Guest Post With Kirsty Ferry

This week, I'm very pleased to welcome author, Kirsty Ferry, onto the blog to answer some questions about her writing and her latest novel, Christmas of New Beginnings. It was published by Ruby Fiction on October 19th.

Kirsty, welcome! Please tell us a little about yourself and your writing.
Thank you for having me on your blog Jan! I’m Kirsty and I live in the northeast of England with my husband, son and aged Yorkie. I write for Choc Lit and, as of Christmas of New Beginnings, Ruby Fiction as well. Christmas of New Beginnings is a contemporary romantic comedy, all told in the heroine’s voice, and that’s why it’s a Ruby book.
 

I believe Christmas of New Beginnings is your sixth Christmas novel. Why do you think Christmas books are so popular with readers?
I think they are quite nice to escape with when you’re getting all stressed about Christmas. Also, they are a lovely way of beginning to feel festive and a good excuse to start on the mince pies early… I do think Christmas books which are part of a series are a nice way of reconnecting with the characters as well, and I’ve really enjoyed writing them too and seeing what my characters are getting up to in the festive period.
 
What was the inspiration for this book?
I wanted to do a fun, romantic comedy and I had already invented the village for my summer 2022 book – as I was writing that one, I realised a couple of characters might need a story of their own and I hadn’t got anything planned for Christmas 2021; so I went away and thought about it, and a Christmas book seemed like a really good way to introduce Padcock village and its inhabitants. I must apologise to the Tasting Panel – I’m sure I completely confused you all by submitting book number one in the series second. I hope you can forgive me!
 
Can you summarise your new novel in just a few sentences?
I can indeed. Cerys has relocated to Padcock and meets Edie and Sam on more or less her first day there. Edie and Cerys soon become great friends, and we find out more about Cerys’ budding relationship with Sam as she tells her story over five Christmases. Five years might seem a long time for them to get together, but as you will see, a few complications arise in the shape of Awful Belinda, who has her hooks well and truly into Lovely Sam for all the wrong reasons.

Do any of your family’s Christmas traditions appear in your novel?
Yes, the fact that there is a Christmas Eve carol service and Cerys goes there with her family and friends. We love to do that – we have a photograph of all our children over several years in the same spot outside the church and it was one of the things we very much missed doing in the non-Christmas of 2020. Also, that one of the things on Cerys and Edie’s agenda for having a fun Christmas is to eat their combined body weight in chocolate and drink a lot of fizzy wine. I can  - and do – do that!
 
When do you write best – are you a lark or an owl?
I am definitely more productive writing-wise in an afternoon or evening. I can certainly be a night owl if I’m really getting into it, and will often work quite late into the night. This feels like a great idea at the time, but it’s never such a great idea when I have to get up for work the next day.
 
Which is more important for you - plot or character?
Character, I think. The characters seem to drive the plot because they all develop their own personalities, and you just can’t put them in a situation they wouldn’t ‘work’ in. It helps that I don’t plot my books. They grow organically from a concept, so I’m quite flexible really when my characters take over and demand things. As a reader, I really have to like the characters I’m reading about as well. I’ve read some books which people have raved about, from some of my favourite authors – and have given up as I don’t like the characters and can’t root for them, no matter how hard I try.
 
Do you have a particular writing routine?
Not really. If I’m trying to finish something and have a deadline of sorts, the TV goes off at 9.00pm and I make a cup of tea and just crack on with it. It helps a bit if my husband is at work and my son is away at uni, because I can just type like a madwoman and nobody can distract me. Apart from the dog, who will try his utmost. I try to get a bit of time in during an afternoon if I’m not at my day job, but it doesn’t always work, and I’ve learned not to let it stress me out like it used to. The only person I’m putting pressure on is myself and I so don’t advocate that.
 
