It gives me great pleasure to welcome today's guest, Cally Taylor, to my blog. Cally has moved from short stories to rom-com novels and finally has made her name as the author of psychological thriller The Accident. I wanted to find out a little more about her diverse journey.
Welcome to my blog,
Cally - it's great to have you here.
Wonderful to be here. Thanks so much for asking me, Wendy.
It's my pleasure. Now I've been dying to ask - in the days when you
were writing short stories, did you ever imagine that you would one day be a
published author?
I never dreamed I’d
be a published author one day. I’ve always been a voracious reader and, to me,
authors were mythical creatures who lived in the fairy-tale world of
‘Publishing’. They weren’t ordinary people who had families and full time jobs
and spent their childhood holidays in caravans in soggy Aberystwyth. No, their
great-grandfathers were authors, they lived in Bloomsbury
or Hampstead or Primrose Hill and they hung out at the Ivy. It was all about
who you knew and where you went to school. Or so I thought.
I felt the same about short story writers when I first started
sending my stories in to the women’s magazines. I saw two names popping up all
the time – Della Galton and Teresa Ashby – and I assumed they were in on ‘the
big secret’ of women’s magazine publishing (whatever that may be) or they
somehow knew the editors. The truth, I discovered years later, was that they’re
exactly the same as me. They’re women who love telling stories and who worked
really, really hard to see their work in print.
It’s the same with authors. There’s no ‘club’ you need to be
part of, no secret network you need to join, you just have to write a stonkingly good novel and hope an agent, and
then an editor, get what you were trying to do. Somehow I managed to do that
and no one is more astonished than me.
I used to think that about magazine writers too, Cally, until I became one myself. Do you feel it was a
natural progression, moving from short story to novel?
It was a natural progression for me because I’d always
wanted to write a novel but I know that, for some short story writers, the idea
of writing a novel is a real anathema. It’s a long, long slog and you don’t get
that lovely ‘I just finished a story’ buzz that you get dozens of times a year
if you’re focussing on short stories. With novels you’re lucky if you get that
once a year!
When you write short stories you learn about the importance
of an enticing beginning, three dimensional characters, pacing, plot, theme and
a strong ending. What you don’t learn is how to craft sub plots or juggle
multiple strands or points of view or how you sustain tension and mystery over
a much, much longer story so writing my first novel wasn’t without its
difficult moments. You can read a hundred different books on ‘how to write a
novel’ but none of them can tell you how to craft your own story or how to fix
its issues. Writing a novel made me realise why so many people ditch them after
a few thousand words. You need stamina and determination to get to ‘The End’.
Your two novels, Home
For Christmas and your latest, The Accident, are very different. What prompted
you to make the change from chick lit to psychological thriller?
I was in a very different place in my personal life when I
wrote my chicklit books Heaven
Can Wait and Home
for Christmas. I was in my early thirties, I was in a relationship but lived
alone, and I didn’t have any children. Like a lot of women at that stage of
their life I was obsessed with love and romance and finding ‘the one’ and it
felt natural to write romantic-comedies with themes that I could relate to.
When I wrote The
Accident, my debut psychological thriller, I was thirty-eight. I was living
with my partner and we’d just had a child together. My priorities couldn’t have
been more different. I’d found the security and the family life I’d always
craved and I wanted to protect it and keep it safe. Psychological thrillers
hinge on worst case scenarios – what if your child disappears? What if your
husband has a terrible secret? What if you’re losing your mind? – and it didn’t
take a huge leap of imagination to come up with a similar scenario for The
Accident. Once I’d identified what my worst fears were the plot started to take
shape.
Which genre did you
find easiest to write?
I can’t say that I find rom-coms easier to write than
psychological thrillers or vice versa as there are elements of both genres that
are tricky. With rom-coms I always worried that what made me laugh might not make the reader laugh, whilst with psychological
thrillers the difficulty is getting the pace right. You need it to be pacey
enough that your reader keeps turning the page but not at the expense of
character development.
You must be very
excited that Home For Christmas has been made into a film. Did you have much
input into it or did you have to hand over your baby and stand back?
I am ridiculously excited
that Home for Christmas is being made into a film. I’d heard of authors having
their books optioned but knew the reality was that very few films are actually
produced. As a result I didn’t let myself get too excited when Home for
Christmas was optioned by JumpStart Productions. I couldn’t have underestimated
them more because they did it, they got the film made, and I’m due to see the
finished edit any day now (and I cannot WAIT!).
After JumpStart optioned the film I was asked if I’d like to
write the screenplay. At the time I was up to my eyes in UK and US edits for The Accident and, with
a day job four days a week and a pre-schooler to look after the rest of the
time I just didn’t have enough hours in the day. I happily agreed for Jamie, the
director, to write the screenplay and gave feedback on it as and when I could.
