Tag: Life

An interview with Gwen Kirkwood

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Welcome, Gwen!

Your warm-hearted family sagas are based in rural Scotland. When and where did your love affair with Scotland’s beautiful country and history begin?

I have three Scottish grandparents so I had a yearning to see Scotland for myself. I came to Dumfriesshire to work as a milk officer, inspecting dairy farms. The work was not as I had expected but the people were very friendly and I loved the warmth of the red sandstone buildings and the beautiful landscapes with fresh green hills and glens and lots of trees. I have never wanted to leave, especially not after I met and married my husband, a Scottish dairy farmer.

Are any of your wonderful characters based on real people or are they all purely of your own creation?

My characters are all fictional but I think writers must be influenced by people they have met, even if it is only subconsciously. I had a wonderful mother-in-law so a few of my older characters may have some of her kindness and wisdom. We can read of bad characters every day in the newspapers. I have three adult children who keep me up to date with the opinions of their generation. My grandchildren are of varying ages and I often include children. Writers keep on learning and developing and so do the characters but I have never written about a real person.

You took a six year career break. When you returned to your writing did you feel as if your work had changed at all?

I don’t think my writing changed. I still wrote another series of four in a family saga following the generations. My books are shorter, 100,000 words or less now, but that is due to the policy of different publishers.

To date, what has been the most memorable or significant event within your writing career?

I had written four short romances but it was a tremendous boost to my confidence when an agent sold my first long saga to Headline in a very short time. A good editor can have a big influence and Jane Morpeth helped me a lot.

Secondly, I rarely enter competitions but after a long gap from writing it was a lovely surprise to win the Elizabeth Goudge trophy in 2000 when it was resurrected by the RNA for the millennium. It was judged by Richard Lee of the Historical Novel Society.

What top tip would you give new writers wanting to become published writers in today’s market place?

Persevere. Try to write a little every day, even if it is only a couple of sentences. Keep a notepad handy. Consider the strengths and weaknesses of your characters, or improve your plot, while you are travelling, ironing, peeling the vegetables. Thinking time is important too. Listen to the advice of agents and editors, not friends. If you do self-publish pay a reputable copy-editor to check your work first.

You have seen many changes within the publishing industry. What do you think of the new emphasis on social networking and Internet presence?

Honestly? I hate it – well some of the time! I want to be left in peace to write, BUT writing used to be an isolated occupation so I am pleased we now have opportunities for keeping in touch with other writers, getting and giving help, as well as marketing. Networking has become essential so I do my best, but it can take up a lot of time.

Your new book Darkest Before the Dawn has a very strong cover. Can you tell us something about this novel and what inspired you to write it?

This is the fifth in a series of 5 novels beginning with Dreams of Home at the end of World War II. Darkest Before the Dawn brings the series up to present day with the third generation of the Caraford family. Two of the characters are quite young with problems belonging to their generation so it could almost be a young adult novel, although I did not set out to make it that way. However, it also brings farming up to date with robots for milking cows, arguments between the generations about changes, as well as an unexpected and rather satisfying love affair for two of the older characters.

Darkest Before the Dawn

Joe Lennox becomes bitter and deranged and blames Billy Caraford when his son is killed in a car accident, but Billy has lost his best friend and is badly injured himself. Despite the misgivings of his parents he is still determined to be a farmer. He summons his courage to go to university but privately he regards himself as a cripple now. He is convinced no woman could love him or want to be his wife.

Kimberley is orphaned when her father dies. She moves to Scotland with her aunt but she is nervous about changing schools until Billy helps her find new friends. Both Kim and her aunt become involved in the affairs of the Caraford family and as Kim grows into a lovely young woman she finds the strength of character to confront problems and fight for the life and the love she craves.

What is next for Gwen Kirkwood?

I am going back to the 1800’s and this will be a single novel rather than a series. It has less emphasis on farming but is still set in Scotland. No title yet.

My thanks for taking the time to answer the questions in such an honest and open way. I shall look forward to reading Darkest Before the Dawn when it is available later this month!

