How I got into print

When I give talks I am often asked how I first got published. I tell this story:

Many years ago, just before Christmas, I found an advertisement on the back page of The New Statesman. "Writers Make More Money!" it proclaimed. Well, I'm a writer, I thought (a handful of short stories sold to the BBC) and I'm hardly making any money. There was a P.O. Box to send for information. My husband thought it would prove to be a writing school and that I would have to part with some money before there was any chance of making any.

He was wrong. The material that arrived was from D.C. Thomson. They needed new writers for their girls' picture story papers such as Mandy, Judy and Debbie. There were a couple of sample scripts and photo copies of how they translated to the page of the story paper. The scripts were fascinating. The instruction was to have a go at writing one and even though there was no guarantee of it being accepted - in fact they said it probably wouldn't be - if they thought you had promise they were prepared to train you. I had a go.

I found out later that about 30,000 impecunious writers had responded to the advertisement but most of them dropped out when they discovered what was required. Nevertheless about 3,000 people did have a go and my editor told me later that the whole staff up in Dundee put in extra hours until they'd decided on twelve possibles. I was one of them. And the script I had submitted was, in fact, accepted and became the first episode of the serial "Cathy's Friend From Yesterday"(a time-slip tale)

which ran in Mandy. What fun I had for the next fourteen years. I wrote for the Christmas Annuals as well as the weekly papers.

Fourteen years was far too long, I should have put my hockey stick away and tackled grown-up novels long before that. By the time I most regretfully said goodbye to Mandy and co. I was the only one of that batch of writers left.

And now Mandy and her friends are no more but they taught me much about writing. I'll tell you what another time or should I say: Story to be continued?

Memories of You

My mother, the youngest of thirteen children, was a scholarship girl. At the age of fourteen her parents told her they could no longer afford to keep her at school and that she had to leave and work for a living. She ran away from home - all the way to London where she got a job in a big house. After a while she left domestic service and found work as a 'Nippy' in a Lyon's Corner House. Helen, the heroine of my new book, 'Memories of You', finds work in a cafe in Soho and discovers a new and exciting world. She not only falls in love she makes an entirely new life for herself. So did my mother, make a new life that is. For the difference is that mother came home to Newcastle for a holiday, met my father, and never went back to London. Helen stays and I'm pretty sure my mother would have approved of the way the story ends.

In medias res

The phrase has become almost a cliché to describe a common method of beginning a story. In other words you hurry the reader into the middle of the action just as something important, some change is about to happen. Once the story is going along at a cracking pace you can shuttle back and forth using flashbacks to fill in anything we need to know. But don't do this too soon. The first page, the first paragraph, that's where it all begins . . . or ends. If the reader isn't hooked immediately you've lost the battle.
Some of effective openings:

Marley was dead to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that.
(A Christmas Carol by Dickens)

It is cold at 6:40 in the morning on a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad.
(The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth)

We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody dropped the girl off the bridge.
(Darker Than Amber by John D. MacDonald)

Please add your own favourites.

Audio books

I should have added that many actors apply for the job of recording audio books and often they're given the chance, especially if they are well known. But they just can't do it and are seldom asked again. Reading is a special skill.

Audio books

The other day I went to Soundings to sit in during a session while Anne Dover recorded my new book Starlight And Dreams. Anne is an experienced reader who once had her own late night record show on commercial radio and has done voice-overs and television commercials. She also once worked as a model.

Any author who is assigned Anne to read their book is lucky; she is an intelligent and instinctive reader. She has a good ear and a fair grip of dialects so it's not surprising that she reads many books that need regional accents such as sagas. That's why she has read most of my books. Geordie is notoriously difficult to do but then Anne was born and brought up in the North East.

Anne, who lives in Yorkshire, is given approximately four weeks to read the book and prepare herself. A recording session takes three and a half to four days during which, if she is working at Soundings, she stays in a company flat all expenses paid. She says she enjoys her work enormously even though she sometimes has to leave the cubicle to have a little cry at the sad bits. A book she loved reading recently, and which didn't make her cry, was Molly's Millions by Victoria Connelly.

We were also given a tour of the studios. The General Manger at Soundings is Gillian Bell. Gillian started there as a typist when she was eighteen and has since worked in just about every department. In packing, as a sound engineer, a producer, P.A to the boss before becoming General Manger herself. She met her husband, sound engineer Graham, at work. Graham is the son of Christine Bell, one of the producers. Christine started off as a proof reader for Soundings many years ago. She seems to love her work; as they all do.

As far as the recording is concerned tapes, razor blades and chinagraph pencil editing is history. Everything is digital. Three versions of each book rare produced: Cassette, Cd and MP3.

Soundings, Magna and Isis are all part of the Ulverscroft group. Gillian tells me that Soundings and Magna are more alike in that they cater for an older generation of listeners with sagas, war stories, traditional crime stories and what she calls 'softer' fiction. She says Isis is more 'modern'.

Gillian has always been a reader but she doesn't bid for the books. Someone at Isis does that. But once Gillian is sent the book she takes control. She does the casting and, if they are not going with the original cover, she commissions an artist who will do one to suit.

Asked about business Gillian predicts maybe two or three bad years because of library cutbacks. She also says there is more competition now. Because of this fees to the authors are improving and they are having to pay more to secure the contract.

She made passing reference to the present standard of copy editing. You can probably guess what she said.

Finally, in answer to someone's question Gillian told me that an author could submit her book herself.

When we left I was given a copy of the latest catalogue and was pleased to find books by members of romna including Anna Jacobs, Penny Jordan, Anne Whitfield and Janet Woods.