I’m amazed at how many novels you’ve written. What are you working on at present?
Nothing! I’ve just submitted the Christmas 2022 book, and I know I have two other books due out next year – the final one in the Schubert series (which I submitted a while ago), the summer book, which is the second in the Padcock series for Ruby, and the third will hopefully be the Christmas one if the panel pass it. I did quite a bit in lockdown. Although I worked from home all the way through, I’m part-time, so had four days a week to fill. I’m taking some downtime now to decide what I want to work on next, and am concentrating instead on getting a qualification in art. I failed my O level at school, and have always wanted to get an equivalent qualification, so I’m working towards my Level 2 NCFE in Arts. I’m doing it through the local Council’s Learning Skills, and have a lovely group I’m working with and a fab teacher. I’m also doing it at the same school I failed it at, which is rather surreal!
 
What would a reader expect when they pick up a Kirsty Ferry novel?
Ooooh – now you’re asking. I’d hope that they’d pick up a book where they invest in the characters and want to follow the series through to see what happens next. I usually pick a different pair to concentrate on romance-wise for each book, but do include the other characters in some way. A lot of my books are timeslip or dual timeline, but some are contemporary and some are simply quirky and fun. Something to appeal to lots of different readers, I hope! There’s often a mystery or secret to unravel, and a little bit of suspension of your disbelief is required as well. If you’re after Booker Prize-worthy stuff, or deep and meaningful literary fiction, you won’t get it from me. Rather, my hope is that you get a nice, feel-good story that leaves you feeling like a friend of the characters rather than simply just a reader.

A feel-good story that pulls you into the characters' world sounds really good to me. Thank you, Kirsty. I wish you good luck with Christmas of New Beginnings I and hope it flies. 

BLURB:

Not all festive wishes come true right away - sometimes it takes five Christmases...

Folk singer Cerys Davies left Wales for the South Downs village of Padcock at Christmas, desperate for a new beginning. And she ends up having plenty of those: opening a new craft shop-tea room, helping set up the village's first festive craft fair, and, of course, falling desperately in love with Lovely Sam, the owner of the local pub. It's too bad he's firmly in the clutches of Awful Brenda...

Perhaps Cerys has to learn that some beginnings take a while to... well, begin! But with a bit of patience, some mild espionage, a generous sprinkling of festive magic and a flock of pub-crashing sheep, could her fifth Christmas in Padcock lead to her best beginning yet?

BIO:

Kirsty Ferry is from the North East of England and lives there with her husband and son. She won the English Heritage/Belsay Hall National Creative Writing competition in 2009 and has articles and short stories published in various magazines. Her work appears in several anthologies, incorporating such diverse themes as vampires, crime, angels and more.

Kirsty loves writing ghostly mysteries and interweaving fact and fiction. The research is almost as much fun as writing the book itself, and if she can add a wonderful setting and a dollop of history, that's even better. 

Her day job involves sharing a building with an eclectic collection of ghosts, which can often prove rather interesting. 

For more information on Kirsty, you may visit:

SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS

Website: www.rosethornpress.co.uk

Blog: www.rosethornramblings.wordpress.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/kirsty_ferry

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/kirsty.ferry.author/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kirstyferry/?hl=en

BUYING LINKS for Christmas of New Beginnings: 

Amazon: Christmas of New Beginnings: A heart warming and uplifting Christmas romance eBook : Ferry, Kirsty: AmazonSmile: Books

To see all of Kirsty's books please visit:  Kirsty Ferry (choc-lit.com)

Thank you for reading. Do you agree with Kirsty about why Christmas novels are so popular? Do they help you escape from the stress of Christmas preparations? I'd love to know what you look for in a Christmas novel. Thanks.

You may also follow me on Twitter @JanBaynham and on my Jan Baynham Writer Facebook page.

To find out about all my books, please visit Jan Baynham Amazon Author page.  

 Guest Post with Anni Rose

This week I'm delighted to welcome another Choc Lit author onto the blog, Anni Rose. Anni's second book, A Recipe for Mr Perfect, was published on September 28th.

Anni, welcome!

Thank you, Jan, for inviting me onto your blog today as part of my blog tour for Recipe for Mr Perfect.

Please tell us a little about yourself and your writing.