More by Gwen:

Felicity Moon

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Felicity Moon KEC

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UK Readers: Kindle / iTunes / Nook

Early nineteenth century North Yorkshire, England.

Felicity Moon strikes the Lord of the manor in self defence and is forced to leave his household. Squire Moon, her father, is in gaol charged with bank-rolling smugglers and storing contraband. Felicity has one last chance to save herself from ruin in the form of a reference to Mr Lucas Packman, a man her father dislikes intensely. She has an impossibly stark choice to make: trust Packman or her obey her father. 

 

An interview with Christina Jones

Published on by valerieholmesauthor2 Comments

A very warm welcome to this month’s award-winning author, Christina Jones.

Katie Fforde described An Enormously English Monsoon Wedding as “warm, witty and wonderful”. I love the title of this book.  What inspired this novel?

My editor suggested that I should write a summery/weddingy/villagey book as the first in a new series of village-based stories. It threw me a bit to start with, as most of the weddingy themes have been covered a zillion times – but as my daughter recently had a fusion wedding (hers went wonderfully smoothly, I must add – nothing like poor Erin’s!) so I’d learnt a lot about marrying together two totally different religions and styles of wedding ceremony. I knew I had to use the experience – so An Enormously English Monsoon Wedding is the happy result!

What do you consider is at the heart of your novels that makes them so appealing?

Probably their ordinariness (is that a word??). I write about normal people doing normal jobs, nothing and no-one high-powered or high-flying. I also include all ages, genders, and all other diversities. Something for everyone – like real life. They live in small rural communities, everyone knows everyone else, and I suppose it’s all a bit cosy. My whole aim with my books is to create warmth, security, happiness, a few laughs, escapism, and hopefully a massive dollop of feel-good factor. Like everyone else, my real life has had enough sadness – I was determined there’d never be any sadness in my books!

I love the way you create your own villages and the communities that interlink. What was the inspiration for your characters, their world and the stories which they have inspired?

The village where I grew up. No question. It was a very close, rural, working class community, and gave me a fabulously grounded and secure start in life. My friends from back then are still my friends now and we all share the happy memories and the luxury of a perfect childhood. Now I live somewhere very similar, and I watch people and listen to them talking in the corner shop and the pub and just pinch bits here and there! Again, it’s all very safe and cosy – not too twee, I hope – but sort of real and the kind of world that everyone can recognise.

I read in an interview that your cats share your workspace as they do your home. How did you first come to rescue them?

I grew up with animal-loving parents who took in waifs and strays. We had dogs that were going to be shot or drowned before my dad stepped in; cats that had eyes/legs/tails etc missing; ferrets, rabbits and hens that wandered in and out of the kitchen; and ducks that were destined for the dinner table before my mum did a midnight raid on their pen! Nothing was ever turned away. I sort of gravitated towards cats when I first had my own home – via our local vet who had a litter of dumped motherless kittens – and it grew from there. My cats have come from vets, from Cats Protection (the ones no-one wants – too old/scared/injured – oh, and feral in some cases!), word of mouth, and just strays who have turned up and moved in (cats seem to know when there’s a cushy billet!). When I met my husband, he also had rescue cats, so by the time we married and merged our broods we had 11. We’ve never looked back!

What fictional hero/heroine has inspired or impressed you as a reader?

Probably an unpopular choice – but Scarlet O’Hara and Rhett Butler. Manly because Gone With The Wind is one of my all-time favourite books and also because they were both real people, with flaws and not very nice sides to their characters but I understood their dreams, desires and motivations. They simply walked off the page for me and despite them not really having a Happy Ever After; no other fictional romantic couple can hold a candle to them in my opinion.

You are an award winning author, but what do you consider the highlight of your career to date since you became published in 1997?

There have been a lot of highlights (and some lowlights as well!) and over the years I’ve won awards, been to some amazing places, met some very famous people, done telly and radio programmes, and had more fun than I surely deserved, but I suppose it was that first publishing deal for Going The Distance. Seeing my first book in print, on bookshelves, being chosen for WH Smith’s Fresh Talent… honestly, a dream come true – and a feeling that will never, ever be forgotten or recreated.

