Imogen Clark's Blog, page 15

How to mark the Big 5-0!

My friend is about to turn fifty and she’s having a party to mark the occasion. And why not? It’s quite an achievement to get to half a century!

But the wording of her invitation was a little odd. Instead of being excited and enthusiastic, I sensed a reluctance to engage with the birthday itself. It’s almost as if she’s ashamed that she’s only having a party because she can’t think of anything better to do.

I think this is 50th birthday pressure at work!

When I was approaching fifty, people asked me how I was going to celebrate for months beforehand. I know that each time there’s a zero at the end of your age it’s a bit special but being fifty seemed to be more of an event than all the milestone birthdays rolled into one. And with that came pressure . . .

When expectations were so high, I began to feel like nothing I did could possibly match up. I’d had some special treats in the run up to my birthday but I was stupidly worried that the day itself might be a bit of an anti-climax.

So I gave myself a talking to.

My thought process went thus: what would be your perfect day?

Well that was easy – a day on a Caribbean beach followed by dinner alfresco basking in the golden light of a spectacular sunset with a warm breeze to gently lift my hair from my face. Sounds idyllic right?

Sunset in Zanzibar from our family holiday in 2017

But I live in Yorkshire and getting to Barbados for the day wasn’t entirely practical, especially not with my children in the mix. And there is no guarantee of golden light in high summer here, let alone once autumn arrives.

So instead, I broke my perfect day down into its constituent parts. It seemed I wanted 1) seaside, and 2) food outside. Now that I could achieve.

So I went to Bridlington to walk on the golden sands and then had a picnic on Ilkley Moor with my family. And even though it wasn’t quite my perfect day, it really wasn’t that far off, given the limitations of real life.

Ice cream on Bridlington beach

Champagne on Ilkley Moor

 

 

But it was memorable and that, I realised eventually, was what was making me fret. It wasn’t that I needed to do something spectacular. It was more that I wanted it to stand out in my mind as a special day.

So my friend might be apologetic about having a house party to celebrate her 50th birthday but actually it’s not about what you do. It’s HOW you do it. Making memories doesn’t depend on the backdrop. It depends on the people that you share the time with.

 

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Bestselling Books!

Hi there.

Well it’s all go around here. Not two months after Postcards From a Stranger hit the top of the Amazon kindle charts in the UK and Australia but my second book The Thing About Clare does the same and my feet have barely touched the ground!

Clare (as I affectionately like to call it to stop me having to type the whole name out all the time) isn’t actually published until 1st December but I was lucky enough to have it picked as one of the Amazon First Reads for November so First Read and Prime members have been able to get hold of a copy early and it’s those lovely readers that catapulted it to the top of the charts.

If you happen to live in the Ilkley area, I will be having a little launch party for the book on 2nd December at toasthouse. Here’s the link to the event. I’ll be reading a short passage and there will be copies of both books to buy if you’re looking for Christmas presents. And of course, I’ll be happy to sign them if you’d like.

In other news, I’m just back from a few days in Crete where I went to get some peace and quiet to edit book 3 (for more details watch this space.) It was the end of the season and things were very quiet which was perfect for my purposes but a little bit eerie nonetheless. Here’s the plane as I flew over Europe. Talk about a private jet!

 

As well as putting the finishing touches to the book I also learned:

that the sun in Greece in November is the perfect temperature for writing outside;
that I am happy in my own company for three nights;
that mealtimes are easiest if you have a book;
that no one likes to ask a middle-aged woman exactly what she is doing on her own in a holiday hotel!

Honestly, no one spoke to me or asked me why I was sitting at the pool bar on my laptop from dawn until dusk. It was quite funny. I think I would have been curious!

It’s all pretty busy here too. My younger two children are in their dance school’s show at the end of the month and my youngest will also be dancing in the Northern Ballet’s production of Nutcracker. Meanwhile, I have radio interviews, a blog tour and various other PR events in my diary. Just today I did an interview with the wonderful model Rachel Peru for her podcast Out of the Bubble. Rachel, like me, has found success in a new career later in life and is embracing it wholeheartedly. Her podcast is inspiring and uplifting. You can listen to it here.

