My Secret Double Life by Sophie Claire

I have a set of questions which I think of as my annual review:

            What did you embrace in 2015?

            What did you let go of?

            In 2016 where do you want to be? 
And so on...

I love these kind of questions. They’re useful for keeping me focused on my goals and reminding me of my achievements, and obviously this was a big year for me with the publication of my first novel. However, one of my answers stopped me in my tracks. I had completely forgotten that 2015 was also the year I came out and told everyone in the real world (as opposed to online) that I am a writer!

Until May, when Her Forget-Me-Not Ex was released, my writing life was a closely guarded secret known only to my close friends and family. Why?

Let me take you back a step. When I first began to write fifteen years ago, I treated it as a hobby. I wrote while my baby was napping and I mainly wrote short stories because that was all I had time for. After a few years, I plucked up the courage to start a novel. I worked on this for two years and by the time I’d finished it, the seed was sown: I knew I wanted to be a writer. So I tentatively told a few people about my hopes of one day being published.

I knew achieving publication would not be easy and I braced myself for rejection, but when I sent my first book to publishers and agents I was stunned by their response. My book was like a boomerang. It used to come back, sometimes by return of post. (With hindsight, I’m so glad – that first book was a learning experience!)

However, I wouldn’t give up. I wrote another novel. And another. I went on writing courses, and I constantly searched out books and articles to try and improve my craft. Gradually, the rejections became less standard and more encouraging, telling me I was nearly there. I saw this as progress (though it was incredibly frustrating too), but some people – non-writers – couldn’t understand my optimism. Their interest turned to sympathy and eventually to pity. So I decided to keep my writing dreams to myself.

Then we moved house. As far as my new neighbours and friends knew, I was a stay-at-home mum of two who did the school run and worked part-time proofreading academic papers. In reality, I proofread at night when the children were in bed, and wrote feverishly from 9 till 3 every day. Although I still hadn’t earned a penny from writing, I treated it as my job and that was all I wanted to do.

I would sometimes vanish for the weekend to attend a writing course, and when people asked where I’d been I kept my answers vague: ‘Oh, seeing friends’. Which was true. I didn’t want to give the game away, but I didn’t want to lie either. It was difficult keeping up the deception. So this year when my book came out and I could finally tell everyone the good news I was so relieved.

What’s your book about? friends asked; Where do you get your ideas? Why didn’t you tell us you were a writer?

The truthful answer is: because I needed the validation of being published to feel I really was a writer.

And how do people react now when I tell them what I do? They’re mostly intrigued. Writing, for whatever reason, is regarded as a fascinating career. I love that some people are bemused by imagination and the concept of making things up (Did you base your book on an ex-boyfriend? – er, no). I love that people want to give me ideas they’ve had for books they think should be written. I love that there is a general perception that writers are all as rich as J.K. Rowling (oh, that this were true!). I love the discussions I get drawn into about other authors and their books. It’s my favourite subject, my passion, and I’m thrilled that I can now openly share that passion.

I am Sophie Claire. And I am a writer.

Sophie.x

U is for...Unique Selling Point by Annie Burrows

On the first Friday of every month, Novelista Annie Burrows has been sharing a very personal view of what it is like to be a writer.  And is dealing with themes in alphabetical order.  This month, in spite of being hampered by Christmas and New Year festivities, she's reached U...which she has decided should stand for Unique.

When I started out as a writer I didn't want to have to do any marketing of myself.  In fact, that was one of the reasons I wanted to write for Harlequin Mills & Boon.  I thought I would just be sort of absorbed under the umbrella and become part of their brand.  I thought I could just concentrate on writing my stories, and my publisher would do it all the publicity for me.  And to a large extent, they do.

But I write in what is a very crowded market.  There seem to be dozens and dozens of other writers producing the same sort of book I do - Regency Romance.  And with the rise of self-publishing, the marketplace has become even more competitive.  Why should anyone want to pick up my book and read it, when there are so many others on offer?  What is going to keep a reader remembering my books, and coming back for more?

According to marketing gurus, what I need to do is offer a Unique Selling Point.  Something that will make me stand out from the crowd.

Fortunately for me, Mills & Boon have been brilliant about helping me develop my "brand".  When I first started writing for them, they had a reader panel, made up of fans of specific lines, who would send in a questionnaire about what they liked (or didn't) about each month's books, in return for being entered into a draw for free books.  This was a great piece of market research which I couldn't possibly have undertaken myself.  And eventually my editor contacted me with the news that what readers liked about my books was the humour.  One or two people had already told me that they had giggled when reading certain sections of my stories, so when she asked me if I would mind concentrating on that, rather than on what she termed "my dark side" (which made me feel as if I was perilously close to joining forces with Darth Vader) I agreed.

Because every writer needs to fulfil reader expectation.  If you pick up a Dick Francis, you expect the hero to be an unassuming chap who thwarts the bad guys within a setting which is something to do with horses.  If you read a Dean Koontz, you expect there to be something a bit spooky going on in the background of the thriller.  Even I could see, that within the Harlequin Historical line, some writers tended to create "bad girls", those of the demi-monde, who maybe turn to crime to survive.  Others are known for getting in a lot of historical detail.  Others write extremely tortured heroes, or go for unusual settings. 

I'd already had an Amazon review from a reader who was disappointed that the heroine of the book she'd just read by me hadn't been a virgin.  And when I looked back at previous books, I saw that this was something else I'd done without really thinking about it.  I'd made my heroines virgins, (at least, to start with!) and my readers had come to expect that from me.

So, thanks to the market research done by my publisher, and a disgruntled Amazon reviewer, I'd discovered what readers wanted from my writing, and I started going all out to provide it. It wasn't any hardship...just a slight adjustment to the way I went about thinking up my plots.  I can never resist deflating a pompous character, or inviting someone to share in a joke with me, and I'd already been doing that in my stories without really noticing I was doing it. 