You are a writer that many new writers aspire to and respect. What would be your three top tips for anyone wanting to succeed in the industry today?

  1. There honestly are no rules to creating a fictional world – so don’t over-do the “I must study all the manuals/latest info etc” because it’ll only confuse and worry you. Write what’s in your heart – write the story you alone want to write, not what you think you should be writing because it’s trendy or current – write for yourself. If you love your story and your characters it’ll show on the page and everyone else will fall in love with it/them too.
  2. Don’t feel you have to write every day. Write the way that suits you. Some people write 10,000 words a day, others write 500. Some (like me) know that if the words aren’t there then it’s best to forget writing until they are and go and scrub the kitchen floor or go for a walk or chat with friends or read or watch telly, whatever – be yourself and do what’s right for you. Just don’t feel pressurised to be like everyone else.
  3. Don’t overwrite – don’t keep going back and rewriting. You can write the life out of your story by constant tweaking. Usually those first bubbling, brilliant ideas that just pour out on to the page are the best ones!

What is next for Christina Jones?

I’m just writing the next novel in the new series – That Red-Hot, Rock’n’Roll Summer – which is about a summer fete that, thanks to Tiggy, who works in the local American Diner, and Marilyn Monoroe look-alike, Cordelia, somehow morphs into a mini-Glasto in the village of Daisybank, much to the horror of the very stuffy and traditional fete committee. And of course nothing goes exactly to plan (understatement!), and Tiggy and Cordelia find lots of love and laughter along the way…. I have ideas and notes for the next two after that as well!

Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to take part in the interview.

Thank you so much for asking me. It’s been an absolute pleasure to be included here. I’ve loved it! Thank you!!!

More by Christina:

An interview with Linda Mitchelmore

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LINDA WRITING ROOMI am delighted to welcome prolific short story writer and successful Choc Lit author, Linda Mitchelmore.

When did you first realise that you wanted to be an author?  
I did things rather back to front. I didn’t consciously start out to be a writer. One Christmas – back in the day – there was a short story writing competition in Woman’s Own. On Christmas Day evening, my family were all glued to the TV – something I don’t get a huge lot of pleasure from as I am deaf. So I thought I’d have a go at the short story competition for something to do. To my utter amazement my short story was short-listed  and published. And I was paid for it. The old cash registers behind my eyes started to ring and I thought, hey, I could make money from all the ‘stuff’ that goes around in my mind…

Your stories have sold internationally. How many have you had published to date? 
I’ve lost count of the exact number of short stories I’ve had published but it is definitely 300+ now. I’ve also had a story broadcast on radio – the irony of that not lost on me.

Writing short stories and longer fiction involve two very different disciplines. What attracted you to short fiction initially, and how much of a challenge was it making the switch to longer fiction? 
Short fiction is just that – short. 750 word stories are quite popular with some magazine editors. I tend to write 1000 word or 2000 word stories as they’re the lengths that tend to fit into most magazine slots. When working on a short story I don’t have to think too much about viewpoints – I only ever write one character’s viewpoint into a short story. I don’t have to have sub-plots, and foreshadowing is something that – depending on the story – doesn’t raise its head much. So they are much quicker to write. When I first started writing I had two teenage children at home, a husband (still got him!) and a part-time job as well as ageing parents and parents-in-law to be doing things for. Short story writing was easier to fit in around all that. Writing longer fiction – 80,000 words or so – seemed a natural progression for me once I had more time to write it. The same premise of ‘person, problem and plot’, with a ‘beginning, middle and an end’, is the same for short stories and novels. The only difference is the time it takes to tell the story.

Your novel, the first of a trilogy, ‘To Turn Full Circle’ is set in your beautiful home county of Devon. Please tell us something about the inspiration behind it? 
The seeds of To Turn Full Circle were sown when I was helping my husband research some family history. We discovered that his great uncle, George, had fished out of Brixham. George had had two trawlers. One of them was lost to the sea in a storm (although with no loss of life) and George had a bad accident on board the other one which meant he had to come off the sea and lost his livelihood. He had to move his wife and daughter back in with his mother. I had a ‘What If’ moment! What if it wasn’t a man who had lost his home because of circumstances, but a young girl? And ‘What If’ the sea still controlled her struggle to survive? And so, To Turn Full Circle was born.
When you begin a new project does your initial idea start with a character, situation, place or theme or does it vary? 
For me a story always starts with an emotion or a feeling – something deep inside my main character. In To Turn Full Circle’s story it was Emma’s determination to survive which drives the story.