I have always loved both reading and writing. As a child, I was always happiest losing myself in fictional worlds. I turned out numerous stories and recently when we were clearing out my mother’s house some of my earlier works made a reappearance. On leaving school, the need to earn a living sort of got in the way of any creative ambitions and I became an accountant where my only published work apart from regular financial reports was the employees’ handbook.

A local writing course and an encouraging group of writing friends re-ignited the fiction flame many years later and I went on to win or be short listed in a number of writing competitions and had short stories published in Writers Forum, My Weekly and Sophie King’s ‘How to Write your Life Story’.

These days I would describe my writing as modern romantic stories with a healthy dollop of humour thrown in and was delighted to be signed by Choc Lit this year. It really was a dream come true.

What inspired you to write Recipe for Mr Perfect?

Usually, I get an idea for a character first, but in this case, I used to take wedding photographs and the idea for Recipe for Mr Perfect started with an incident I witnessed while waiting at one Register Office for “my couple” to arrive. The wedding before was being photographed on a patch of grass next to the building. Believe me, compared to that, Darren and Leanne’s wedding was a very toned-down affair- what is it that’s said about truth being stranger than fiction.

Can you summarise your new novel in just a few sentences?

A romantic comedy about the friendship between three women who work together. Outside the office, they may each have a life of their own, but when each woman suffers a personal catastrophe, they can’t help but bring their problems to work. Are office relationships strong enough to help each other through their own crises? and who all find love when they least expect it.

Plotter or pantser?

I’d like to say I was a plotter. I like to have the beginning and the ending sorted out in my head before I start, but what normally happens is that once I start writing I go off at a tangent and end up somewhere quite different to where I expected.

Which is more important - plot or character?

I need to know who my characters are before I can start writing, once I know who they are, I find it easier to figure out how they will cope with whatever the plot throws at them. My plots are generally sparked by an idea, that can come from anything. Quite often it is a snatch of overheard conversation or even a misunderstanding.

On a more general note, do you have a particular writing routine?

Mornings normally start with a dog walk. I love that time and need it to get my head round the day ahead, what needs to be done, in terms of writing and life in general, once back, a cup of tea and I’m ready to get going. I am most productive in the mornings, sometimes I will get so involved in a storyline that I’ll keep going all day, but sometimes I just feel relieved when some words appear on the page.

What is the biggest compliment a reader could pay you after reading Recipe for Mr Perfect?

It’s still early days for me, so I’m always amazed when anyone says they’ve read my book. But I’ve had some lovely reviews; it’s so lovely to hear what readers think of books, I’m always happy when they say they enjoyed reading it, especially when it cheered them up or made them laugh. 

This is your second published novel and I know there are others on the way. What should readers expect when they pick up an Anni Rose book?

I am definitely a Happy-Ever-After writer, so hopefully readers will always be reasonably happy with the ending, in that everyone ends up where they should be! I like humour and try and make sure I include some in every novel.

What are you currently working on?

Now you’re asking! I have so many ideas at various stages of development. All my books are set around the fictional town of Redford but are standalone books, although some of the characters reappear in more than one. My third combines the heady world of probate research with the equestrian community and the one I am currently working on is about a registrar. Surely if you marry people every day then your own happiness must be guaranteed, mustn’t it? 

I know you are also a photographer. Do your pictures inspire scenes or plots in your writing or do you keep the two areas of expertise separate?

Not exactly and if I see something that I think will be useful, be that a landscape or an outfit, then quite often I take a quick picture. It’s so easy these days with a phone and I do take a huge amount of pictures, but the images I enjoy creating most at the moment are more abstract, something with multiple images, or slow exposure, that you can’t always see with the naked eye.

Thank you, Anni. I wish you lots of success with your new novel.

BLURB FOR Recipe for Mr Perfect: 

How do you know if you’ve found Mr Perfect or Mr Perfectly Useless? 

Jess Willersey realised things with Martin weren’t perfect, but it’s still a shock when he leaves. Is she destined to a singleton lifestyle with only her cat for company, or could a certain hat-astrophic encounter with a handsome stranger at a rather unusual wedding signal a turning point?

