Confessions of a Suspense Author - Guest Post Zoe Lea

Continuing my 'psychological thriller author' series, I'd like to welcome the lovely Zoe Lea to my blog. Zoe is an author who first came to my attention on Instagram due to the wonderful photographs she posts, all set in the beautiful Lake District where she lives and writes. Loving this part of the country myself, I couldn't wait to ask Zoe some questions.

You’ve written two psychological thrillers. Have you always written in this genre?

The first time I tried to write a book it was for young adults and it was bad, really bad. I wrote several of these that were unsuccessful until an agent said that the book I was writing would be better suited to an adult audience. I gave that a go and it kind of went from there.

Could you describe ‘If He Wakes’ in three words?

Twisty. Page-turning. Shocking.

You live in the beautiful Lake District where my own thriller is set. How important do you think setting is to a novel?

Hugely. And it was something that I overlooked for such a long time, but I think setting is almost like another character in the novel. It sets the tone and atmosphere of the book; it gives the reader indications as to how everything builds. Without a good setting, I think a novel can become two dimensional.

Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when the idea for your latest novel came to you?

Not so much with The Secretary, I’d had an idea batting about for a while about a woman who does little acts of revenge on people she feels have wronged her. I think it was actually whilst on a school run that I thought a primary school would make an excellent setting!

Are you a plotter or a pantster and how long does it take you to write your thrillers?

I used to be a pantster and I love that way of writing, but it doesn’t work for me in the long run. I keep forgetting this and start giddily writing each novel as soon as I get a spark of an idea, but I need to have a good plan. I need to think about the plot and so, I usually get half way through a novel and then have to start planning which is not ideal at all. Because of this, it takes me a stupidly long time to write a thriller, but I’m working on it!

Could you describe your typical writing day?

As well as being an author, I also run a business so I don’t really have a typical writing day. But usually, my writing will happen either early morning or late afternoon, or on my lunch-break depending how the book is going, so it can vary from day to day.

I’m sure my readers would love to hear about your road to publication. Was it long and winding or did you take a short cut?

Oh it was a long road! I’ve been writing for years, but mostly short stories. I didn’t have the confidence to write a book for the longest time. Then it was YA books and then, with my first stab at an adult book I went on a Curtis Brown online course. That was invaluable, not only because of the advice and support I got, but because it made my attitude shift towards myself as a writer. I began to think I could actually do it. I got an agent from the novel that I started on the course and after several rewrites, got my deal with Canelo and now I’m working with Piatkus

.

You post great pictures on Instagram. How important do you think social media is to an author?

Hmmm, that’s a tricky one. I think it can be a really useful tool to building up an audience and community who know you and this can be wonderful for when you have a new book out or a deal that you want to announce. However, it takes a lot of time and can suck the life out of you if you’re not careful. I do Instagram because I adore it, it’s a hobby for me, a way of connecting with my readers and sharing my life as well as getting a peak into the lives of others, but I have to be careful it doesn’t take time away from my writing. If you’re an author, the main job is writing books, not spending ages on social media, and I think it’s important to remember that at all times!

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

I love being outdoors. I try to get a hike in every weekend if I can with the family. I’m also starting to really enjoy cooking, which is a novelty for me as I’ve hated it in the past, but recently I’ve found a new love for it.

What does your family think of your writing?

They are immensely proud. My teenage son showing off my book to his mates was a joy to witness, and my husband, who is my writing rock, is delighted. He shares my every high and low and I absolutely would not be able to do it without his unwavering support.

But something quite pivotal happened when I got my proofs of The Secretary. I took a copy to my parents, who have been my biggest cheerleaders and supporters since I was a kid. Having a tangible book I could give them was a momentous thing in my head as I’d dreamed of handing a finished book to my parents for so long.

At the time I was going through a really rocky patch, I was full of self-doubt and as I handed the book to my dad, I said, ‘Finally, I did it. After all that time.’ And he hugged me and said, ‘love, we’re not suddenly proud just because of this book, we’ve always been proud of you.’
And it changed my perception of the whole process.

I think, when you’ve been chasing a dream for a long time, it can become an insurmountable goal that becomes more than it actually is. My dad’s comment that day taught me not to put so much pressure on the outcome, it reminded me that I write because I love it, and that’s so important to keep hold off as you go through the publishing process. So, my family are forever the wisest, best and most brilliant council I could ask for.

What next for Zoe Lea?

I’m just in the process of completing my next novel, The Influencer. It’s about a social media queen who gets involved in the case of a missing teenager. After that, more writing, more novels but I have no idea as yet as to what they’ll be!

Zoe Lea lives in the Lake District, UK with her husband, two children, dogs and peregrine falcons. As well as writing, she helps manage an animal tracking company used for raptors and other wildlife. She's previously worked as a teacher, photographer and in the television industry, but writing has always been her passion. She is currently working on her next novel.

