Where I (Used to!) Write

I've moved house a lot over the years (I think I'm on my 12th house), so the 'where I work' posts on this blog have described several different rooms and views. There was the study that overlooked Snowdonia, the one that looked out over Penrhyn Castle, and then there was the last house, where my study had a lovely view of the bus stop!

In these posts I usually mention the story of how I wrote my first book in a tiny bungalow, with my monitor jammed into a cupboard and my keyboard on my lap.

And then last week I found this photo. Yes, that's me as a teenager, chuffed to bits to have my own desk and my own typewriter, and being A Writer. 

I grew up in a rambling Victorian house that, even shared with my large family, had a room no one else wanted to use. When my parents moved in they decided it would make a great playroom, to keep the kids out of the way of the grown-ups. But my brothers and I convinced ourselves the room was haunted by the little old lady who'd lived in the house ten years before us. We knew she'd used the room as a bedroom, as she'd been too frail to climb the stairs. So we decided her ghost was the reason the door would open by itself (this often happens in old houses) and we even thought we heard a piano playing in the empty room - it was probably a radio! We ignored the cold spooky 'playroom' and played in the garden instead!

Skip forward fifteen years when we'd all grown up, my mother suggested I could have the room for myself. It would be a fabulous place for me and my friends to hang out away from the adults (I'm noticing a theme here), but I was thrilled. Especially when,

Mum: You can decorate it however you like!

Me: I'm going to paint the walls black!

Mum: Absolutely not!

We compromised with grey walls but with my first pay cheque I bought a desk, two bookcases, and a small sofa, all in my favourite black. I probably imagined lying on the sofa and dictating my novel to a secretary, like Barbara Cartland, because that's what writers do, right?

Thirty-five years later (thirty-five!!!), I still have the two black bookcases but sadly the desk was taken to the dump just before Christmas. Although it did have a second life as my daughter's desk for a good twenty years. 

I'd completely forgotten this photo had been taken until I found it last week. As my husband said when I showed it to him (after he'd got over laughing at the 80s fashion), what advice would I give my past self?

Apart from 'Don't wear big earrings around small children'? Probably, 'Hang on in there' because it would take another ten years before I was offered a book contract.

And maybe suggest I get over my obsession with the colour black... 

Related Posts:

A Room of One's Own

Where I Write

Writers Write (or, what I really do all day)

Inspiration: You Make It Feel Like Christmas

I first had the idea for You Make It Feel Like Christmas way back in 2014 while I was at the cinema watching Guardians of the Galaxy. You can't see the connection between a superhero movie and a Christmas romantic comedy? Well, the soundtrack featured an old 70s song called Hooked on a Feeling and the lyrics got me thinking about people who have (for one reason or another) become stuck on a certain way of thinking.

I often have ideas for stories that I scribble down in a notebook and then promptly forget about but this one stayed in my mind. A few years later, when the mystery novel I was working on wasn't coming together in the way I wanted (I'll be blogging about that later), I decided to start something completely different. I remembered those characters who'd become 'hooked on a feeling' and You Make It Feel Like Christmas began to take shape.

Beth is obsessed with the idea of having a perfect family Christmas and still has feelings for the man that broke her heart seven years ago. Aidan associates Christmas spent at his family home with a tragic period in his life and would happily see the house flattened, whereas his brother Nick remembers his idyllic childhood and will do anything to save it.

I didn't realise until I'd finished writing the book that my feelings about the house I'd grown up in had also found their way into the story. This might have been because part of the book was written there while I was visiting my mother. We talked a lot about the 'old days' and the amount of work it had taken to restore the house.

My childhood home

My parents bought their house back in the 1970s. It was their dream house and restoring it became their hobby - except they didn't restore it in a traditional way! Instead, they trawled reclamation sites buying quirky fittings from old houses that had been demolished. Although the house was Victorian they added oak beams to the sitting room ceiling (original 300-year-old ship's timbers!) along with a huge Tudor fireplace.

I asked my mother why they'd chosen to do this and she explained that they had loved visiting old houses, with all their history, and wanted to recreate a little bit of that in their own home.