At the same time, Jess’s best friends and work colleagues, Maggie and Sarah, are going through their own personal disasters – from shocking family revelations to dodgy dating app-related drama.

To top it all off, it seems that the handsome stranger won’t remain a stranger – and when Neil Jackson turns up at the friends’ offices with yet another bombshell, how long will he stay ‘Mr Perfect’ in Jess’s eyes?

BIO:

Born and raised in Berkshire, Anni emigrated to Wiltshire six years ago, where she lives with her husband, sister, two dogs, a cat and Midge, the grey speckled hen.

Away from writing, Anni can usually be found behind a camera, walking the dogs, enjoying one of her husband's curries or sister's bakery treats.

Links on Amazon/other platforms:

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3lqwepf

Apple: https://apple.co/3BpysL9

Kobo: https://bit.ly/3iM3p4H

Google Books: https://bit.ly/3uVCGYv

Goodreads: https://bit.ly/3AmzplN

Website: https://bit.ly/3AsYFHc

Author Links:

Twitter: @AnniRoseAuthor

Facebook: www.facebook.com/AnniRoseAuthor

Website: https://anniroseauthor.co.uk

Instagram: anniroseauthor

Thank you for reading. Do you keep hobbies or your other job separate or do you include them in your fictional writing in any way? I'd love it if you left a comment. Thank you. 

You may also follow me on Twitter @JanBaynham and on my Jan Baynham Writer Facebook page.

To find out about all my books, please visit Jan Baynham Amazon Author Page. 

 

 Guest Post with Evonne Wareham

Today, I'm delighted to welcome writing friend, Evonne Wareham back to the blog. Evonne is an established author published by Choc Lit of which my publisher, Ruby Fiction, is an imprint. We are both members of the local Cariad Chapter of the RNA and she lives not far from me. Her latest novel, A Villa in Portofino, was published on September 21st.

Welcome, Evonne! Congratulations on the publication of your novel last month. I'm looking forward to hearing more of 'the story behind the story'. Over to you.

Many thanks to Jan for inviting me on to the blog today as part of the blog tour for the third in my romantic suspense series set on the Riviera – A Villa in Portofino.

Writing the Perfect book.

Is there such a thing as a perfect book?

Of course there is, it’s the one in your head when you first sit down with an almost blank piece of paper with two magic words at the top “Chapter One”

If any author has ever managed to get beyond this delightful mirage and write the thing, I’ve never yet met them. If they do exist it would be wonderful to know the secret.

For the rest of us, well, there’s the story you think you are writing and the story you actually get. Not at all the same thing. Once you have begun to write, the book has its own ideas, and as for the characters ... These are people you have created. Surely you should be able to make them behave? Well – all I can say is – Good luck with that.

I’m not claiming that my latest book, A Villa in Portofino, was ever going to come close to the perfect book. I hope it’s the best book that I and my editor can make it, but I have enough experience now to know that the thing will change in the making. And actually this one did, quite a bit.

First off it was going to have a distinctly gothic tone – neglected villa, overgrown garden, mysterious legacy from unknown relative. That lasted about five minutes when I realised that all that darkness and gloom was not going to survive an encounter with the Italian sunshine. And I do like my sunshine. The gothic idea is still in there. Maybe it will emerge one day as a Halloween novella? 

Along with the gothic setting the book was going to have an element of gas-lighting. The term refers to psychological manipulation attempting to make a person think they are insane – a classic creepy horror device. I was going to lean a little more heavily towards unexpected accidents and disturbing vandalism – designed to make Megan want to give up her legacy. This would allow the villainess to buy the villa from her. It didn’t take long for that one to bite the dust either. Organising all that mayhem was going to require a henchman or two and the persona I had in mind for the villainess was of a fastidious and snooty woman who just wouldn’t play into that setup. Gabriella was already taking shape on the page and she would operate in a much more devious way. She has her henchmen, but not the kind who organise accidents - far too unsubtle and quite beyond her to arrange with the domestic setup I had created for her.