You have two more novels to write to complete this trilogy. What do you see as the next challenge for Linda Mitchelmore? 
Writing the next two books is keeping me busy at the moment. I do, however, have a contemporary novel under consideration – the heroine is older than Emma. The feeling driving this story – tentatively called Red is for Rubies – is regret. Most of us have them and in Red is for Rubies, my hero and heroine have lived – apart – with their own regrets for a long time. Will they get a chance to redeem themselves?

Also, I have now signed a contract with Choc Lit for a novella – Hope For Hannah. It will be an e-book initially and out in the close future.

My thanks for a very insightful interview, Linda.

More by Linda:

CHOC LIT LOVE MATCH Layout 1

An interview with Valerie-Anne Baglietto

Published on by valerieholmesauthor1 Comment

AuthorCentral

Thank you for being my guest this month.

When/how did you realise that you wanted to be a writer?

I was four when I ‘wrote’ and illustrated my first book, and my granddad stapled it together for me. I think I knew back then it was something I wanted to do. I quickly got bored of the books school tried to foist on me, with barely any plots, and my parents introduced me to Enid Blyton and the Famous Five. When I realised the worlds that books could introduce me to, I was hooked! I instantly wanted to reproduce some of that magic for myself.

You were born in Gibraltar. Do you think this has influenced your work?

I am currently working on a short story for Belinda Jones’s ‘Sunlounger’ anthology, coming out this summer. My contribution is set in Gibraltar, but this is the first time I have used it in a story this way. My great-grandfather and grandfather were writers, though, so I suppose the writing gene is in my blood.

Your stories mix reality, romance and fantasy, such as ‘Once Upon A Winter’. ‘The Moon on a Stick’ is another eye-catching title. Where does your inspiration for the titles come from? Do you begin with the plot, character or title first?

This really varies from book to book. Each one has been different. My first four novels, published by Hodder, were rom-coms, including ‘The Moon on a Stick’. Now that I’ve added a magical, fairytale element to my work, I suppose my titles will need to reflect that. ‘Once Upon A Winter’ had an altogether different title while I was actually writing it, but when I finally tested it out everyone hated it! So I started playing around with ‘Once Upon…’ until I hit the right note. When it comes to ideas for the books themselves, sometimes it stems from a fragment of a plot, or a character. I have no set rules I work by. I usually let ideas ‘slow-cook’ before I start putting them down on paper, but with ‘Once Upon A Winter’ it was more of a quick blast in the microwave before I sat down to write the first chapter.

Could you tell me something about the Novelistas?

I could go on all day about the Novelistas! The group has evolved over time, but it was started by Trisha Ashley over ten years ago. I was one of the early members, along with best-selling saga author Anne Bennett. I hadn’t long moved to North Wales from Essex, so it was wonderful to find a group like this so quickly. We became the ‘Novelistas’ about two years ago. I was inspired by the term ‘fashionista’. And the Spanish for ‘novelist’ is ‘novelista’… you can see where I’m going with this. There are a dozen of us at the moment and we meet once a month near St Asaph, coming from as far as Anglesey in one direction and Manchester in the other. We’re also very varied in what we write, and all at different stages in our careers. We’re good friends as well as writing buddies and we inspire and support one another, and we always seem to have something to celebrate, so lots of champagne corks get popped at our lunches – and launches!

What key advice/tips would you give aspiring writers?

OK, my favourite pieces of advice are: firstly, you can never please everyone, so above all please yourself and write something you feel passionately about. It will show if you don’t. Criticism is hard to hear, but it is inevitable because any sort of creative work is subjective. If you can truly connect with just one person through your writing, though, everyone else who may also come to love it is a bonus.