After several faltering steps my Newsletter now lives and breathes so if you would like to sign up to receive that then just click here and put your email address in the box. Next month’s newsletter will contain some exciting news about book 3 and you wouldn’t want to miss that.

That’s all for now. I have to race off to take my children to the dentist and pick up something to cook for tea ( just in case you thought it was all excitement and glamour around here.)

Lovely to chat. Speak again soon,

Best wishes

 

 

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Bestsellers, skulls and orang-utans!

Hi

Well what a month it’s been!

Postcards was published on 7th August and since then it has flown to the top of the kindle charts in both the UK and Australia hitting the coveted Number 1 spot in both. I’ve also had lots of lovely reviews and so now I finally feel like I am a real author. That may sound silly but it’s been a long journey for me to make that mental leap I can tell you!

Eggs for breakfast.

Mainly though I’ve been travelling. I was lucky enough to go on a trip to Borneo with my family. It was such an experience. As well as seeing lots of wildlife, including the fascinating orang-utans, we also had the chance to stay the night with some families of the Iban tribe. They still live a simple life in wooden longhouses, farming for their own needs and selling what they can. Their days of headhunting are mercifully behind them now although we did have a go with a blow pipe and there were skulls hanging eerily in the eaves.

The Iban longhouse

 

 

 

 

Then this week I have been in Lisbon settling my second daughter into her Erasmus year at the university there. It was a first trip to the city for us both and we were struck by its vibrancy and colour. I particularly liked the tiled buildings and, of course, the trams. I may have to set a story there!

So now I’m back home with no plans for further travel for a month or so which is great as I need to get the manuscript for my third book delivered to my editor very soon. I’ve been working hard on it over the summer and I’m really enjoying spending time with my new characters as I get to know them.

As usual please get in touch if you’d like. You can find me mainly on Facebook and Instagram ( although I do loiter elsewhere) and don’t forget to join my Book Café if you like chatting about what you’ve read and finding recommendations for what to try next.

Happy reading,

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Imogen Clark at Home is TEN!

 

 

 

Happy birthday to my little blog! Ten years old today and I’m feeling quite emotional.

It’s never been a huge affair. I didn’t understand about advertising or keywords or search engine optimisation so I just blogged and published and didn’t really capitalised on the fact that I was so early to the blogging party. I simply wrote about what was going on for me in my kitchen and people read it.

I began blogging because as my youngest child started school I suddenly felt very aware that I was being left behind in terms of technology. I had four children! I needed to know at least a little of how this ‘online’ thing worked. So I dived in. You can read my very first post HERE.

Then my children got a little bigger and their friends started to read what I wrote which felt odd. When their friends started to comment on what I’d written I decided to reconsider my subject matter! By then though I was busy with other things. First I started a BA (Hons) in English Literature (here’s my POST about that) and then I began my first novel in 2010. You’ll see from my post about that HERE that I didn’t tell anyone until the project was well underway. Lack of confidence, fear of mockery, fear of failure – all that normal stuff. When it was finished though I asked my book group to read it. Listening to them discussing it as if I wasn’t even in the room was one of the most exciting and terrifying experiences of my life.

When I’d written my second novel, Beyond Belief, I decided to release it in instalments to my little community. I wanted to know if they thought it was any good and I positively encouraged criticism – and I got it!

On I went. Self publishing was a thing now but it was so complicated. My husband kept encouraging me to have a go but it wasn’t until  2015 that I plucked up enough courage to try and even then I used a pseudonym. Lucinda Fox was born.

Lots of courses and seven novels later I finally felt brave enough to publish Postcards From a Stranger. I signed up for the fantastic SPF101 course and learned what I needed to know to edit, format, get a cover, publish and market my book and on 7th June 2017 Postcards From a Stranger hit Amazon. It did well, reaching #14 in the UK Amazon kindle chart.