The appearance of the Abbey in my story was influenced by much bigger real-life houses, including Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, New York (also the location for the 1970s horror film House of Dark Shadows) and Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire (once home to Lord Byron - who also gets a mention!).

Newstead Abbey

When I wrote the book, I'd recently moved into one of the first houses on a new estate and for the next year I effectively lived on a building site. This probably influenced my decision to make Aidan a builder!

Like Agatha in You Make It Feel Like Christmas, my grandmother was heavily into crafting. I remember her making me jewellery out of rose hips, and jack-'o-lanterns out of turnips - they were super-scary! - and Christmas decorations out of real holly, ivy and fir cones, which she'd sprinkle with glitter or spray gold (this was the 80s!). My grandmother also told me the stories behind the traditions of decorating our houses with greenery, and the legend of Balder and Loki.

In You Make It Feel Like Christmas the Holly family have an heirloom box of decorations going back to the 1960s - so did my mother. Earlier in the story, when Nick decorates his tree with some very unusual baubles, he explains to Beth how much they mean to him. This is something that is also important to me. I've collected the decorations for my own tree over many years and every one has a story behind it.

Lucy's experience of driving through a snowstorm happened to me! Hearing the sound of compacted ice scrape the underside of my car is not one I'd care to repeat! 

Ophelia's fabulous high fruit, low sugar mince pies are based on my own recipe.

And the Holly family's usual Christmas - dinner at lunchtime, an afternoon spent watching the Christmas movie on TV, eating leftovers and Quality Street, and playing Death-by-Scrabble?

I wonder where I got that idea from?

Related Posts:

A Very Marley Christmas

How Grandma Invented my Family's Christmas

Marley's Marvellous Mincemeat

Newstead Abbey: Lords Behaving Badly

Get Noted

How I Found the 'Write' Inspiration

Have you ever read a book that you loved so much, that as soon as you finished it you had to go right back to the start and read it all over again? Have you ever read a book so many times that it eventually fell to bits? And when you went to buy a replacement, although the book had been reprinted several times, you had to have the version with the exact same cover as the one that had disintegrated? Reading a book just like that led to me becoming a writer.

I was 13 years old and on a family holiday to the Isle of Wight. It was the height of summer, so it rained and it rained and it rained. While my brothers disappeared off to the amusement arcade, I found myself in a little café/bookshop on my own, sat next to a carousel stacked with books by an author I’d never heard of: Jilly Cooper.

I know what you’re thinking: Jilly Cooper writes huge, glitzy, blockbusting novels about horses. But before Riders and Rivals, Jilly wrote a series of romantic comedies with girl’s names as the titles: Emily, Bella, Harriet, Prudence, Octavia and Imogen.

I handed over my pocket money in exchange for Emily and was soon transported to Scotland along with the heroine, who finds herself married to a brooding artist, spends the night in a haunted castle and is caught stealing roses in a see-through nightdress. I quickly handed over the remainder of my pocket money for the other five books and my parents didn’t see me for the rest of the holiday.

I think the reason I loved Jilly’s books so much was that they were hugely funny and didn’t take themselves too seriously. The heroines made the same mistakes as the rest of us, but rather than whinge about it they just cracked a joke and moved on. My favourite (the one that fell to bits) was Imogen. The heroine falls in love with a bad boy tennis player and is whisked off on holiday to the French Riviera, which at the time seemed a very long way from a rain-lashed Isle of Wight.

Three years later, for my English Literature exam, I had to give a presentation on my favourite books. My friends (being complete suck-ups) picked authors like Dickens and Orwell. I chose Bella, Octavia and Imogen. Unfortunately, my passion and enthusiasm for all things Cooper failed to impress the examining board and I passed with only a B+.

I didn’t mind. If you’re the kind of person who loves reading, sooner or later you’ll want to create stories of your own.

And that is exactly what I did.

This post was previously published on the Chick Lit Club blog

Links:

If you'd like to find out more about Jilly Cooper, click here for her website.

