Living the Dream - Life as a Bestselling Author

After writing for six years, I find myself in the enviable position of earning a very decent living from writing fiction. Recently I took the plunge and gave up my day job as a school teacher. After all, if a crime author can't bite the bullet, what hope is there for any writer? So here I am at last, living the dream. I can finally call myself a full-time writer. And this is the point where I am beginning to realise that, in my case at least, 'full-time writer' is a bit of a misnomer. You might expect that I would have a lot more time to devote to my writing, now that I'm writing full-time. That was certainly my expectation when I gave up the day job. The reality is somewhat different...
It's hard to credit, but now that I no longer have the day job, I'm actually struggling to maintain my output. I hesitate to admit that I'm actually doing less writing now than when I was working. (Although I now earn my living from writing, I still can't think of writing as work.)  'Writers' block,' you mutter knowingly, 'that's why she's struggling to write so much.' You couldn't be more wrong.
The problem that keeps me from writing is that I'm just too busy. Take my visit to York in October. I'm going there to research the area for the Ian Peterson series which is set in York. Of the twelve days I'll be be in the area, I actually have two days free for my research. The rest of the visit is taken up with seven bookshop visits, two library talks, and one U3A talk, and then there's likely to be a radio interview and an interview with a local paper - and I still need to fit in a  talk to students at a local college. And so it goes on... I'm going to struggle to fit in all my research. Writing won't get a look in.
Look at my summer. July was occupied with a research trip for a week, followed by a crime festival which took up nearly another week. apart from two book signings, two author talks, and six meetings. In August I spent two weeks teaching at the Writers Lab in Greece, followed by a week at a Literary Festival in France, with a signing and a meeting thrown in between my travels. And so it goes on, meetings, book signings, author talks and workshops, one after another, with seemingly no let up.
It's all great fun, but I do sometimes look back at the days when all I did was work full-time in a normal job, and write books. Life was so much simpler then, and, dare I say it, not quite such hard work.

Writers and Readers

I received my PLR statement today. Around 3,000 people borrowed my books from libraries in the UK in the year to June 2010.
Who says libraries aren't popular nowadays?
As an author, it's hardly surprising that I spend a lot of time writing, but these days authors also spend a lot of time talking. As a relatively unknown 'name', my events vary and sometimes I chat to half a dozen readers in a library reading group, always an enjoyable experience. But here are a couple of photos, both taken at a recent talk I gave where more than 200 people turned out to hear me talk about my books. You can just about see me, a tiny dot on the stage.

Maybe one day I'll even see a queue of more than two people waiting in front of my table at a book signing...

Did I say people?

It's a hard life...!

In case you thought I was doing nothing but work at my writing, I thought I'd share a few photos taken when I was out and about this week.
Here you can see me hard at work giving a talk to a book club. Fortunately they loved CUT SHORT. I met one of them at a book signing last year, and they kindly invited me to go and talk to them. They were really welcoming, and very interesting. The group includes two speech therapists, an experienced social worker and teachers - all very relevant to CUT SHORT.
On Saturday I signed at the Get Writing Conference at Hatfield University. I wasn't able to run a workshop, as I had a Very Important Meeting with my publisher that morning (!) but I did go along to sign at lunch time. The photo shows me with Bibiophile Helen. (We haven't morphed into pixies - I'm holding a poster.) In her review, Helen described CUT SHORT as 'a thoroughly gripping, sprint paced, creepy thriller' which she 'couldn't put down.'


Finally, here's a photo sent to me by Stanmore College, where I gave a talk before Christmas. The students described CUT SHORT as 'gripping' and 'a good read'.

So it's not all head down writing. I do get out and about and meet people, which is great fun.


If you'd like a visit to your book club, writers circle, school, college or library, feel free to contact me. You can leave a comment here, send a message via the contact page on http://www.noexit.co.uk or use the email on my profile.