And then the email that changed everything. Amazon Publishing, Amazon’s own traditional publishing house, wanted to buy Postcards and my next two books and publish them for me. Postcards From a Stranger was republished on Tuesday of this week, almost 10 years exactly since I first set out on this adventure.

Do I have any regrets? A few. I should have learned more about blogging in the early days but I had four young children and I didn’t have energy or brain capacity for it. I should have been brave enough to self-publish earlier as well. Who knows where I might have been if I’d started with those early kindle writers back when the market was wide open?

But I firmly believe that you can only take these steps when you are good and ready and I didn’t reach that spot until last summer which was, as it turns out, the perfect moment.

So, now I have a blog with  over 500 posts, a First Class degree in English Literature, two pen names who both sell books most days, nine novels and lots of fab friends that I met along the way. Not bad for 10 years work.

And what’s next? Well who knows. More books I hope, maybe a bestseller or two! But the most important thing to me is to keep striving. I’ve never been one for sitting still. Life is short and all that. If you have an inkling about something you’d like to do then you just have to have a go. Who knows where you might end up?

Thank you for reading this and if you’ve been with me since 12th August 2008 then thank you from the very bottom of my heart.

 

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We have lift off!

So I’m very pleased to announce that Postcards From a Stranger has been released into the big, bad world. It’s been a long time getting to this point but now that we have finally arrived things should start to happen thick and fast with The Thing about Clare due to be released on 1st December and my third book next July.

I was very touched to receive a lovely basket of flowers and fizz and chocolates from my wonderful publishers Lake Union to mark the day so that champagne is now on ice for later. I am also thrilled to see that Postcards hit the Number 1 spot for Hot New Contemporary Releases in the US this afternoon which is very encouraging.

So if you’ve been with me since the beginning of this journey (of which more later in the week) or whether you have joined me more recently I just want to say thank you for your support. It means so much to me.

I’m holding a GIVEAWAY to win a signed copy of Postcards on my Facebook page so if you haven’t got a copy of the book yet and fancy your chances at winning one then head over there and check that out.

Best wishes

 

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Postcards From a Stranger

Hi everyone

Well, it’s now over a year since I took the phone call from the Commissioning Editor who was interested in publishing Postcards From a Stranger. It’s been a long wait and I think it’s fair to say that I haven’t always been terribly patient but now we are almost there. Postcards will be published a week today on 7th August. I’ve not been twiddling my thumbs whilst I waited though. I have edited both Postcards and The Thing about Clare as well as writing a further two novels over the course of the last fourteen months but now that Postcards is finally going to be republished I am both excited and a teeny bit nervous.

So, to take my mind off it all, I thought it might be interesting if I told you a little about how the book came to be written. The initial idea struck me at the end of one particularly difficult day at home with my four children. Picture the scene – I can’t remember the season but let’s assume that it was a grey, cold and probably wet as that would fit the mood. I had been chasing my tail all day trying to keep some semblance of order in the house but feeling increasingly defeated by the task. Each time I put something away in one room someone would take something out in another. So, after I’d spent my time pointlessly tidying, ferrying my children around town and cooking a meal that no one ate I decided that that was it! I was going to run away. I would take my passport and get on the first plane to Paris. (I think I was reading Paula McLain’s wonderful novel about Hemingway’s Parisian years The Paris Wife at the time but my imagination might have embroidered that part over the years!)

Of course I didn’t go. Who would take the children to ballet or pack their school bags or polish their shoes if I disappeared? But the idea got me thinking about the kind of mother that might drop everything and put her own needs over everyone else’s. And from that it was a small step to wondering what could be so terrible that it would drive a mother away.

There are no spoilers here. The book that I finally wrote is very different to the initial seed of the idea that I started with. I am a ‘pantser’ – that’s someone who writes without an outline – so, my stories rarely end up anywhere near where they started. I have an opening and an ending in mind together with my characters when I begin to type but the rest just occurs to me as I go along. However, the role of the mother features in a lot of my stories because of how central being a mother has been to my life over the last twenty years. There is a mother at the heart of my second book The Thing about Clare too although she is very different to Annie. 