Related Posts:

Ten Authors Who Influenced Me

Five Books That Influenced Me

Spring Update

I haven't updated this blog since January. What's my excuse? Mostly I've been hard at work on my new book, which has not left much time for anything else.

A good chunk of my blog posts are about places I've visited (I often use them as inspiration for locations in my books). It's not quite so much fun to visit a ruined castle in the middle of winter - atmospheric, but very cold!

Now Spring is here, I've been revisiting some old favourites. So, no new blog posts - but plenty of photos!

Bodnant Garden

Bodnant is at its best during spring, when the azaleas are out, and I've visited twice this month.

You can read my previous blog post about Bodnant here.

Gwydir Castle

I've already blogged about Gwydir Castle too, but here are some photos from my most recent visit. It was a bit of a gloomy day but we did receive a warm welcome from the residents!

Instagram

Now I have a new smart phone, I'm more active on Instagram. You can see more of the places I've visited, as well as the books I'm reading, (and gratuitous photos of cake!) here.

Book Blog

And if you want to know what books I'm reading, check out my Instagram feed and my book blog.

Guest Blog Post

If you're a writer yourself, you might be interested in this guest post I wrote for Women Writers about creating characters:

How to Prevent Your Characters From All Sounding the Same.

New Book

And finally, the reason I'm not quite so active on my blog and social media, is that I'm hard at work on my new book. Trust Me I Lie has turned about to be just the first in a new series about Milla and Ben.

And I've made the mistake of entering into a word race with my friends Trisha Ashley and Juliet Greenwood. The last one to finish writing their new book buys the others a cream tea! And at the moment I'm the one that's losing!

So I'll see you later!

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Happy New Year!

How do you feel about New Year's resolutions? Do you ever make any? Do you stick to them?

When I was a teenager, I would make three resolutions every year without fail. And every year they would be pretty much the same: (1) Lose weight, (2) Save money, (3) Write a book. Every year I failed to keep them but at least it saved having to think up three more. And if that sounds familiar, I gave the same trait to Marina in Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - my first novel, published fifteen years ago this month.

I think it's about time my resolutions had an update! So, what is it that I'd really like to change if I could?

Well, I'd like to

Be more organised ...

As you may have noticed, I'm not the world's most organised person - and then last year my phone died, taking all my contacts and my calendar with it! Disaster! But I've learnt from this! I have a new phone - and I've now got back ups! All my contacts have been updated in a proper address book, everyone's birthday is listed in a birthday book and I have a back-up diary. So, fingers crossed!

Write more ... 

I'm a professional writer, that's what I do all day, right? Yes - along with critiques, reviews, blog posts, guest blog posts and social media for both myself and other authors, somehow the actual book writing is getting very squeezed. JK Rowling talks about how important it is to 'guard' precious writing time, and she is right. What can I do to fix it?

My friend, Trisha Ashley, belongs to a writers' group called The 500 Club with Elizabeth Gill and Leah Fleming. Every day they agree to email each other once they've written 500 words. Isn't that a great idea? It's certainly easier to achieve than 1000 words, and the words soon mount up. I'm going to give it a go - and record my progress in my back-up diary!

Try to leave the house occasionally ...

It is easy when you're self-employed to forget to have any 'me' time. A couple of years back I was working from 7.00 am to 9.00 pm, seven days a week, and all I achieved was to make myself ill. Besides, if I don't meet new people, visit new places and have new experiences, how will I find anything new to write about?

Yes, that's me,
halfway up the Eiffel Tower with my daughter

So there you have it. Those are my resolutions for this year, how about you?

Once More Unto The Bookstore (or, how I accidentally ended up with a book blog)

I've always loved books. I started with my mother's Enid Blyton collection and some great big books of fairy tales from the 1920s/30s, which I originally believed had belonged to my father but now I think they were probably my grandmother's. (You can read more about the books which influenced me as a writer here.)

I devoured every book I could find, some quite unsuitable for my age; I read Shirley Conran and Jackie Collins while I was still at school. On one occasion I remember borrowing a book from the school library and taking it back the next day, and the teacher refusing to believe I could have possibly read it so quickly. I felt quite offended!

