Tag Archives: Writer

Interview With In the Shadows of Love Author Awais Khan

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  1. When did you first want to become a writer?

Funnily enough, it didn’t happen until I was in my late teens. I have always been a lifelong reader, but it wasn’t until I was in college in Canada that I finally realized that publishing was actually an industry (we don’t have a publishing industry in Pakistan). I started to look – really look – at how the industry worked and that started inspiring me to write my own book. I started seeing myself as a published author. 

  1. You live in Lahore. How does that inspire your writing?

Lahore is in every aspect of my writing. I think, feel and breathe Lahore. There’s a popular saying in my part of the world ‘One who has not seen Lahore has not been born’, so you can quite imagine the kind of impact this city has on my writing. Lahore features heavily in all my books, and it wasn’t until I started writing Someone Like Her, which is partly set in London, that I realized how easy it was for me to write about Lahore, because I really struggled to bring London to life in my novel. Having said that, I have a very complicated relationship with my city. Just like in any relationship, there are good days and bad days, but I would be lying if I said that the city didn’t inspire my writing. Lahore is the very essence of me. Lahore is like for me as Paris was like for Ernest Hemingway – a moveable feast.

  1. You have written four novels now. Do you feel like a veteran now?

Hardly. If anything, I feel like things are getting more and more difficult. People tell me that I’ve made it, but they don’t know just how terrified I really am most of the time about failing. With each book, reader expectations rise, and after a point, the pressure sort of gets to you. However, while the insecurity never really goes away – it shouldn’t really, as it keeps us grounded – I have to say that I am getting slightly more confident about my writing. I may be having doubts, but somewhere at the back of my mind, there’s a small voice that says, ‘You’ve written something good. All it needs now is that one big push, that one final edit.’

  1. How did your first success come as a writer?

Success depends on one’s definition of success. Success can be selling a million copies of your book, but success can also be critical acclaim or positively impacting the life of even one reader. I first started writing In the Company of Strangers back in 2012, but it wasn’t until 2019 that it was published. During that time, I amassed a significant social media following, and since I naturally love to support my fellow authors, by the time my debut came out, it was an instant success with everyone I knew clamouring to buy a copy to support me in turn. The book went into reprint before it was officially out and also ended up becoming a national bestseller in Pakistan. However, it wasn’t until No Honour was published that I understood what it was like to be reviewed in major UK publications, and perhaps it was the topic, but No Honour ended up doing phenomenally well everywhere. In many ways, it was bigger than In the Company of Strangers. 

  1. What’s your writing routine?

My writing routine is all over the place. I suffer from writer’s block a lot when I’m in Lahore, and have frequently flown to London in the past just to finish writing my book. Being a writer in Lahore is not easy. Since there isn’t a publishing industry here as such, the environment here isn’t conducive for writing. A lot of people here disregard your efforts as a writer, thinking that whatever you’re doing has no value. All of it affects your self-esteem and motivation. Despite all of that, I try to be regimental about my writing, spending a few hours in my favourite café in Gulberg five days a week. It does bring some structure to my day and allows me to complete writing tasks that would just get delayed or put off otherwise. When in London, I like to write early in the morning and then in the afternoon too, preferably in a favourite café of mine. 

  1. Do you have a favourite of your books?

I feel that just like kids (not that I have any), one cannot have a favourite book. I’ve spent a lot of time with each of my books and they’ve all uniquely contributed towards my journey as a writer. However, if forced to choose, I would probably say No Honour, because I spent over three years researching and writing that book and it remains very close to my heart. 

  1. Tell us about The Writing Institute. 

I set it up back in 2016 when I realized that there were absolutely no creative writing courses available in Pakistan. Initially, a lot of people laughed at me, saying that nobody would be interested in something like this, that writers didn’t even exist in Pakistan. Yes, my courses did struggle at first, but as word got around, more people started joining them and since then, over 10,000 people have taken courses with The Writing Institute. Today, the institute prides itself on providing the best online and in-person creative writing courses in Pakistan at the most affordable prices imaginable. 

  1. What is your top creative writing tip?

My top tip for any aspiring writer is to never give up. This is a very subjective industry, and what works for one would probably not work for another. Never stop believing in yourself. Deep down, we know just how good our work really is. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. If someone is giving you proper critical feedback that can be used, then listen to them, but if someone is disparaging your work just for the sake of it, don’t listen to them. Similarly, be very wary of people who praise your work to high heavens. Just believe in yourself, in your talent, and don’t let the rejections get you down. Have the skin of an alligator’s. 

