While I’ve always enjoyed writing creatively, I never really committed to finishing a novel until I found myself stuck upstairs for weeks during the renovation of the downstairs of our house in the autumn of 2023. With nothing much else to do – well cleaning was a waste of time – I sat at a patio table in our bedroom and bashed out around 81k words. The story had been swishing around in my mind for years. In fact, I’d picked it up again in 2019 and got as far as chapter 11. Then my memory stick failed and I lost three chapters. I was so demoralised that I abandoned my manuscript for four years. Such is the temperament of a writer!
Actually, that bit about it being my first novel is not entirely true as I did write and submit a romantic novel called Stormy Lady to Mills & Boon back in … I think it was 1996. I actually got some really great feedback – their editor said my book was very well researched and this was in the pre-internet days when researching a novel meant hours in the library and/or talking to real people. Their criticism focused on the romance element of the book – I can’t remember the exact feedback but I either kept the main characters apart too much or too little. With the entire novel taking place on a yacht the hero (Morgan) is sailing from one of the Canary Islands to Wales, I suspect it was probably the latter.
To be fair, I don’t think my heart was ever really in romance writing. Even Helen Fielding (creator of the hilarious Bridget Jones) failed to make the mark with Mills & Boon. This recently finished novel of mine (Run Free) contains a little flirtation and a few kisses and that’s it. I submitted the now 98k word manuscript to my first-choice publisher in mid-June, however they have warned I could be waiting up to six months to hear anything. If I fail to find a traditional publisher, then I will self-publish (with the non-fiction books, I didn’t attempt to find a publisher and went directly to the self-publishing route).
In the meantime, I’m busy plotting novel number two (Run Far) which follows three of my characters – Karen, Maria and Tammy – to the Isles of Scilly. Five years have passed and the relationships between the three have changed dramatically. Run Free was the story I always wanted to write. Despite it evolving significantly from its inception as a overly melodramatic screenplay, I always kind of knew where I wanted to go with it, despite culling various characters and plotlines. Run Far is a completely new project and I’m approaching it altogether differently. This time around, I’m attempting to work out a pretty solid storyline in advance. I reason that putting more effort in before I start the actual writing will save me an awful lot of headache/heartache later on. I know some things will change – the beauty of the writing process is that new ideas frequently appear as if by magic – but I want to avoid the need to cut thousands of words simply because I change my mind about the storyline or decide I can’t stand a character (I killed off Tammy’s new boyfriend in later drafts of Run Free – he was an idiot, she was better off without him!).
Run Free (submitted to my preferred publisher mid-June 2024)
Run Far (currently at the development stage)