Postcards is set mainly in my home town so it was easy to find locations for the action and I’ve made a Pinterest board with photos of the places that I had in mind as I was writing. You can see it HERE. There is also a board showing my writing room if you’re interested in that kind of thing. I’ll be posting more of my research on Pinterest going forward so keep an eye on it.

In other news, The Thing about Clare is now available to pre-order HERE and I have been busy editing book 3 which is due to be published next July. It is set in the North East of England and so I will build a Pinterest board of locations for that too. And I’ve just bought a new notebook for book 4 which I can’t wait to start scribbling in. More of that in due course!

Reading wise I’m currently enjoying A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles which is very elegantly written and gently funny.

As usual, if you want to get in touch then please comment below or contact me on Facebook or Twitter and if you’re interested in what I get up to then check out my Instagram account.

Happy reading.

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One Month To Go!

 

Hi everyone.

On 17th July last year I received an email out of the blue from a fiction editor at Amazon Publishing. I had just self-published my first book and was basking in the glory of my first 570 sales. The email said that the editor had loved my book and wanted to talk to me about what I was writing next.

To be honest, I thought it was a joke or worse, a scam. I almost didn’t reply but it turned out to be totally legit and now here I am with a three book publishing deal and just one month to go until my book Postcards From a Stranger is released by Lake Union, an imprint of Amazon Publishing.

It’s been a long year and not without its dramas as I learned more about how the publishing industry works and what I could (and could not) expect to happen. At times things have felt very slow and  more than a little frustrating.

But progress has been made. Postcards is about to emerge. Book 2 The Thing about Clare is complete and just waiting for its cover to be finalised so that it can go into pre-publication marketing. I have written what I hope Lake Union will love as Book 3 and submitted it well before my deadline. I have also written another book and am editing yet another as well as having had a wonderful idea for the book after that so I haven’t been slouching whilst I waited.

This coming week my advance copies of Postcards together with the audiobook version  are due to be delivered here (Giveaways soon so watch this space!) and I will be talking both to my editor about Book 3 and my marketing manager about her plans for pre and post publication. I have also met with ED Public Relations  about the forthcoming promotion of The Thing About Clare.

So it’s safe to say that things are about to start happening. This sense of finally moving forward is really important for me personally. I have found it so hard being in  limbo for the best part of a year – not being able to move forward with my career as an indie author as I intended and yet not quite being able to claim the title of author because I felt like a fraud as there was no book there. So I have made a deal with myself that when we finally get to publication date on 7th August I will FINALLY feel able to celebrate properly and if anyone asks me what I do I will tell them proudly that I AM AN AUTHOR!

 

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Me and the Eternal City

Hi there.

Recently I did one of those DNA test things and discovered that I am one quarter Scandinavian. Who knew?! However, I have now decided that this must be wrong as I am clearly half ITALIAN!

I’m joking, of course ( well, about the Italian bit at least – I really am quarter Viking). What I maybe should have said is that I FEEL half Italian. I might not have long dark hair or skin that turns a delicious chestnut colour in the sun and I have next to no proficiency in the language but when I go to Italy I feel like I belong there. It’s almost like coming home even though I have never been there for longer than a month at a time.

I have to confess though that this was something that I only remembered when I was in Rome last week and immediately fell back in love with the place. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is that I find so appealing – the architecture certainly, the tiny roads and the way you can just stumble across flashes of  startling beauty in and amongst the everyday. I love the food too and the warmth. of the sun on my skin but mostly I think it’s the Italian people that appeal to me. They seem to embrace life as if every day might be their last and they must squeeze every last bit out of it. It’s not that they are perpetually happy or enthusiastic but they never seem to do anything in half measures. Whatever an Italian is busy with they do as if they really mean it.

So I think I need more trips to Italy and I’m going to make it a goal for me to pursue. After all, it’s so easy to get there from here that there really is no excuse for not doing something about it.