In the first plan too the reader would see the villainess but not know who she was. For that I had to create three or four possible female candidates, one of whom would be revealed at the end. That hung on for about the first 10,000 words, by which time I realised that creating even three women with any depth was going to take far too much attention away from the villa and from Megan and Gideon. Back to the drawing board. The other women survived and thrived though, in supporting roles, as Bianca and Alcinda, who became Megan’s friends and Signora Bertolo, Gideon’s landlady. Gabriella reigned supreme as villainess and developed in ways that I had never foreseen.

The perfect book? Or even the book I intended to write? I don’t think so. The restoration of the villa and its garden and Megan and Gideon’s love affair were constants, but the story had its own way in quite a lot of the rest. It doesn’t really matter, as long as the readers enjoy it.

Thank you, Evonne. That's made me want to read your book even more. It's already downloaded onto my Kindle and I can't wait to escape to Italy and immerse myself in Megan and Gideon's story.

Evonne is an award winning Welsh author of romantic suspense - more crime and dead bodies than your average romance. She likes to set her book in her native Wales, or for a touch of glamorous escapism, in favourite holiday destinations in Europe. She is a Doctor of Philosophy and an historian, and a member of both the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Crime Writers’ Association.

Twitter  https://twitter.com/evonnewareham

Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/evonnewarehamauthor/

Website  www.evonnewareham.com

Blog  www.evonneonwednesday.blogspot.com

 A Villa in Portofino

Third in the ‘Riviera’ Series of romantic suspense: love and mayhem in the sunshine of the French and Italian Riviera

From chambermaid to "got it made"...

When hotel cleaning temp and poetry academic Megan Morrison finds out she's inherited an Italian villa and small fortune from her estranged great-great-aunt Olwen, she doesn't quite know how to react. That is, until she travels to Portofino to see Il Guardino delle Rose for herself. Then she knows exactly what she has to do: live there!

Enchanted by the beauty of the house and gardens, fascinated by the history, and more than a little intrigued by handsome hired landscape gardener Gideon West, Megan can immediately see the villa's potential as a dream home.

But having long-lost relatives sometimes means long-lost secrets - and it seems that Olwen had plenty of those. Could these secrets and a jealous obsession be powerful enough to drive Megan out of the house she's already fallen in love with?

Available as an e-book from

Kindle https://www.amazon.co.uk/Villa-Portofino-Evonne-Wareham-ebook/dp/B09CDPWB98/r?tag=smarturl-gb-21

Apple https://books.apple.com/gb/book/a-villa-in-portofino/id1580723491?id=1580723491&ign-itsct=books_box_link&ign-itscg=30200

Barnes and Noble/Nook https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-villa-in-portofino-evonne-wareham/1139997714?ean=2940162375562

Kobo  https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/a-villa-in-portofino

Google playbooks  https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Evonne_Wareham_A_Villa_in_Portofino?id=JylAEAAAQBAJ&gl=GB

Goodreads Reviews  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58773338-a-villa-in-portofino?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=1t6hnjlD7p&rank=6

Thank you for reading. Have your stories changed from the initial idea to the one that readers find behind the cover of the published book? Is there a constant that was there from the very beginning? I'd love it if you commented. Thank you.

You may also follow me on Twitter @JanBaynham and on my Jan Baynham Writer Facebook page.

To find about all my books, please visit Jan Baynham Amazon Author Page. 

 

 Guest Post with Sarah Edghill

This week I am delighted to welcome onto the blog author, Sarah Edghill, whose debut novel, A Thousand Tiny Disappointments, has just been published by Bloodhound books. 

Welcome to the blog, Sarah. Please introduce yourself and tell us a little about your writing.

My name is Sarah Edghill and I have been making up stories since I was old enough to hold a pencil. When I was seven, my parents bought me a mustard-coloured Petite Junior typewriter and it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Luckily none of my works of fiction from those early days remain in public circulation. Having finished a politics degree at university, I spent the summer doing work experience on four different women’s magazines, after which one of the editors offered me a job. I spent my career working as a journalist for a wide variety of magazines and newspapers, before turning my hand to fiction about seven years ago.

