Hi Kate! It so wonderful to welcome you back to my blog for Guest Author Saturday - I hope you're well and keeping busy. Your new book AN ITALIAN DREAM is out now and I am looking forward to hearing all about it. Wishing you lots of sales! Let's get started with my interview...
1.)
What genre do you typically read? Why?
I actually read all sorts of genres, but my go to genre is historical fiction particularly set in Roman, Viking, the Dark Ages and Elizabethan times. Although I mainly write women’s fiction and romances, I do love darker fiction and I’m not at all put off by battles and gore! I love the history and that the fiction is grounded in reality. I also find it helpful to read something completely different to what I’m writing.
2.)
Share a favourite childhood memory.
My grandparents lived on a farm in north Norfolk and I have wonderful memories of spending every Christmas and some summers there while growing up. I remember at the height of summer my brother and I taking a packed lunch to my grandad and watching him on the combine harvester while we played in a huge heap of straw – summer heat, dust, scratchy straw, fresh air, freedom and the rumble of the combine. A wonderful memory from a childhood littered with happy times. I was very lucky.
3.)
Do you have any shameless addictions? ie. Tea, Books,
Shoes, Clothes?
Coffee! Or to be more specific, caramel lattes. Not good for me, I know, but it fuels my writing (and helps me to function first thing in the morning!).
4.)
What do you think is the biggest challenge of writing
a new book?
Besides going from a blank page to 80K words, the biggest challenge is in the first edit after (in my case) the very rough first draft is written. The challenge of tying all the strands of the book together, the characters, their interaction, back story and their journey throughout the book to hopefully a satisfactory happy ever after always worries me, but somehow I get there in the end.
5.)
Do you aim for a set amount of words/pages a day?
Yes, generally I aim to write 2000 words a day, but on a recent writing retreat where it was just me in a cabin in Wales for two days (utter bliss!), I aimed for a daily target of 5000 words and managed to write 12,000 words in that time. I couldn’t keep that up on a daily basis though!
6.)
What are your thoughts on writing a book series?
I really enjoy writing a book series and being able to revisit
characters and places, however the novels I’m currently writing for Boldwood are
all standalone romantic escape novels although the linking theme is different
characters on beautiful islands (Skopelos and Capri so far, Madeira and Iceland
will feature in the next two books). My Romantic Escape series also has standalone
books but I’ve linked them together as, from a marketing point of view, it made
sense to encourage readers to easily move on to the next one (if they liked the
first of course!). In many ways I’ve made it harder for myself by having to
create a whole new setting and characters for each book, and perhaps one day I’ll
return to my The Butterfly Storm series (set in Greece and north Norfolk)
and write a continuation of those books or perhaps a new series entirely!
.png)
No comments
Post a Comment