When I went to watch the filming I was there as an observer (and an extra for a
few scenes!). Lots of authors say that writing a novel is like giving birth. If
that’s the case then I gestated and birthed Home for Christmas but JumpStart adopted
it and brought it up. It was still ‘my baby’ but different. Seeing the characters
that had started life in my head actually come alive in front of my eyes was
one of the most surreal and magical moments of my life.
I have to confess,
chick lit is not my reading of choice but Home For Christmas made me laugh out
loud in places as it's very visual humour. Did you imagine it as a film as you
were writing it?
I never imagine any of my books as films when I plot them
but I do visualize the scenes as I’m writing them. It’s funny because the
editor who worked on Home for Christmas commented on how much slapstick there
was in the book and said it tended to work better on screen than in novels so I
cut quite a lot before the book was published. Lots remained though and I
cannot WAIT to see the oyster scene in Home for Christmas. It’s one of my favourite
scenes in any of my books and I just hope it looks as funny on screen as it did
in my head.
Were you happy with
the choice of actors?
I was delighted. Initially I didn’t think the main
characters – April Pearson as Beth and Karl Davies as Matt – looked like the
characters I’d created in my head but they nailed the nuances of their
personalities and did a fabulous job. Other characters – like Mrs Blackstock
and Grandad were spot on visually and I can’t wait to watch everyone
interacting in the final film to see how well the chemistry works.
Moving on now to your
thriller. In The Accident, obsession and control play a large part in the plot.
Is there an element of fact amongst the fiction?
Yes, unfortunately there is. I escaped from an emotionally
abusive relationship several years before I met my current partner. He never hit me
but he was incredibly controlling, narcissistic and manipulative and I drew on
the slow, subtle way he drew me into the relationship and the gradual
diminishing of my self-esteem to create the relationship between Susan and
James. Unlike my previous relationship James was physically and sexually
abusive to Susan and those scenes were very hard to visualise and write.
Your past comes back to haunt you is something that your heroine,
Sue, finds out in your novel - do you think this is true?
I do, and it’s something I’m exploring in my current book,
Last Girl Standing, as well. I think we try and put the events of our pasts in
little boxes and close the lid, especially if they’re painful, but everything
that happens to us has an impact on our personalities and the way we behave. No
one can ever completely escape their past.
How long did The
Accident take you to write?
It took about six months to write the first draft and
another three months to edit. If I’m honest I can’t really remember writing it!
I was on maternity leave at the time and I was extremely sleep deprived.
I know that you are
at present working on your third novel, Last Girl Standing. Can you tell us
something about it?
Last Girl Standing is about friendship, deceit and murder.
Jane Hughes works in an animal sanctuary in rural Wales and she’s
in a fledgling relationship with Will, the local primary school teacher. She’s
the happiest and most content she’s ever been – until she receives a note
through the post that says, ‘I know your name’s not really Jane Hughes’. Someone
from her past is after her, and they won’t stop until they destroy everything,
and everyone, she loves.
Thank you again for sharing your answers, Cally and we wish you well with your new novel.
Cally Taylor
is an author with two writing heads. Her Cally Taylor head writes romantic
comedies and women’s fiction whilst her CL Taylor head writes dark
psychological thrillers.
Cally’s latest - a dark psychological thriller called THE ACCIDENT
(written as CL Taylor) - was published by Avon HarperCollins in April 2014 and
in the USA
(as BEFORE I WAKE) by Sourcebooks in June 2014. It shot into the top ten of
Amazon.co.uk's Kindle chart within two weeks of release and rights have been
sold to Germany, Italy, Russia,
Brazil, Turkey and Poland.
HOME FOR CHRISTMAS is being developed into a feature
film by JumpStart Productions featuring Karl Davies, April Pearson,
Lucy Griffiths and Derren Nesbitt. Shooting took place in April and May 2014
and the film will be premiered in December.
It is about a woman who used to work in a primary school but who, after meeting the love of her life and marrying for the second time, chooses to give her teaching career up to follow her dream of being a photographer. The only problem is, the garage is full of memories of her old life - her folders full of worksheets and lesson plans as well as reference books. Although her husband wants her to empty the garage, she is afraid that getting rid of everything related to the job that gave her security after her first marriage failed, will jinx her ideal life.
I wrote this story after having one of my teacake sessions with Tracy Fells. I told her I was having difficulty letting go of my teaching paraphernalia even though it was taking up valuable space in the garage. I told her a little of the background to my difficulty and she told me to go home and write the story (this has happened a few times now and she is going to want commission soon!) so I did.