  1. Tell us about your new book.

I am very excited about my next book called In the Shadows of Love. It is the sequel to my debut In the Company of Strangers. The story moves twelve years into the future and Mona is now in her early fifties. She and Bilal have weathered the storm of infidelity, with Bilal embracing the son Mona had from her affair. Although on the outside, it seems that Mona has everything, and that every single day of hers is the same, with glittering parties and society events, things are not how they seem. Her perfect world is forever changed when the first message arrives. Will the secrets of Mona’s past threaten her future, her marriage and even her life?

In the Shadows of Love will be published by Hera Books in October, 2024. 

  1. What’s next for you?

I have recently finished writing my first thriller, tentatively titled Her Sister’s Secret. We don’t get to see a lot of thrillers coming out of Pakistan and I really wanted to write one that explored themes of sibling rivalry, guilty secrets and toxic marriages. The story centres around Maria and Sohaib who seem to have everything they could ask for, but behind the perfect façade, their marriage is toxic and when Maria’s sister, Fareena, comes to visit, everything goes awry. 

Spotlight on Priest and Poet Ian Tattum

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I have long been a fan of writer Ian Tattum. Ian is incredibly intelligent and a keen observer. Ian’s poems have been published in a number of magazines and it’s easy to see why. Ian’s talent is outstanding and his poems stay with you for a long time after you have read them. I cannot recommend his poems enough, nor insist enough that you keep an eye out for what he does in the future.

It was hard to find just three poems to publish here. I loved them all. One such line ‘for a bruised heart will kill first what others love’ had a huge impact on me. Ian’s poems are full of truth and beauty. He is a fantastic nature writer and a wonderful person. May we may have more like him. Now. Thank you.

Ian Tattum, poet, priest, nature, writer

Nativity

I didn’t croak, I cried.
Long armed and long legged,
and long breathed.
It was not an amphibious belch,
but a human yell
as I left my pond for the world.
And my arrival wasn’t
a leap but a tumble.
I was not smooth and green,
but red and wrinkled.
My mother objected when my father said, ‘he looks like a frog’, but looking closer she saw his point, and kept her silence.

For my mother
JOAN TATTUM

Landlocked at Olney

The Ouse lives up to its name,
slowly winding through a gentle valley.
Overlooked by the modest high point of Clifton Reynes,
and windmills that march without moving.
It floods less now, hardly a boot covering but
wild swimming still provides the odd drowning.
A snaking mirror of the sky and trees,
of barely rippled blues, greys and greens.
Where a damselfly’s stained-glass wing or a sudden kingfisher
can arrest your attention without troubling it.
A place for a closer walk with God,
where the breeze curtains out the traffic
as it did for Cowper the noise of industry and cart.
But the river leads to the sea,
one hundred and forty-three miles east.
To a place where the water and the sands move,
footing is unsure, and the tides are wilful.

Attic Verses. Cowboys and Indians

I rarely felt the cold in those days before central heating,
when the coal fireplace in the front room was only lit
for necessity and the kitchen harboured the hypnotic
skin-searing paraffin stove.
When my bedroom was icy my mind was warmed by travel.
I knelt on the carpet moving my soldiers across prairies,
and over rivers and hiding them in clefts in the rock.
Some would take refuge in a cardboard stockade,
while others whooped from plastic horses,
in circling menace.
In TV Western Land even when it snowed
it was always temperate.
There were countless deaths, but no one ever died.
Until my brother, proving how wrong Wilde was,
instituted an irreparable massacre by beheading;
for a bruised heart will kill first what others love.

Ian Tattum is a priest in the Church of England, who writes mainly about nature, local history literature- including a recent essay for Little Toller’s ‘The Clearing’. His poetry has previously been published by Spelt Magazine , The Pilgrim and Black Bough Poetry. He is a Fellow of the Linnaean Society. https://stbarnabas-southfields.org.uk/essays-and-
reviews/
Follow Ian on Twitter at @ITattum.