Of course the thing about reading a good book is that I immediately want to tell everyone about it - how great it was and why they really should read it themselves right now. Although the drawback to that is I'd end up having to loan out my own precious copy and, as you know, I've never been great at sharing. The other drawback is that most of the people I know in real life don't read the kind of books I like. So here I am, reading all these great books and having no one to tell ...

During the summer one of my Twitter friends, Terry Tyler, told me about her idea to encourage people who would not normally write a book review to post one on Amazon. You didn't need your own book blog, or be any kind of professional or regular reviewer, to take part. To help spread the word, the reviews were hashtagged on Twitter as #August Reviews and promoted by other book bloggers, including Rosie Amber. And I gave Terry a whole load of reasons why I couldn't take part:

(1) I'm a writer.

(2) I know too many other writers. 

(3) I could never give another writer a one star review (which I might be likely to do, as I'm far too honest for my own good).

(4) I've never been able to get on with Goodreads.

(5) I love reading books and having to write a review afterwards would be too much like doing homework.

Ironically, last month I needed to teach myself Wordpress for another project. I had to set up a new blog and blog about something. What could I blog about? Books, obviously!

September turned into October and I went through my Kindle to dig out all the spooky books I could find, intending to read them in the weeks leading up to Halloween. Mainly because I have a really bad habit of downloading cheap and free books, and then not reading them. (Any author reading this, and thinking of running a free promotion, bear that in mind - people are more like to read your book if they've paid for it!) 

As I read each book I wrote a review - and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. When the Wordpress project came to an end I was loathe to let my new blog go. So I moved it over to Blogger and carried on for a bit, just to see if I could.

If you want to check out the new blog, it's called Once More Unto The Bookstore. I'm only reviewing books I've enjoyed and that I've bought myself, because I'm a writer not a book blogger. If you're interested to know what I'm reading, I'd love to see you over there. And if not, this blog will still carry on as usual with me talking about myself.

Some things never change.

Related Posts:

Ten Authors Who Influenced Me

Five Recommended Reads for Chocolate Lovers

Five Books Which Romanced Me

Five Books Which Chilled Me

Five Books Which Influenced Me

Why I Love My Kindle

Never miss a post! See that little box in the left-hand column, near the top, that says 'Follow by Email'? If you add your email address, you'll receive my latest blog post almost as soon as I've written it.

Images Copyright: Shutterstock (girl reading) and Fotolia (book)

How to Write a Guest Blog Post

If you’re a writer, sooner or later someone will ask you to contribute a guest post to their blog. If you’re a savvy writer with a book to promote, you will have identified bloggers likely to be interested in a guest post months ago, and pitched them accordingly. If you’re traditionally published, the publisher's marketing department will have hopefully arranged this for you, so all you have to do is write the thing. Simple, eh?

No? Oh all right then, here are ten tips to get you started:

Read the Blog!

Obvious, yes? Why? Because it helps you judge the style and tone of the post you're about to write. It’s no good pitching a piece about your dark erotica novel to a book blogger who only posts about sunny romantic comedies. Nor will readers of a book blog be much interested in a post about the mechanics of writing, unless they are writers themselves – it’s a bit like a magician explaining how their tricks are done. Keep the ‘how-to-write’ posts for the writers’ blogs.

Check the Requirements

Are you expected to write about a certain subject or theme? How many words do they want? As a guide, 600 to 1,000 words is the average length of a blog post. If you write something longer, remember to break it up with sub-titles or bullet points. (See: Ten and a Half Things We’ve Learned About Blogging). And, most importantly, when is the post needed by?

Stick to the Deadline

But if you have a really, really good reason for failing to keep to the deadline, ensure you give the blogger as much advance notice as possible, so they can fill the slot with something else. If you get to choose your own deadline, pick a date around the publication of your book.

Showcase Your Voice

The structure of a blog post is somewhere between an article and a letter to a friend. Whatever you’re writing about, it should sound like you speaking, not Wikipedia. You want people to read the post and think, ‘I enjoyed that. I wonder what their book is like?’