Can you summarise your novel in just a few sentences?

It’s the story of Martha, whose mother dies unexpectedly and leaves her home to a stranger.
Juggling a difficult home life and getting no support from her uninterested husband or arrogant brother, Martha is left facing the ultimate moral dilemma: should she carry out her mother’s last wishes, or destroy the evidence so no one will ever know?

Perhaps, you’d like to tell us about the journey to publication. 

It’s been a long one! About seven years ago, my husband enrolled me on a weekend Guardian Masterclass on fiction writing, which was inspirational. In just two days, the tutor gave us a lightning-fast overview of everything from plot development and characterisation, to dialogue and point of view – I came away with reams of useful notes. A year later I got a place on the six-month Faber Academy Novel Writing course, and by that time I was working on my second book (the first was truly dire). After the course ended, I began submitting that book to agents, with no success, and started writing something else. That third book got some interest from agents, but no offers, so then I wrote something else! By the time a publisher picked up A Thousand Tiny Disappointments, earlier this year, I had six previous novels tucked away in a drawer, three of which had been out on submission. Over the years I’d got quite knowledgeable about the submission process: I’d done a lot of research into literary agencies and which authors they had on their books. I usually started by going out to about a dozen agents, then – as the rejections trickled in – I’d send out to a few more. I had many requests for full manuscripts, and plenty of kind, personal rejections, but never made it any further than that. The breakthrough came when I started submitting directly to publishers. I’d had positive feedback from editors at Bookouture and Avon, then saw a tweet by a writer who was published by Bloodhound Books, saying how fantastic they’d been. I rattled off a submission and less than a fortnight later they got back to me and said they wanted to publish A Thousand Tiny Disappointments.

The characters in your novel appear very real and you successfully get into their heads, especially Martha’s. Did they come first or the story you wanted to tell? 

The idea came first: how would a daughter react, if her mother – to whom she’d always been close - effectively disinherited her? I then thought a lot about Martha and her relationship with her mother, Judith, and began to jot down notes. I would tap out a few hundred words on my laptop, then go away and mull on it, coming back to write some more the next day. So, from that initial starting point, I guess the plot and characters developed in tandem. Once I had Martha and Judith, the other characters began to fit in around them. I knew I had to throw an awful lot at Martha: make her life as difficult as possible and put her in a really tricky position. So, her husband and brother were important because they needed to make her life hard. Joe, her son, has a small part - in that he can’t personally influence events - but actually he was a vital character, because he shows us so much about Martha – what she’s been through, what she’s struggling with, how her life may pan out.

How would you like your readers to feel when they’ve finished reading your book?

I hope they’ll feel I’ve given them a satisfying ending. Some readers may think Martha lets herself be pushed around by her brother and her husband – and even by her mother. But she goes on a traumatic journey, and she emerges from it stronger, wiser and happier. She finds out who her friends are, and she discovers a lot about herself in the process. So, although this isn’t a typical ‘happy ending’ book – I hope readers will ultimately find it uplifting.

How much planning did you do for the novel?

I always used to be a pantser – flying by the seat of your pants – so I’d come up with an idea and feel so excited by it that I’d start writing with no real idea where I was going. That meant I got stuck regularly, not knowing what should happen, although invariably the next bit of the plot would eventually occur to me and I’d be off again. I wrote three books that way, and didn’t have much success with any of them. Probably because they needed a serious structural edit! But with A Thousand Tiny Disappointments, I planned the whole novel first, starting by writing a general ramble (which included character information, plot points and even snippets of dialogue). I then went through that and extended it. By the time I started writing, I had a detailed chapter breakdown. I still made changes as I went along, but the general plot was there for me to follow.

© Victoria Strauss

On a more general note, do you have a particular writing routine?

Sadly not. When I’m immersed in a particular project, I slip away and write whenever I have a spare moment and can escape from the domestic chaos. But some days there is no spare time. My youngest child is 17, so there isn’t endless parenting to be done, but I still do some journalism and work on an art magazine, plus we have two holiday cottages, and I do the cleaning and admin for those. So, there are days when no writing gets done, and other days when I have several empty hours stretching ahead of me – which I love!

