- Cosy inside
So here I am, cosily ‘at home’ in my little cottage (well, converted cow shed and hayloft actually!) in the 
delightfully small village of Arlingham in Gloucestershire, in the UK. The local plumber recently told me my study is where they used to store the dried cow pats! I sit typing away for hours and hours and hours …. I’m sure you get the picture. It’s actually rather quaint.
Occasionally I look up so that I can gaze out onto the tiny courtyard garden. There is a well, an addition that has no meaning or history but it stands on the site where many years ago there was a cider press. The old stone circle, with raised bricks to stop the poor donkeys slipping as they pulled the harness to tighten the press, is still there. A constant reminder of times gone by. I’ve watched it all quite passively, rain, hail, snow, spring sunshine, brilliant blues skies. It never attracts my attention for long, the flashing cursor on the screen and the flow of words in my head prohibits that.
It’s a marvellous and very fortunate existence I’ve finally been able to create for myself, like a cotton-wool cocoon, where I spend most days entirely in the company of characters I’ve created. Goodbye to my day job, I can finally afford to do what gives me pleasure (actually it’s joy), rather than what earns me money.
So it’s not as if I’m expecting any payback in monetary terms, I’m not expecting to win any grand (or not so grand) literary awards. However, it is all about ‘being read’. Any ‘artist’ no matter what their discipline, longs for one thing and that’s to be appreciated. To have their work valued.
I knew that when this ‘me’ time arrived and I could finally devote my time to writing, that I’d be prolific. In the first year I wrote four novels, my first book ‘Touched by The Light’ was published in February 2011. At the beginning of year two I wrote another manuscript, then downed tools to set up my ‘author platform’. I’ve just started manuscript no. 6.
The day I completed my first ‘real’ novel (bearing in mind I proof as I go, so when I say ‘finish’ I don’t just mean the story, but probably 30-40 re-writes and amendments, fifty pages at a time) I was elated. I was beside myself with a mixture of adrenalin, joy, euphoria and if that’s the effect taking mind altering substances have on you, I can see why people get hooked. I was hooked, dangerously so and then continued to write more or less continually a minimum of seven or eight plus hours a day, sometimes as many as sixteen hours a day, sometimes seven days a week. I even took my laptop on holiday and a couple of long weekend breaks. Fortunately my long-suffering husband loves me without question.
I was well into my second book when I heard that Book Guild Publishing were going to offer me a contract. The day I opened that Email my scream of delight could be heard as far away as the beaches in France….
It’s took a year to get ‘Touched by the Light’ from a file nestling in my ‘Linn’s writing’ folder on the Mac, into a book I can lovingly hold in my hands. The original hardcopy manuscript sits in a large white lever arch folder, on a shelf in my study. I then decided to self-publish a diary of the psychic experiences I’ve had over the years and some of my possibly ‘off the wall’ thoughts about luck, deja vue, gut feelings and coincidences – Being A Sceptic Is Oh So Easy. With feedback coming in from my first two books, it spurred me on.
I now have a shelf that is quickly filling with additional folders sitting respectfully alongside those two published books, each screaming out at me … get ME published NOW.
So you can by now understand the Hot Passion (apologies to those who were expecting something a little risqué) and you are probably wondering about the Cold Reality. The truth is, for me the writing has been the easy bit. Incredibly easy, too easy and I knew there had to be a catch somewhere. I have enough story lines I’ve noted down over the years to keep me writing for several lifetimes. I don’t understand the term ‘writer’s block’ – I even have to take a pen and notebook with me when I’m on the treadmill at the gym. Someone I know (I have to be discreet) inspired one of the other completed manuscripts without any idea at all she was my inspiration. Because it’s fiction it will be fine, but I’m plucking ideas from everything and everywhere to flesh out the bones (my storylines) I’d carefully set aside for ‘my writing years’.
No. The Cold Reality is what comes after a publisher says ‘Yes’, the joyful whoop is out of the way and then you realise no-one knows you, your book is one of a zillion others out there vying for attention. Unless someone has an enormous publicity budget, a large established readership, or A-list/B-list celeb status – where do you start? As time has moved on I have just signed two book contracts with Sapphire Star Publishing.
Their enthusiasm is infectious and The Quintessential Gemini and The Restaurant (@ The Mill) are due out on
7 June 2012 and 2 Aug 2012 respectively. Another of my manuscripts will also see the light of day in 2012 – Never Alone with a new UK publisher. Excited? Very. Nervous? Very. Everything happening at once? That’s the way I live my life!
I know there’s also an element of luck involved and I understand that. There are a lot of good books out there that never get the exposure they deserve. I’m frequently finding little gems and thinking ‘this SHOULD have been a best-seller’.
So I realise that it’s highly unlikely my fun, romantic and sometimes thought provoking novels are going to fly off the shelves, in addition there will be people who will love my writing style and subject matter, and (naturally) those for whom the subject of life after death/romance/real life is just not their thing. If I’m lucky I will make enough to pay for the printer ink, paper and hey – maybe even the electricity I use working all those long, long hours. Maybe not the gallons of coffee, which I freely admit I overdo. But hopefully enough to enable me to keep writing.
So you’re thinking ‘ah, Cold Reality’ sets in. You’d be wrong, I have no problem with any of that. The problem is that I’ve constantly had to put my (sob) serious writing to one side, halt a story I’ve only just begun with great excitement, and participate in promoting myself! Now that’s what I call Cold (Hard) Reality.
I think I need a cold towel for the forehead, a very large glass of Californian White Zinfandel and a softer light next to the Mac (and now the PC alongside it) whilst I’m online late into the night. I might then be able to survive tweeting, FB’ing, blogging, updating websites and trying to get to the heart of the best advice out there for a newbie.
The Cold Reality hit the day I realised I didn’t even ‘know enough’ to understand what I ‘didn’t know’ about being published …… the good news is that it won’t stop me writing. In between juggling social media balls and running websites, I’m back and forth on that unfinished story with constantly renewed energy.
If this touches a chord please contact me and share your pain or let me hear what you have to say. I value all feedback and not just the ‘professional’ kind, it’s the readers that count! My mother always used to say ‘a trouble shared, is a trouble halved’ and as the years have rolled on I’ve come to marvel at the wisdom of many of the old sayings. Well I’ve shared my crazy life, thanks for listening! I’m off to tweet, it’s been nice talking to you.