So Don’t Forget to Mention Your Book!

You are there to promote yourself as a nice, friendly author who’s written a great book, remember?

But Don’t Make It All About You

Think about what the reader can ‘take away’ from your post. Keywords here: informative, entertaining, amusing. It’s a waste of time writing a post that’s only about a book no one has had the chance to read. If your book is set in a real location, write about the location. If your character is a police detective, and you were once a police detective, write about that. The post should work out at 75% about the subject that inspired your book, to 25% actual detail about the book. Don’t waffle on about nothing. OK, it’s ‘only’ a blog post – but it should have a point! (And preferably a beginning, middle and conclusion too).

Plan Ahead

Try jotting down a list of subjects you can potentially blog about while you’re actually writing your book. For my most recent novel, Trust Me I Lie, I blogged about the true confessions of an author on social media, the enduring appeal of fairy tales, and why I love 'unlikeable' heroines – all of which are connected to the themes in my book.

Make the Blogger’s Life Easier

When you submit your post, remember to attach an up-to-date photo of yourself and a clear image of your book. Also include, either as part of the post or in a separate file, a short by-line, a longer biography (let the blogger choose which they will use), and links to your website/blog/social media accounts, including where your books can be bought. If you don’t do this, the blogger will either leave the information out or copy a bio from Amazon/a social media site that might be out-of-date. But make sure the file sizes are not so big they’ll fill the blogger’s inbox. That is not the way to make friends!

Don’t Be a ‘Difficult Author’

It’s your responsibility to ensure your post has been proofread, any stated facts are correct and it is in every way perfect. Also accept that the blogger is completely within their rights to edit the post for length, take out anything they consider might get them sued, or even reject it completely.

Promote the Post!

Don’t leave the entire promotion of the blog post to the blogger! They’ve been kind enough to host you on their blog and given their time free of charge. The least you can do is share the post across social media and visit the blog to check for, and answer, any comments.

If your post is popular, you’ll be invited back. Who knows, you might even discover you enjoy writing blog posts so much you’ll start a blog of your own …

This post previously appeared on Novelistas Ink.

8 Tips for Writing in Cafés

It's the summer holidays, and while my children are no longer at that age where they expect to be entertained every minute of the day, there is that expectation that mum will be the one driving them to where they expect to be entertained every minute of the day. Which is how I found myself working from a café for two mornings last week, instead of my nice snug study.

It certainly brought back memories. When the children were younger I would regularly take them to one of those indoor play centres. They would go crazy sliding through twisty plastic tunnels and getting lost in ball pits, and I'd drink lots of coffee and write. Much of Breathless was written this way - but it did help that I'm the kind of person who can screen out background noise as I work!

But even I was surprised at how much I managed to achieve last week. I'm not sure if it was the coffee, a different environment or just being away from the Internet - probably the latter! So if you feel the need to get away for a few hours, just to write, here are my tips:

(1) Choose a café where you are already known, or one that's part of a large chain where you'll blend in with everyone else.

(2) Go during a quiet time so you're not seat hogging, and sit in a quiet area so you're less likely to be disturbed or asked if you're writing a book - although this is a good opportunity to hone your elevator pitch!

(3) Order plenty of drinks to keep the staff happy enough that they won't turf you out, but don't go mad because it'll get expensive. Preferably, use a café that has a loyalty card scheme - after a few visits you'll get a free drink!

(4) Sit facing the room unless you want people reading your draft sex scenes over your shoulder. There's no greater temptation than an open laptop. 

(5) If you're the kind of person who can't write in a noisy environment, try revising or proof-reading instead. In the old days I used to cart around a huge A4 lever arch file with my manuscript in it, now I copy my work onto a Kindle. Alternatively, just print out a few chapters.

(6) Consider using a (shock horror) notebook and pen. A notebook doesn't need charging, you don't have to worry about it being damaged and it's far more portable. But take more than one pen, in case it runs out, and ensure that it's comfortable to write with.