Website:   https://zoelea.com/ 

Instagram:   https://www.instagram.com/zoeleawriter

Amazon author page:   https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zoe-Lea/e/B07BDGGRQK  

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/zoeleawriter/ 

A Tale of Two Sisters - Guest Post Merryn Allingham

There are some blog guests I am always very happy to welcome back to Wendy's Writing Now and Merryn Allingham is one of them. She is here today to answer questions about her new release, A Tale of Two Sisters which is published by Canelo.

Can you tell my readers a little more about A Tale of Two Sisters?

It’s 1907 and Lydia Verinder has been in Constantinople for well over a year, working as a governess at Topkapi Palace. When Lydia’s letters home come to an abrupt halt, Alice Verinder is ready to blame her headstrong sister for thoughtlessness - Lydia has always been indulged and Alice’s feelings for her sister are decidedly mixed. She loves Lydia and admires her courage and passion, but feels resentful that since her sister was bundled out of England to escape punishment for a suffragette ‘crime’, she is the one left caring for their parents.

But Lydia’s continued silence is desperately worrying. Why should an English governess working in a securely guarded palace disappear without a word? Fearful of what might have happened, Alice sets out for Turkey alone, lying to her family about her destination. When she reaches Topkapi, she is overwhelmed by it magnificence and by the secrets she suspects the palace is hiding.

Slowly she uncovers the fate of her sister, helped by a young Englishman she meets on the journey. At first, their relationship is prickly, but love grows as together they face the dangers her search provokes. Step by step, Alice penetrates the silence that reigns within the palace but is drawn into a perilous game of power and violence.

What’s the hardest part of writing a novel set in a different century?

I enjoy research which is probably why I’ve gravitated towards historical fiction. Most of my novels are set between the mid-Victorian era and World War Two, and the amount of source material available - letters, diaries, speeches, endless scholarly tomes and novels and films of the period - makes the task relatively easy as well as enjoyable. The internet, too, can be invaluable for checking those tiny details you didn’t know you didn’t know. Where it gets harder is when you’re writing of another country’s past - particularly when you don’t read the language - and you’re forced to lean heavily on other people’s interpretations of events. In the case of this novel, most accounts that I read of Turkish history and specifically the Ottoman Empire, were written by Europeans with an inevitable bias.

How much research do you do before you start the novel?

It varies, but in the case of A Tale of Two Sisters, I read a good deal about the Ottoman Empire in the early years of the twentieth century. It was a time of political upheaval with calls for democracy and lots of different groups vying to overthrow the Sultan. I also read about the empire itself - its history over four hundred years and the way in which Topkapi Palace or indeed any of the Ottoman palaces were organised according to a strictly observed hierarchy. There are several articles on my website - www.merrynallingham.com - that look at the role of women within the empire and the way in which the system of slavery worked. You might be quite surprised!

You are with a new publisher. How have you found the transition?

I moved from a large conglomerate publisher to Canelo, a smaller independent firm but one that is growing fast. I’ve found everyone approachable and very friendly. In terms of book production, the editorial advice, copy editing, the jacket cover, have all been excellent. So I’m a happy bunny!

What is the central theme of your novel?

The novel is a mystery and a romance, but at a deeper level it raises questions of identity, of the complexity of family relationships, and the triumph of love against the odds.

Do you have a special time of day when you write?

I tend to do ‘stuff’ in the morning - exercise classes, Italian lessons, meeting friends - so my writing time doesn’t usually start until after lunch. Then I’ll work until six or seven in the evening. I seem to need those morning hours for my brain to get into gear.

Give us an insight into your main character. What is it about them that would make a reader want to go on the journey with them?

In fact, I have two main characters, since the story is told from both sisters’ perspectives. On the surface, Alice is the quintessential daughter of the Edwardian era. She has dutifully run the Verinder household for years and, after her brother’s death and her sister’s escape to Turkey, is left alone to care for ailing parents. Over the years, she has lost sight of the person she used to be, and it takes a desperate situation to help her recover the ‘real’ Alice. For Lydia, too, it’s the threat she faces that makes her realise for the first time how dear her family is to her. Each sister is forced to confront difficult feelings and face catastrophic loss. But both come to know reconciliation and the power of love.

What authors inspire you?

Lots do, but if I had to choose only one it would be Kate Atkinson. I love her style, the way she blends the literary and the popular. She’s also a writer willing to take chances and try different genres. Her first novel won the Orange Prize and a few years later the Jackson Brodie crime series was filmed for prime time television - you can’t get more versatile than that!

Have you any desire to write in a different genre?

I’ve wanted to write crime for a long time. I started out writing pure romance, but saw each book getting darker than the one before, and once I moved into mainstream women’s fiction, there was always a dead body somewhere in the story. But I was told quite firmly by those in the know that the odd body doesn’t make for crime. So this year I’m taking the plunge and publishing my first real crime novel - and with more than one body!

What next for Merryn Allingham?

