His Hidden Wife Hits Amazon Top 50!

I apologise in advance for the fact that this is going to be an incredibly excitable post... for many reasons.

The first is that a week ago, my fourth psychological thriller, His Hidden Wife, was published by Bookouture. That's four books in just over two years! I have to admit that although I was passionate about this book, it was a hard one to write. So much so that when I handed it over to my editor, I knew something was off but I was too close to it to know what it was. 

There were two parts to the story (a present day story and a story set twelve years earlier) narrated by different people. After a week or so, my editor came back to me and told me she knew what was wrong: the story set in the past wasn't necessary. It needed to come out. Yes.. all of it!

I could have cried but my lovely editor had worked with me on my three previous books and got it right so I knew I had to trust her judgement. I had to have faith that at the end of it, my book would be a stronger one even though the amount of work needed seemed overwhelming.

So began several weeks of structural edits, followed by several more of line edits that were almost as hard. They were, by far, the most difficult edits I've had to do for any of my books and I'll be honest and say that, at times, I wondered if I could do it. I even wondered, at my lowest point, whether after I'd finished, I'd ever want to write another book. 

But I carried on and eventually saw the light at the end of the tunnel. When I'd finished, I read the new version and thought: Do you know what? This isn't bad at all.

Thank goodness I wasn't the only one to think so because, a week on from publication day, His Hidden Wife has become an Amazon Kindle Top 50 bestseller (peaking at #43). It is number one in the Hot New Fiction charts in both the UK and the US and has sold more books in the first week than I ever could have imagined.

The picture at the top of the page is of me signing books for my local bookshop. I have to pinch myself to believe it! At the moment they're only taking phone orders from customers but I'm looking forward to taking some photos in the shop once they open again. It's a gorgeous little bookshop and one I share with Julia Donaldson (who lives in the same village) who can often be found signing her children's picture books in school holidays.

My books have always done better in the UK than in the US so it was particularly gratifying to find that the book raced up the Amazon charts across the pond as well. I am so very grateful to everyone who bought and shared and reviewed as I certainly couldn't have done it on my own.

You can buy His Hidden Wife here

This was the second publication day I've had in lockdown so I knew that I wasn't going to be having a huge celebration. Instead, I had a mini publication party with my friends via Zoom, drank Prosecco and scoffed the delicious cakes and biscuits my publisher sent me.

And what of the next book? Let's just say it's going well and when it's published at the end of the year, I'm hoping I'll be able to celebrate in (non-lockdown) style!
 

What She Saw Makes Amazon Top 100

I would like you to forgive this rather excitable post but I'm, well, rather excited.

When you have a novel published, you never know what to expect. Is anyone going to read it? Will people like it? Will you have to rethink your career? I thought all these things, and more, as the excitement of publication day wore off and life returned to normal.

It was a bit like having finished an exam and I couldn't help thinking, 'Was that it?'

My novel was hovering around the #1,000 mark on Amazon and I had no idea if this was a good place to be or whether I should skulk away into the shadows. I knew my editor was keen for What She Saw to make it into the Amazon Top 100 bestseller list but it didn't look as though it was going to happen.

Then suddenly, when my back was turned, something changed. My second psychological thriller, We Were Sisters, went on pre-order and the next thing I knew, What She Saw had begun to climb again. If I said I didn't check my Amazon ratings at frequent intervals after that, I would be lying. After all, things were starting to get exciting.

With each day, my debut slowly but surely climbed the charts until, early one morning, my editor emailed me to tell me I'd sold 10,000 books in twenty days and had broken into the Amazon Top 100. But it didn't stop there... it kept on climbing and, to my amazement, reached #58.

Not only that but it also got to #2 in the Amazon Hot Releases chart in Psychological Thrillers.

I was absolutely over the moon and was just thinking things couldn't get much better when I had another message to tell me that on Kobo in Singapore I was #1 in 'Mystery and Suspense Thrillers' (plus two other categories) and had bagged top spot in 'Hottest New Page Turners' in both the UK and the US.

The icing on the cake though was when I found out I had received my first 'Bestseller Badge' on Amazon. This time it was in Australia. What She Saw was #1 in Psychological Thrillers (and two other categories) and #2 in the whole of the Kindle charts. Here's the evidence!

I'm really sorry for what must sound like a horribly boastful post, and I don't mean it to be. It's just that (as a lot of you know) the road to publication for What She Saw has been a roller coaster and I can't help feeling like a proud parent as they watch their child who's struggled at school, graduate... which I will actually be doing in a couple of month's time!

I am so very lucky to have found my marvelous publisher, Bookouture, and the best editor in Jennifer Hunt.

She believed in What She Saw from the moment she read it and, thankfully, I now know others do too... including the lovely lady who took the time to let me know she'd read my novel on her cattle station in Queensland!