Mark Ellis My Writing Process

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Q1: I took up writing when I sold my computer services business in the early 2000s, having always had an ambition to be an author. I have so far written 5 books in the DCI Frank Merlin World War 2 detective series. The four published books are Princes Gate (set in January 1940), Stalin’s Gold (September 1940), Merlin At War (June 1941) and A Death In Mayfair (December 1941). Merlin At War was nominated for a CWA Dagger in 2018. My aim is to continue to follow Merlin’s adventures through to the end of the Mark Ellis, author

Q2: The book I am promoting now is the 5th in the series, Dead In The Water, which will be published by Hachette (Headline) on May 19th. It is set in August 1942 and revolves around two artistic masterpieces stolen from an Austrian Jewish family before the war and which end up in London with fatal consequences.

 

Q3: As I am writing a historical series set in a specific period, my principal framework is the timeline. As you can see above, all books are separated in time by 6 to 9 months, so when I finish the latest I know roughly when the next one will be set.When I’m starting work on the new book, I focus intently on the exact time slot of the story. I research that heavily and that process often prompts plot ideas. I am already working on Frank Merlin 6, which I have decided to set in Spring 1943, and plot ideas are beginning to occur to me. When I have roughly formulated what ideas to pursue, I just start writingand see where they take me. I usually do not know who did what until I am about two thirds of the way through the book. I write a first draft straight off without stopping to edit. Then I do many edits before sending the manuscript off to the publishers. I did about 15 edits of Dead In The Water which is about the norm.

 

Q4: As is clear from above, I am not really a planner. I rather think of myself as a sculptor, except that I don’t have a piece of stone or marble to work with. My first draft is the working material. Once I’ve created that I start chipping away.

 

Q5: The word count of the new book is approximately 110,000. The word count of my first draft was over 200,000 so you can see a significant editing job was done. My plots tend to be quite complex and I don’t think I could manage anything much shorter but I think 110,000 to 130,000 is a good length for a thriller.

 

Q6: I am conscious as I write my first draft of teeing up various characters and situations but as I say don’t formally plan a structure in advance. After a while, I tend to find everything comes together in its own way. I seldom make major structural changes when I get down to editing.

 

Q7: I find writing the first draft very hard work. Also waiting for comments on the submitted manuscript is tough.

 

Q8: Editing is good fun. Also I love creating a fictional world all of my own and then sharing it with my readers.

Dead In The Water by Mark Ellis is out now in paperback by Headline Accent, £9.99.

 

 

 

How I got a Literary Agent.

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In January this year one of the most amazing things happened to me: I got a literary agent. Having an agent was always something beyond my wildest dreams, more than that, my agent is the amazing Susan Yearwood. Champagne popping time indeed.

I spent the months in the run up to Christmas researching agents and sending off submissions. I went through The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook with precision, choosing ten agents to send my book off to. I researched every agent heavily and Susan called to me. There are a few interviews I found in which Susan and her ethos resonated with me. I knew she was The One.  In fact, before her email asking to schedule a call with her, I had a dream she was my agent and we were being interviewed at a literary festival together.

In the end I sent my first novel off to a lot of agents and publishers. I got a lot of good feedback and a few full manuscript requests. I also got a wonderful rejection from Harper Collins, who read the entire thing and sent me four paragraphs of feedback. They even asked me to send them anything else I wrote. In the end Susan passed on my first novel, but she liked my writing enough to ask if I had anything else I could send her. Thankfully I did. I always write a first draft of a book and then get started on another one while I let the other one sit. Then I go back to it with fresh eyes, alternating my drafts. I did not think the other book was ready and had spent hundreds sending it off to a professional editing agency for feedback. By the time the feedback came back Susan had been my agent for three months! It may have been a waste of money, but I have no complaints.

Susan loved the book and took my on as a client after our phone call. I was a true pinch me moment. For anyone who wants an agent and does not have one yet I would say the following things:

  • Write a good book. Send off the first three chapters, along with a synopsis that really grabs.
  • Collate all of the writing you have done and any awards you have won. Write a paragraph about yourself that sells all you have to offer. Covering letters are important.
  • Get a copy of The Write”s and Artists’ Yearbook and research what agents work in your genre.
  • Start submitting.
  • Keep submitting.
  • Take rejection in your stride.
  • Listen to all feedback.
  • Redo your submission to suit various agents.
  • Start writing your new book.

 

Good luck!

 

How I Got Published By Alec Marsh

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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

 

How I Got Published Jenny O’Brien

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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

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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

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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