revealed, ready for publication next month.

When we met last year Susanna Bavin already had her deal with Allison & Busby, and her writing career is going from strength to strength: “It’s been a year of dreams coming true for me. My debut saga, The Deserter’s Daughter, has been published in hardback, e-book, audiobook, large print and paperback. My second, A Respectable Woman, will appear in the same formats; and I have a contract for another two. The best moment? Out of a year of ‘best moments,’ the very best was listening to The Deserter’s Daughter as an audiobook read by Julia Franklin. I’ve listened to audiobooks for years and Julia is one of my two favourite readers, so having her as ‘my’ reader is wonderful.”

Last but not least, Kirsten Hesketh feels she’s on the verge of something big too: “What a year! The main thing I have learned over the past year is not to submit your work too early to agents! After a round of ‘good’ rejections last September, I spent the next few months editing, restructuring, polishing and then getting a critique from the marvellous Alison May whose advice made all the difference. Then I did it all again!  The result is …. I now have an agent! I am thrilled to be represented by the wonderful Felicity Trew and have just had the excitement of having my book taken to the London Book Fair. Fingers crossed!”