Secondly, don’t rush it. Write with your heart, finish it, put it away for as long as you can. A month or more, if possible. Come back to it and use your head this time. This is the only way you can really discover your inner editor and see your work through fresh eyes. Sending it out too prematurely can be the difference between rejection and acceptance, so why risk it? Similarly, publishing it yourself before it’s ready can be the difference between the best-seller charts and obscurity. Don’t hit that ‘publish now’ button too soon!

What is next for Valerie-Anne?

As well as the short story for the ‘Sunlounger’ anthology, I am working on a novella which will be out spring/summer this year. Just like ‘Once Upon A Winter’ it has a contemporary fairytale theme and is set in North Wales. I’m constantly inspired by my surroundings, and feel very lucky to live in such a beautiful part of the world. There is also another full-length novel simmering away, but this won’t be out until 2014.

Thank you for taking the time to write such interesting and inspiring answers.

More by Valerie-Anne Baglietto:

Once Upon A Winter is currently at a Valentine’s special promotional price!

Once Upon A Winter

Moving On

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Shortlisted for the Love Story of the Year 2011 by the RNA.

Moving On

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When life is going nowhere, do you stop and accept what is – or Move On? Hailey did, freeing herself from the emotional baggage which had weighed her down. James was always free to choose his way, but had been devoted to generating income, forgetting how to enjoy it. One word, ‘No’, can stop the daily circus. They both dared to take one step in a new direction changing their destinies forever…

An interview with Margaret James

Published on by valerieholmesauthor14 Comments

Marge2Welcome!

You have written many historical and contemporary romantic novels as well as being a prolific journalist and inspiring writing tutor. Could you take us back to the beginning of your career and tell us when your desire to be a novelist began?

Thank you for inviting me to be the first guest author on your blog, Valerie. I’m delighted to be here. Ooh, back to the beginning of my career – that’s a long time ago, almost thirty years. I had two very small children. My husband worked away from home a lot so I wanted to find something to do at home which would earn some money, too.

I decided I would write some short stories for women’s magazines, because that had to be easy, right? No, of course it wasn’t easy. As I soon came to realise, writing any sort of fiction isn’t easy. But, after trying for several months and failing to sell anything, I finally had my first acceptance and this encouraged me to keep going.

Okay, I thought, could I write novel, too? At that time, family sagas were hugely popular so I thought I would try writing one myself. Again, it wasn’t easy, but I was determined to finish my novel and also sell it to a publisher. Rejection after rejection came along, but I carried on sending my novel to agents and publishers because – as many of my friends and family members know – I’m not the sort of person who gives up!  Finally an agent took me on and sold my novel A Touch of Earth to Futura.

I think I was determined to become a novelist because although I could see it would be a challenging career it would also be possible – with a bit of luck – to get somewhere.

What originally drew you to writing romance?

I’ve always been fascinated by how human relationships work – what makes us like one person and dislike someone else, what happens when we fall in love and out of love again, how families work and why family relationships break down. So I think I was always going to be a romantic and relationship novelist.

Your latest novel is a romantic comedy. What inspired the change in direction?

My next novel The Wedding Diary is set in the present day and is mostly about people I haven’t written about before, but it also mentions characters and settings from my most recent historical trilogy – The Silver Locket, The Golden Chain and The Penny Bangle.

What key advice/tips would you give aspiring writers?

If you’ve decided you’re going to be a writer, stick at it and believe you have something interesting to say. There will be times when the going gets hard and you’ll need to be able to convince yourself that it’s worth going on.

Make friends with other writers face to face and online, via Twitter, Facebook and their blogs – most writers these days have blogs and will be delighted if you follow them. Think about joining a local or national writing group in which you can meet people who understand the joys and frustrations of being a writer. Then you’ll never feel isolated and alone.

Read other people’s novels because then you will absorb good practice and realise there are many different ways in which you can tell a story.

What’s next for Margaret James?

I would like to write another novel set in the present day. I also have a Victorian murder mystery simmering on my back burner, but there is a lot of research to do for that one and I don’t know if it will ever come to the boil!

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I shall look forward to reading The Wedding Diary.

More by Margaret:

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