Writer Spotlight - Sarah Painter

On Coffee and Roses I like to bring you news of authors – both debut and established – who I think you’ll love. Today, I’m delighted to welcome the wonderful SARAH PAINTER into the Coffee and Roses Writer Spotlight…

Before writing books, Sarah Painter worked as a freelance magazine journalist, blogger and editor, combining this ‘career’ with amateur child-wrangling (AKA motherhood). Sarah’s debut, The Language of Spells, became a Kindle bestseller as did the follow-up, The Secrets of Ghosts. Today, she launches her new book, In The Light of What We See. Sarah also podcasts about writing (and interviews other authors and creative-types) at www.worriedwriter.com

Welcome to Coffee and Roses, Sarah! When did you first decide that you wanted to write?

For as long as I can remember. I wrote my first 'novel' aged eight and it featured a cat called Miracle. I can't recall much about the story (thankfully), but I do have very vivid memories of the pastel-coloured A4 paper on which I wrote it. Yes, my stationery obsession began young, too!

What interests you as a writer?

Oh, what a great question. I love the excuse to learn new things and to follow my curiosity, but what really interests me is a good story. I want to take readers to another world (even if that world is very like our own) and give them an escapist, almost-magical experience, in the way that so many books have done for me.

Do you have a typical writing day? If not, when is the best time to write for you?

I am a complete creature of habit and I like nothing better than keeping to my daily routine. I write in bed first thing (ideally, as soon as I wake up) then, once my kids have left for school, I relocate to my garden office and write until I've got my word count or it's nearly lunchtime. Then I go for a walk, have lunch, and spend the afternoon on marketing, my podcast, email, and obsessively checking my Amazon rankings.

What inspires you as a writer?

Good storytelling in whatever form (television and film as well as books) and interesting non-fiction. I suffer from many short-lived obsessions, which can be very handy for research, and I love reading memoirs.

What are the best things about being a writer?

Oh, pretty much everything. It is my absolute dream and I am thankful every single day. Some highlights include working in bed, reading as part of my job, and tax-deductible books! More seriously, the very best thing is having connections with readers. I have to pinch myself that people read my books, and every time I get a message from a reader it makes me happier than I could ever have thought possible.

And the worst?

Dealing with my own self-doubt on a daily basis, and worrying about letting readers down.

Tell me about your new novel, In The Light of What We See.

It's a dual narrative story set in a hospital in Brighton in both 1938 and the present day. The present day story follows Mina Morgan as she recovers from a bad car accident, slowly piecing together her shattered memories. The past strand features Grace Kemp, a young woman who has escaped her family and is training to be a nurse. Both women see things which others do not, so it's a mix of thriller, historical and mystery, with a touch of the supernatural. It's a story I wanted to write for a very long time, but I didn't feel that I was good enough to do it justice. Then I realised I was never going to feel good enough, so I ought to just get on with it.

You're the host and creator of the brilliant podcast, The Worried Writer. What inspired you to start it?

Thanks for your kind words, Miranda, and for being on the show! Although I always wanted to be an author, I spent many years too frightened to actually try. I was crippled by my own self-doubt and a terrible fear of failure, and I thought these things meant I couldn't be a writer. Over the years, I've developed strategies for getting the work done despite my worries, and I wanted to share my experience with others. I thought that if I could make one anxious writer feel less alone then it would be worth doing. The podcast has had an amazing response, though, with so many people getting in touch to say that they struggle with the same issues, and that it really helps to know that other writers – at all stages of their careers – feel the same way!

What are your top three tips for writers?

The usual suspects: Read lots, write lots, and don't give up. Oh, and 'apply chocolate as needed'.

Do you have a dream project you'd love to write?

I love listening to podcasts and the radio, so I'd love to try writing a radio play one day.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Just a big 'thank you' for having me on your site, and to all the readers, book bloggers and lovely authors in the writing community. Book people are the best!

