How Did I Get Here?

It’s a constant surprise to me that people want to read my books. Not just a few people, but thousands of people! In fact, at the two-year anniversary of my debut psychological thriller being published, sales will have shot up close to 200,000.

Mind blown!

How did that happen to a pretty ordinary fifty-nine year old woman, I ask myself?

Let me tell you…

I had a dream

The desire to write a book had been at the back of my mind for many years. I’ve always worked with words – as a business advisor and management consultant for twenty-five years, the written word was the bread and butter of my day-to-day business.

Communicating concepts, strategies, business plans, marketing messages. So the lure of creative writing gave me a new challenge once my kids had become teenagers and parenting wasn’t quite so intense.

I decided to be an apprentice

As in everything, there is a skill in creative writing.

How do you hook the reader, make them feel the emotions, experience the story in a way that makes them want to keep turning the pages?

I’ve always been an avid reader, but now I read with a different mindset – how the heck did my favourite authors get me so involved in the story? I also attended literary events and read books and articles on writing.

I put time into learning the craft.

I made myself be brave

I knew I needed feedback to improve my writing so I joined an on-line group called YouWriteON, where you posted the first 5-7k words of your story.

A randomly allocated reader would then read and review your work and you’d be allocated someone else’s work to read. I learnt so much from this process and I can heartily recommend it to any budding writers out there!

I finished my book

At first, I was going over the same 7k words editing and editing until I realised I was never going to finish the thing. So I stopped doing that and pressed on to the end.

What a feeling.

I did it. I wrote a book! Unfortunately, that one wasn’t too great. But I knew I could do it now, so I started again, with a stronger story, more idea about structure and which genre I was going to write. 

I found Team Rona

As any author will tell you, writing a book and getting it published is a team effort.

I started to build my team. First with beta readers, then I submitted a synopsis for feedback at literary festivals. I knew my second story was way better than my first.

I submitted to agents and found one who said she’d work with me to knock my manuscript into shape. Unfortunately, after 9 months, she decided it wasn’t the right book for her. A disappointing knockback. But once I’d dried my tears, I did some more editing, then submitted to a few agencies.

My top agency, Madeleine Milburn TV, Film and Literary Agency responded within hours of me pressing the send button. A few weeks later they signed me up. After a bit more editing (are you beginning to understand the amount of editing involved in this process!!!) they submitted to digital publishers and I signed with Isobel Akenhead at Bookouture.

I had found my team and with the addition of a few more beta readers, and a whole army of enthusiastic readers, my books have gone from strength to strength.

The End

So there you have it.

Dogged determination, a willingness to take feedback on board, an innate curiosity in learning the craft, and a bit of luck in finding an amazing team of people to work with.

Mix that with a love of telling stories and a whole bunch of wonderful readers and that’s how I came to be here! And what a great place it is to be. Honestly, I do feel that at last I’ve found my tribe!

So thanks to everyone who has bought, read and enjoyed my books – there’s plenty more stories to come!