In July, The Venice Atonement hits the shelves. It’s the first of a crime series set in different locations around the world, some of them definitely exotic. The books feature the same trio of characters - and the development of their relationship is probably as important as the crimes they solve. At the moment, I’m having fun writing number two in the series which is set on a fictional island in the Caribbean. I wonder, what could possibly go wrong?

You can buy A Tale of Two Sisters here: Amazon    

Find out more about Merryn at the links below:

Website: www.merrynallingham.com

Facebook: www.tinyurl.com/m322ovu

Twitter: @MerrynWrites

Merryn Allingham was born into an army family and spent her childhood moving around the UK and abroad. Unsurprisingly it gave her itchy feet and in her twenties she escaped from an unloved secretarial career to work as cabin crew and see the world.

Merryn  still loves to travel and visit new places, especially those with an interesting history, but the arrival of marriage, children and cats meant a more settled life in the south of England, where she has lived ever since. It also gave her the opportunity to go back to 'school' and eventually teach at university.

She has written seven historical novels, all mysteries with a helping of suspense and a dash of romance - sometimes set in exotic locations and often against a background of stirring world events.

Welcome Back Samantha Tonge!

The last month or so has been a whirlwind of returning guests, and don't I just love it - especially when they are ones I've known all my writing life. Today I'm delighted to welcome back my very special guest, Samantha Tonge, for her fourth appearance on Wendy's Writing Now. Samantha has been on quite a journey recently and has openly talked about her struggle when wine O'clock become something bigger. Since then, she's made huge changes in her life and one of these is a new direction in her writing.

I'll let Sam tell you about it.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about a writer’s voice and exactly what it is. The first book I wrote -  not my debut Doubting Abbey, published in 2013, but my very first attempt at writing back in 2005 – was not comedic. My second and all the ones to follow were. In real life I’m the sort of person to crack one-liners and laugh with people I know (and don’t, to my children’s embarrassment) and I think I decided that romantic comedy was more me because of this. Plus at the time I got feedback from an editorial agency saying that they felt I was very near the point of finding my writing voice and I took that to mean I was doing the right thing, writing as I spoke.

It certainly felt natural and I went on, eventually, to have nine romantic comedies published, the last this May, One Summer in Rome.

I say the last because in recent years I’ve faced some mental health challenges and there came a point, in 2017, when I had to tell my agent I couldn’t write comedy anymore. It just wasn’t in me to crack one-liners. Less of that was happening in real life and I suppose it’s obvious that would affect my work as a writer. In 2016 I’d found myself with a wine o’clock problem that had got out of control and it was whilst recovering from that I changed direction and wrote my first women’s fiction novel Forgive Me Not. It has just been published by the wonderful Canelo.

On the back of that I thought that very first book I wrote must have been the real authorly me and I’d just gone back to that.

But then the reviews started to come in for Forgive Me Not. Here are some examples...

“You will still find the same warmth and love just like in her other stories.”

“This book has a harder edge to it but the characters and plot were equally as compelling.”

“Samantha’s writing style has the knack of drawing me in making it her books extremely difficult to put it down.”

“Heartwarming & heartbreaking in equal measure – love @SamTongeWriter's new direction.”

Whilst reviewers acknowledge that Forgive Me Not heralds a very new direction for my writing, they can clearly see common ground. And the same words keep coming up as in reviews for my romcoms – warm, emotional, heartfelt… so all of this leads me to question exactly what voice is.

And I’ve concluded that, for me, it’s not the tone – i.e. whether the book is comedic or serious – no, it’s about warmth. All of my novels have featured characters and communities pulling together, for example, and Forgive Me Not is no different – the economy of the little village of Healdbury is under threat from a new out-of-town hypermarket and so locals pull together to save their businesses. There’s also a warm-hearted thread about charity and acceptance connected to the grittier subject of homelessness.

I suspect whatever genre I wrote that voice of mine would be there. If I wrote about zombies alongside the gruesome deaths I’d probably have one who was vegetarian, like the shark in Nemo, who was trying to save the humans.

So I think readers help you identify exactly what your voice is – what it is, about your writing, that inspires them to buy your next book. It may not be the tone or the style or feel. Or it might be. But, whatever it is, it’s unique to you.

You can buy Forgive Me Not HERE

You can find out more about Samantha by following the links below:

Website

Facebook

Twitter

Samantha Tonge lives in Manchester UK. She studied German and French at university and has travelled widely.

When not writing she passes her days cycling, baking and drinking coffee. Samantha has sold many dozens of short stories to women’s magazines. 

Her bestselling 2013 debut novel, Doubting Abbey, was shortlisted for the Festival of Romantic Fiction best Ebook award. In 2015 her summer novel, Game of Scones, hit #5 in the UK Kindle chart and won the Love Stories Awards Best Romantic Ebook category. Her new novel, Forgive Me Not, heralds a new direction with publisher Canelo, and is a story about acceptance, forgiveness and trying to put things right.