What can readers look forward to next?

I started writing a new book at the end of 2020 and finished it early this year. I sent it out on submission a few months ago and was delighted when I was offered representation by Hannah Todd at the Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency. This new book, Last Orders, is very different to A Thousand Tiny Disappointments – much lighter, possibly ‘cosy’, although I’m not sure I really like that description. But I’m currently working on the novel with Hannah and we’re hoping to submit it to publishers in the next couple of months.

What is the best piece of advice you’d like to give to a new writer?

Develop the skin of a rhino. Writing is full of disappointments – but that doesn’t mean you haven’t got talent and will never succeed. But it’s hard to keep believing in yourself when you get a stream of rejections, and it’s soul-destroying when you don’t even hear back from many of the agents or publishers you approach. But resilience is essential in this business, so pick yourself up again, brush yourself off and keep going.

Congratulations on getting an agent! What does that mean to you as a debut writer?

It means so much! It’s what I’ve been working towards for the last few years and I’ve been close on so many occasions, with agents sending me kind, personal rejections for books I’ve submitted, but saying they weren’t quite right for their lists, or they weren’t sure they could sell the book in the current climate. I’d long got past the stage of being excited when I saw an agent’s name appear in my email inbox – I was conditioned to expect it would be another rejection. When Hannah contacted me, things moved quickly: she emailed me on the Tuesday to say she’d just started at the agency and Madeleine had passed my book to her. We had a phone conversation on the Wednesday and I signed the contract the next morning. It was extraordinary, and almost surreal after I’d been waiting for exactly this, for such a long time. I was high as a kite for days and I’m now hugely looking forward to working with Hannah on my book. She is so positive and enthusiastic and has some great ideas for how we move forward.

If you were asked to tell us one thing about ‘the other me’, what would that be?

I drink too much wine and eat too much chocolate, but – to make all that possible – I do loads of exercise: tennis, netball, cycling, plus dog walking. There is nothing to beat the buzz you get from cardiovascular exercise. And afterwards, all the alcohol and chocolate can be guilt-free!

Thank you, Sarah. It's been fascinating to learn more about you and your writing. As you know, I loved A Thousand Tiny Disappointments and I hope the novel flies!

 

BLURB FOR ‘A Thousand Tiny Disappointments’:

Life is never perfect, but sometimes it’s just not fair.

Martha is being pulled in too many directions, trying to be a good mother, a loving wife and a dutiful daughter. Despite it all, she’s coping.

But then her elderly mother is rushed to hospital and dies unexpectedly, and it exposes the cracks in the life Martha is struggling to hold together. When she discovers her mother has left her house to a stranger, she’s overwhelmed by grief and hurt.

Getting no support from her disinterested husband or arrogant brother, Martha makes some bad decisions.

If she was a good daughter, she would abide by her mother’s final wishes. If she was a good daughter, she wouldn’t destroy the evidence.

BIO:  

Sarah Edghill worked as a journalist for many years, before turning to fiction. She attended the Faber Academy Novel Writing course, then went on to write two mediocre novels before a third (much better one) caught the eye of the judges and won the Katie Fforde Contemporary Fiction Award at Stroud Literary Festival. Since then she has written more novels and has been long- and short-listed in several short story and novel competitions and won 1^st prize in the National Association of Writers’ Groups Short Story Competition. She lives in Gloucestershire with her husband, three (mostly grown-up) children and far too many animals. Her debut novel, A Thousand Tiny Disappointments was published by Bloodhound Books in September 2021. 

Links on Amazon/other platforms:   mybook.to/tinydisappointments

Blog and website: www.sarahedghill.com

FB Author page: Sarah Edghill Author

Twitter: @EdghillSarah

Instagram: Sarah.Edghill

Thank you for reading. Do you agree with Sarah's advice for a new writer? What would you add? 

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See my books on Jan Baynham Author Page on Amazon.