Thanks so much to Sarah for such a wonderful interview! Her new book, In The Light of What We See is out today from Lake Union. You can hear her wonderful podcasts at www.worriedwriter.com, visit her website at www.sarah-painter.com, and follow her on Twitter @SarahRPainter.

Neal Doran - Getting 'The Call'

At the beginning of this year I chose my magnificent seven Future Stars and I've been working with them on their amazing writing projects. So I was over the moon (and not surprised at all) when one of my Future Stars, NEAL DORAN told me he'd been offered a two-book deal! His first novel, Dan Taylor is Giving Up on Women is available on Kindle now - and it's brilliant. I asked Neal to tell what it felt like to be offered his book deal...

I had a clear idea how it was going to be when I found out I was going to be published.

My family would know I’d got ‘The Call’ because of the music that played. For years Rosalita (come out tonight) by Bruce Springsteen had been an essential part of the dream. If you don’t know it, it’s a fantastically uplifting song, written when Bruce was astoundingly young, about him trying to get his girlfriend to sneak out of her parent’s house for a big night out (it’s cool -- the characters are probably late teens/early twenties, it’s not about two 40-year-olds who still live with mum and dad). It’s medically impossible to not jump up and down when you hear it, and it has this line…

Whoa, so your daddy says he knows I don't have any dough,
Well, tell him this is his last chance to get his daughter in a fine romance,
Because the record company, Rosie, just gave me a big advance!

Now, this might not seem that relevant at first. I accepted, ooh, weeks ago, that I’m never going to be a rock star. And I was expecting to hear from a publisher not a record label. But it was this line, so full of exuberance, vindication, and joy that became part of the moment that would make the work worthwhile. It was going to be the soundtrack to jumping off a table, twirling my wife around the kitchen, and throwing my kids up in the air (and catching them). It was going to get the party started.

I imagine every writer has something like this - a scenario that they can play out in the head, of what it’ll be like when they get the news they’re going to be published. It was one of those things you have to think about a lot when you’re stuck with a half-finished novel that looks in urgent need of CPR and you aren’t sure it’s going to pull through. It’s insulation for your hopes when the cold reality of another auto-response agent rejection comes in, or you get told -- yet again -- that you’ve written a funny book, but men don’t read rom-com, and women don’t read rom-coms written by men.

I knew that getting there (and I had to believe I’d get there) would involve being on the wrong end of rejection. I knew it was going to be a case of one step forward, one step back. There were a lot of times when it just felt like all the steps were being taken on a travelator going the wrong way.

But you go through all that to get The Call that means you have a book deal.

But when it happened, I wasn’t anywhere near the CD player, or the kitchen table. Instead, I was stuck in my home office, bleary-eyed and on a day job deadline. Kathryn from Carina UK called, and BAM! Out of nowhere I had a two digital book deal. Someone had mucked about with the travelator, and suddenly I was heading in the right direction. But life didn’t change in that second. Corks didn’t pop. I had a very late night ahead of me at work, I could only text my wife the news as she was in a big meeting, and the boys needed to get their chicken goujons before football practice.

For days I kept going in a kind of trance. I told lots of people and said I was really delighted. But if you’d heard me, I don’t think you’d have thought I’d achieved something I’d been working towards for years, and dreaming about for decades. It was a couple of days later before it really hit me. We were going away for the weekend for my birthday, it was a big one, and one that I’d set as a deadline for something to happen with the novel. Heading out of town and looking for a place to stop for ice-cream, I put on one of our in-car compilation CDs.

The guitar, Hammond organ and sax of the E Street Band blared, and Bruce started calling out his gal, Rosie.

It sank in. The setbacks and the self-doubt, the re-writes and the rejections had all been worth it. Dan Taylor Is Giving Up On Women was going to be published! I’d made my deadline by a day…

I looked out at the road ahead, the windows down in the early spring sunshine, my wife and two sons joining in with the ‘Hey! Hey! Hey!’s to one of my favourite songs.

I’d done it.

