Sanjida Kay's Blog, page 2

Rejection – Or How to Fail Better at Writing

‘I tried to remind myself of the rejections other authors had faced. JK Rowling was famously told that children did not want to read long books about boys who go to boarding school and learn how to be wizards.’

My podcast on ‘Rejection – Or How to Fail Better at Writing’ is up on the Royal Literary Fund’s website now if you’d like to take a look at the punch-drunk path to success, failures and lessons learned!

Sanjida O’Connell

What no one tells you about getting published…

(A love story in twenty-five parts) SONY DSC

When the Royal Literary Fund asked me to write an article on this topic, I used Matt Haig’s poem ‘Instructions for my funeral (A love story in twenty-one parts)’ as my inspiration.

You’ll be overcome by euphoria: your childhood dream has come true, and you will feel as if you’ve made it.You’ll receive a bound proof in the post and your heart will beat a little faster, as if you’re looking at your first born after they’ve grown up and moved out.You hope that the literary world will receive you as the next Margaret Atwood/Martin Amis/Malcolm Gladwell (delete as appropriate).It won’t.You’ll be crippled with self-doubt and anxiety and think you’ve written the worst book in the world.You haven’t.You’ll meet up with the marketing team and they’ll delight you with their plans for telling the literary world how brilliant your book is.They’ll do almost nothing that they have promised. Instead, you’ll be required to tweet, write blogs, attempt to get articles in newspapers, and host competitions on your own Facebook page.On the day of publication, you’ll drink a glass of fizz and post a picture on Twitter of you drinking a glass of fizz, and your words will be washed away in a torrent of other writers’ words. There will be a book launch that you have organised but your publicist will take credit for, and a few people, not just your mum, will turn up.There will be reviews. Some will be excoriating, some will be wonderful, some will be mind-blowingly annoying. One reader will give your book a one-star rating because Amazon didn’t deliver it on time.If you’re lucky, someone will understand what you wrote and why, and may even see a deeper meaning that you missed. A reviewer will claim you’ll win the Booker. You will go to literary events. As you sit on a panel, you’ll realise that you’re talking to an audience of writers and wannabe-writers, but not readers.You will look at your beautiful book and remember the hours, months and even years you spent crafting it, thinking of exactly the right word to put in the right place, and wondering what the characters thought and felt. Acquaintances will ask how many copies you’ve sold.You’ll wonder how many copies you’ve sold.The sales team will ask if it’s written by Lee Child or James Patterson and when the answer is no, they won’t attempt to place it in WH Smiths.You’ll realise that publishing companies are run as if writers are landed aristocrats from the eighteenth century with private incomes, and they will pay you random amounts at random times, but always less than the minimum wage.You’ll discover that Amazon is as powerful as God: if Amazon decides to sell your book for a penny, all you can do is pray.Your editor will take off her velvet gloves and say that your book needs to win the Booker, or there will be no more book deals. Your book does not win the Booker. Belatedly you realise that your editor doesn’t care about your writing unless your book a) makes money, b) brings them kudos, c) wins prizes, or d) all of the above.After some soul-searching, you’ll understand that what counts is that  you a) love writing, b) can develop your craft by yourself, c) are able to recognise useful feedback, and d) value your own writing. Because your childhood dream has come true, and you have made it.

Head over to the Royal Literary Fund’s Showcase website for the full audio version.

Sanjida O’Connell

My favourite children’s book

‘It’s such a moving, powerful story but it’s also beautifully written. It’s about kindness and compassion, about how what we’re like on the inside should matter so much more than what we’re like on the outside.’

I’ve been talking to the Royal Literary Fund about my favourite children’s book: ‘Wonder’ by RJ Palacio.

‘I love it so much that when my daughter’s gone to school I sneak ahead & read a little bit further…‘

I have to admit, I cried every morning when my daughter was reading it to me. I cried for little Augie, for all the children who believe they are different and are bullied and I cried for my childhood self and the bullying handed out to me at all ten schools I attended – bullying for being mixed race in Britain, for being other, for being different. 

Luckily, being a novelist, I fictionalised my experiences and turned them into my first psychological thriller, ‘Bone by Bone‘, and still, to this day, donate a percentage of my royalties to anti-bullying charity, Kidscape.

My desert island book

I’d want to read it on a desert island because it would remind me of the power and passion of human emotions.’⠀

Talking about the book I’d take with me to a desert island with the Royal Literary Fund. Okay, no surprises, it’s my favourite book!⠀

Which book would you take and why? ⠀

The Perfect Crime is out now!

22 bestselling crime writers. 22 deadly destinations. One deliciously sinister collection 

I’m delighted that ‘The Perfect Crime‘ is out now, published by Harper Collins. It’s a collection of 22 short crime fiction stories from writers of colour, and features authors Vaseem Khan, Oyinkan Braithwaite and Abir Mukerjkee amongst many others. The stories are set all around the world: Mexico, Lagos, the Caribbean…and mine is set in Manchester!