(7) Don't expect to write perfect prose. In fact, don't expect to write anything at all. Start off writing notes, like a long synopsis. With any luck you'll find the notes will get longer and turn into snatches of dialogue or description and then whole scenes. Before you know it, you'll have drafted an entire chapter.

(8) But if you find writing fiction in a café doesn't work for you, try something else - outline a new story, or write a blog post or article instead.

And if all else fails, get out your camera. You never know when all those Instagrammed coffee shots are going to come in handy ...

Related Posts:

A Room of One's Own
Getting Noted
My Writing Process
Seeking Inspiration
Where I Write (written for Novelistas Ink)


Never miss a post! See that little box in the left-hand column, near the top, that says 'Follow by Email'? If you add your email address, you'll receive my latest blog post almost as soon as I've written it.

5 Random Things From My Desk

For this week's blog post I thought I'd write something completely different.    

I should be writing my new novel but yesterday afternoon I ended up tidying my desk instead (expert procrastinator, remember?) and, along with a forgotten bar of chocolate (still within sell-by date: yay!), I found a selection of random objects that to anyone else might seem totally weird.

Reno from Final Fantasy

I won Reno in a competition organised by one of my favourite authors, Anne Stuart. Anne used Reno as inspiration for one of her own characters in a book called Fire and Ice. She's blogged about it here. He usually sits on my tub of paperclips. I love him.

I've also got a Ninja Minion, a glow-in-the-dark polar bear and a large pink frog wearing a crown, but we won't go into that.

Hotel Business Card

This is an advert for the Waterton Park Hotel, where my husband stayed about a year or so ago. He had the  idea the photo would appeal to me because it's of a Palladian house built on an island in the middle of a lake, and he thought I might want to put it in one of my books! It was one of those really strange coincidences because he was unaware I'd just created a similar house (Hartfell) in Trust Me Lie - although in my book the house is a very modern one.

Postcard of Marilyn Monroe

I found this old postcard when I was sorting through some old photographs. It was sent to me over 30 years ago by my school-friend Tracey. She had recently moved away and would write to me every week with a Marilyn Monroe postcard - one of my favourite actresses. I kept all the postcards but this one somehow came adrift from the others and now sits on my desk.



Packet of Forget-Me-Not Seeds

If my friend Sophie Claire is reading this, she will not be pleased with me! These seeds were part of a goody bag from the launch of her book, My Forget-Me-Not Ex. Part of the goody bag included a cute little terracotta pot to plant them in, so I had no excuse not to do so.

Sorry, Sophie! I'll sow them soon, honest!




The English Housewife in the Seventeenth Century

by Christina Hole (1953)

I have lots of modern paperbacks piled up on my desk but this is a book picked up on my most recent trip to a second-hand book fair. I love second-hand book fairs, particularly the really old books with interesting inscriptions and pretty bindings.

But I bought this book because I love history but I don't know much about the seventeenth century other than the events of the Civil War. Here's an extract:

"Cottage women could not afford many candles, and for all ordinary purposes they relied upon rushlights which they made themselves ... The rushes grew wild in the water-meadows and under hedges, and the grease in which they were coated came from the scourings of the frying pan and the cooking pot. They were gathered in summer while they were green and kept in water until the housewife was ready to make the lights. Then the green rind was peeled off, leaving a narrow strip along one side. The next step was  to bleach the reeds by putting them out of doors for two or three nights and letting them soak in the dew, and afterwards they were dried in the sun. Then they were laid in long iron pans filled with melted grease, and when they were thoroughly coated and dried, they were hung in bark containers on the wall."

All that trouble to go to when you consider all we do now is reach out and click on an electric light!

Now, what weird and wonderful things are lurking on your desk?

My desk: The tidy version
(for the untidy version you need to click here)

Related Posts: 

Where I Write (for Novelistas Ink)

A Room of One's Own

Never miss a post! See that little box in the left-hand column, near the top, that says 'Follow by Email'? If you add your email address, you'll receive my latest blog post almost as soon as I've written it.