The thing with being in a car with the windows open, is it’s much more likely you’ll get something in your eye...

You can follow Neal on twitter @nealdoran and on Facebook.

Caroline Smailes: Why I'd Quite Like To Thank Richard Madeley

I am delighted to welcome fantastic author CAROLINE SMAILES to Coffee and Roses. Her brand new book, The Drowning of Arthur Braxton is published this week. It's already receiving rave reviews and is an absolute must-read. Over to you, Caroline!


Being a student and finding out that I was pregnant seemed like the end of the world.

And even after I had come to terms with the pregnancy, and long after my baby had been born, I was dogged by a sense of failure. In fact, three children, a happy marriage and several house moves later, I was still haunted by that ghost of my abandoned studies.

So, when the opportunity to return to academia presented itself I jumped at the chance to study for a PhD, but this brought with it new, unforeseen problems.

My break from university had left me out of touch with current research and being a mother and wife had changed me. I wasn’t the same naïve, young girl who had been excited by the challenge of phonetics and phonology. Yet I continued with my studies, the voice in my head telling me that I would prove wrong all the people who had told me that having my baby would ruin my life.

I was in my second year of PhD study when I miscarried our fourth child. This brought devastation into my daily life. I felt lost and confused. In my sadness and grief I recognised that I wasn’t being true to myself. I finally understood that I’d been too busy trying to please other people and in doing so had forgotten how to please me. It was in amongst the chaos and upset that I turned to writing.  
Writing had been my 'safe place', it had always been my safety net. I had numerous diaries, poems and snippets of captured moments. Yet this time it was different. The writing about my feelings surrounding the miscarriage developed into a story and that story into something longer.

I found myself stealing increasingly larger amounts of 'spare' time to write. My time with the story offered an escape and a chance to explore issues and thoughts. Through writing I was finding myself, I was finally being true to me.

Fast-forward five months to September 2005 and I was eating my lunch in front of the TV. I was watching a repeat of a Richard and Judy programme. The presenters were talking about someone who Richard called 'a nearly woman'. It makes me laugh now, but I can’t even remember who they were talking about. He gushed that this 'nearly woman' often tried new things, but she never finished them.

Richard Madeley’s words hit home and I froze. I was a 'nearly woman'.

I felt that I was ‘nearly’ finishing many things, but not fully committing to any. At that very moment I knew that if I didn’t make some drastic changes I ran the risk of living the rest of my life as a 'nearly woman'.

Within the next two weeks, I dropped out of my PhD study and cancelled my funding. I had made a choice, I was going to be true to myself, I was going to be a writer. Of course, my journey was never going to be all plain sailing. Many people close to me had been shocked at my switch, telling me that I was throwing away my career to follow a ridiculous dream. Academia offered financial security, writing didn’t.

Possibly I’m stubborn or maybe I was driven by a desire to prove people wrong, but I spent every single spare moment writing, late nights, early mornings, in the car, in the bath, giving up my favourite TV shows. Writing simply became an obsession, the characters in the novel occupied my mind and I was determined.

I finished the final draft of my novel a year later, on holiday. We celebrated with champagne in the afternoon and my falling asleep in a chair, fully clothed. Ironically, I guess by finishing the novel I put myself onto a different level of ‘nearly’, as it was suddenly all about how to find an agent and how to submit to publishers. My reaction to this was to start a blog, while trying to figure out the best next step. And it was three weeks later that a publisher stumbled on my blog, read an extract from my novel and asked for the full manuscript. And a week later, when I received my first publishing contract.

But even now, with my fifth novel about to be published, the voice of Richard Madeley still haunts me. It taunts me with the threat of one day becoming a ‘nearly woman’, it makes me determined to keep writing.

One day, I’d quite like to thank Richard Madeley.

Thanks so much to Caroline for such a brilliant post! You can follow Caroline on twitter @Caroline_S, on facebook and visit her website here. Her amazing new book, The Drowning of Arthur Braxton is published by The Friday Project this week and I can’t wait to read it!