Called ‘The Beautiful Game’, it’s about a young woman who falls for a charismatic, wealthy young footballer with a large house on the edge of the moor near Manchester whose girlfriends seem to mysteriously disappear…

The inspiration was a fairy story, which I’d been wanting to re-imagine as a contemporary psychological thriller, so when I was asked to contribute to ‘The Perfect Crime’ it seemed like the perfect opportunity!

Let me know what you think…and if you can guess what the fairy tale is….

My favourite translated book – The Glass Bead Game

My favourite book in translation is ‘The Glass Bead Game’ by Herman Hesse. The Royal Literary Fund has made a short film on books in translation – head over to the RLF to see the full film and find out more about why I like the Hesse’s dystopia and what it’s about – as well as hearing from writers Leila Rasheed, Penny Black, Jonny Wright, Shelley Silas, Gabriel Gbadamosi and Dipo Agboluaje.

Sanjida O’Connell talking about her favourite book in translation: ‘The Glass Bead Game’ by Herman Hesse

What’s Your Favourite Book In Translation?

The Glass Bead Game

My favourite book in translation is ‘The Glass Bead Game’ by Herman Hesse. The Royal Literary Fund has made a short film on books in translation – head over to the RLF to see the full film and find out more about why I like the Hesse’s dystopia and what it’s about – as well as hearing from writers Leila Rasheed, Penny Black, Jonny Wright, Shelley Silas, Gabriel Gbadamosi and Dipo Agboluaje.

Sanjida O’Connell talking about her favourite book in translation: ‘The Glass Bead Game’ by Herman Hesse

What’s Your Favourite Book In Translation?

Sleeping Beauty – How Somerset inspired my thriller, One Year Later

‘The Pines is a rambling farmhouse that our parents, David and Eleanor, converted years ago, and although it no longer has the land it came with, it still has a huge garden. It sits on the lower slopes of the Mendips in Somerset, the woods behind, green fields gently falling away in front of it. On a good day – and 15 August, with its clear blue skies, was one of those days – you can see over the tops of the seaside towns of Clevedon and Weston-super-Mare and all the way across the Severn estuary to Wales.’

This is how Nick Flowers describes the house his family grew up in at the start of my psychological thriller, One Year Later. When I was writing this novel, we were living in Bristol, but we’d just bought a house and some land in a remote part of Somerset and our plan was to renovate our new home. We spent a fairy-tale summer camping in the empty house and trying to keep on top of the vegetation that threatened to engulf the place. Each weekend we would leave the roads behind and bump along a bridlepath, verges of cow parsley and pink campion brushing the sides of the car, the house itself hidden behind an overgrown hedge, a creeper like a briar from Sleeping Beauty, swallowing the porch and stealing through the windows. We’d forage for raspberries and red currants, cook on a one-ringed burner, burn coppiced hazel in a grand stone fireplace, and watch the sun sink behind the small-leaved lime.

In the garden there’s a small pond, which was choked with weed and water lilies, and the ruins of a tumble-down cottage. Both features inspired pivotal scenes in One Year Later. In my story, the youngest child in the Flowers family drowns in the garden pond the day before her second birthday. A year later, Nick, who is desperate to bring the family together so that they can heal, has a dark memory of nearly being killed in the same garden…

The rest of my article on how Somerset inspired my latest psychological novel – and my writing in general – is out now on the Royal Literary Fund’s website as a podcast; you can also hear my fellow RLF fellow and friend, Emylia Hall, who talks about the Cornish landscapes of her childhood that she rediscovered through her writing.

Sugar Island is available to pre-order

I’m delighted to announce that one of my novels is going to be republished! ‘Sugar island’ by Sanjida O’Connell is based on a true story and is set at the turn of the American Civil War, in the deep south.

It’s about a terrible secret a young woman’s husband has kept from her, her struggle for freedom and independence, and her fight to protect and emancipate her husband’s slaves. I love the new cover, designed by Wide Sky Studio. ‘Sugar Island’ was originally published by John Murray and will be available as an e-book from 19 July here.

The paperback will be out soon too! Here’s what it’s about:

Emily Harris, a glamorous young English actress, arrives in America in 1859. There she meets and falls in love with a charming southern gentleman, Charles Earl Brook. But shortly after they are married, Emily discovers that Charles has kept a terrible secret from her. The Brooks are slave-owners and Emily is forced to travel to the deep south where Charles keeps seven hundred men, women and children in abject poverty.‘I have worked every day through dew and damp, and sand and heat, and done good work; but oh, missis, me old and broken now, no tongue can tell how much I suffer.’As civil war breaks out, Emily’s world becomes increasingly dangerous and she realises that her growing friendship with the slaves could cost her everything she has ever loved.

One Year Later – Press