But then my publishers did a series of webinars on marketing and branding.  By this time even I could see it wasn't enough to simply write the best story I could.  We've all moved into an era where we have to have an online presence.  Which, they said, should be consistent across all platforms.  Which meant thinking up a tagline which expressed what we stood for.

Ulp!  As if it wasn't enough learning how to write, and write to a deadline and a wordcount, now I had to promote myself too?

Fortunately, I'd recently had a revisions letter from an editor, saying that my current manuscript (at that point) lacked the "trademark Annie Burrows sparkle".

Aha!  That was it - that was what I wanted to offer readers, and what readers seemed to want from me - some sparkle.   So my tagline became "Sparkling Regency Romance".  Now a reader has a clue what they are going to find within the covers of one of my books.  Though I do aim for total historical accuracy, which demands a lot of research and double-checking, not a great deal of that actually makes it to the pages.  In the end, what I offer my readers is a light-hearted, fun sort of read.

 

That is my Unique Selling Point - the sparkle.

What is yours?

Annie's latest Sparkling Regency Romance is "The Captain's Christmas Bride", still available from Amazon, Mills & Boon and Harlequin, and other book stores.

Rum Cake and Tinsel by Trisha Ashley

I don’t always make a traditional Christmas cake – or I do, but it’s a new kind of traditional cake, inspired by a trip to the Caribbean, because one year I flew out to spend Christmas on Grand Cayman, with my luggage full of packet bread sauce, stock cubes, cornflour and instant stuffing (and an inflatable Christmas tree).

In the local supermarket a helpful assistant managed to find me a solitary, forlorn, ready-stuffed turkey left over from Thanksgiving at the bottom of a freezer, but Brussels sprouts appeared to be a delicacy too far.

The turkey had been compressed into a strangely heavy, smooth, long shape like a giant lead bullet and it was just as well I checked the instructions on the wrapper when I got it back to the apartment, since to my astonishment they said it must be cooked from frozen. Well, this went against everything I’d ever been taught about cooking poultry, especially since the stuffing was in the cavity of the bird and not under the loose skin of the breast, making it more difficult to ensure the turkey was cooked right through.

Still, I was too unnerved by this strange object to do anything else but follow the directions to the letter, though I decided to give it extra roasting time, just to make sure it didn’t become Salmonella Central and poison the whole family.

You can imagine what it was like cooking Christmas dinner in an unfamiliar kitchen in Caribbean temperatures. By the time I actually got it onto the table, all I really wanted to do was climb into the giant American fridge and close the door.

The turkey looked just as it had done when it went into the oven, except that the skin had browned and it was, so far as I could tell, cooked right through to the solid, strangely greyish mass of stuffing inside. The meat was rubbery and tasted of nothing in particular, but no-one wanted to be the first to try the stuffing, which looked like something you might find in cavity wall insulation.

In fact, after all my hellishly hot endeavours, no one ate much of the turkey at all, but instead filled up with roast potatoes and the packet bread sauce I’d taken out with me, covered with thick Lancashire-style gravy. We washed it down with a refreshing local soft drink called Ting and I followed that with a couple of glasses of an even more refreshing local liqueur called Mudslide: I felt I deserved it.

Instead of a Christmas cake I’d bought a large and delicious chocolate rum cake, another local delicacy, and after a large slice of that I went for a swim to cool down. Considering I’d doggedly choked down a couple of slices of that turkey, it’s a wonder the weight didn’t pull me under.

While I was floating in the pool like a large, limp starfish, I wondered what on earth I’d do with the substantial remains of the despised turkey and remembered a previous Christmas dinner with friends at their waterside home on Antigua, where after the meal they’d casually tossed the turkey carcase to the barracuda who lived under the deck.

But on Grand Cayman we were by the beach, so that wasn’t an option: there’s just never a barracuda to hand when you really want one, is there?

You can get rum cake in different flavours all over the Caribbean, but it’s taken me a few attempts to recreate anything like it at home. Here’s my recipe for chocolate rum cake, which is as close as I can get to the original and makes a perfect alternative to the traditional fruit cake.

Caribbean-style Chocolate Rum Cake

Ingredients:

7oz Self-raising flour

2 rounded tablespoons cocoa powder

5oz castor sugar

2 tablespoons golden syrup

3 medium eggs, beaten

A quarter of a pint of sunflower or corn oil

Dark rum

Milk

Method:

Heat the oven to 325 F/166C/gas mark 3 then grease and line with baking paper an eight inch cake tin. You can use a small bunt tin instead, if you have one, which makes it look more authentic.

In a measuring jug put four tablespoons of dark rum and then make it up to a quarter of a pint with milk.

Sift the flour, sugar and cocoa into a large mixing bowl and make a well in the middle. Into this, pour the rum/milk mixture, the beaten eggs, the oil and the golden syrup.

Mix this very well, and then pour into the cake tin.

Put into the oven and bake it for about half an hour, until the cake springs back when lightly pressed. Then turn it out onto a wire rack, remove the paper, and leave to cool.

In the Caribbean, these cakes are served plain, but for Christmas you could cover it in melted chocolate and decorate with a circle of halved walnuts or pecans and glacé cherries, if liked.

To do this, melt a large bar of good quality dark or milk chocolate, as you prefer, in a Bain Marie or a basin over simmering water: just be careful not to get any water into the chocolate. You can also melt the chocolate in the microwave, but don’t overheat it.

Spread the chocolate over the top of the cake with a spatula or butter knife and then press on the nuts and cherries, if using, before it sets hard.

And a rum cake is not just for Christmas – you can eat it any time!

This post originally appeared in the December issue of Trisha Ashley's newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.