In other news, the new cover for Postcards From a Stranger has been finalised so watch this space for the grand reveal. The Thing about Clare is almost ready to go to proof too and the first draft of the third book for Lake Union is also complete. Now I’m thinking about the ideas that are bubbling round for my next story. So far I have the two main characters, a setting and the theme. Now I just have to wait for my creative brain to configure them into something that I can work with.

Whilst that is all cooking, I have been doing lots of reading and if you like family dramas I can recommend This is How it Always is by Laurie Frankel. 

It’s the story of a family with lots of children and a big issue which they all find different ways to deal with. It’s everything I enjoy in a book – well written, thought-provoking and with a little humour.

If you enjoy what I’m doing here and on Facebook and Instagram then please tell your friends and I’d love to hear from you too. (If you don’t know then click the links above to follow me and find out!)

Best wishes,

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Settings and how to find them!

Hi everyone

What do you remember about a book? Maybe not the title or even the characters but I bet you remember where it’s set. Me too. Setting is really important (as I wrote in this Guest Blog piece for Reedsy, the writer’s marketplace. Here it is in case you’re interested.)

So when it came to writing the third book of my Amazon Publishing trio I thought about setting before I even had the idea for the plot straight in my head. I love the seaside so I wanted the coast to feature in my story. I needed to find somewhere that was a little down at heel but was on the doorstep of somewhere a lot smarter and within shouting distance of a city.

I came up with Whitley Bay which, if you don’t know it, is a town on the North Eastern coast of England on the edge of the Northumbria national park and not far from Newcastle. Whitley Bay was originally a fishing village which gained a certain reputation in the 1980s and 90s when it became a Mecca for stag and hen parties.

St Mary’s Lighthouse, Whitley Bay

These days it is searching for a slightly more upmarket vibe but the shadows of its ‘kiss me quick’ past are never far away.

The trouble with setting a book there though was that I had never been. A trip was most definitely in order. So I booked myself into a B and B for two nights and set off to explore.

Whilst I am happy in my own company, I have never done two nights away entirely alone before and when I first arrived I feared that I had made a terrible mistake. However, a couple of hours in to my exploration I found a coffee shop that looked like the kind of place I usually hang out in and after that things improved immeasurably.

I had a list of locations that I needed to find as well as being on the look out for places that I could set scenes in. I won’t share all those with you now – the book isn’t out until next year – but suffice it to say that Whitley Bay didn’t let me down.

The Rex Hotel needing some TLC

Having visited the place, the writing of the book has gone very smoothly. It is so much easier to describe somewhere that you can visualise and, whilst I have done plenty of location research via Google before, it was nice to have my own photos to rely on for a change.

The first draft of the book is now complete and I am leaving it to ripen whilst I work on various things for the first two. I’m also thinking of where to set the next one. I have an idea for something on an island off Shetland and another based in Kefalonia. Another research trip (or two) must be due soon.

In other news my Book Café is going great guns so pop over and have a look if you enjoy lively chat about current reads. Click here for that. I’m also off to London tomorrow to talk about publicity for The Thing about Clare which will be out on 1st December so that’s very exciting. I’ll report back soon.

So until next time, happy reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Making New Friends

 

 

Hi there

So here’s my writing journey so far in a nutshell. I published my first book Postcards From a Stranger in June last year. In July I was approached by Amazon Publishing and to cut a very long story very short they bought the book and my next two.  And since then I have been WAITING! I’ve been writing too but mainly I’ve been waiting whilst the lengthy process of publishing a book spreads itself out in front of me.

Well, I’ve never been that patient so whilst I wait (the All New Postcards From a Stranger will be out on 7th August) I’ve decided that I should spend my time making friends.

So far I have met new friends on my Facebook Page – Imogen Clark at Home. If you haven’t found it yet then click HERE. I also have my Book Café which is a vibrant group where people swap ideas for their next read. Lots of new friends there too. You can join in HERE. Finally, I’ve been posting on Instagram a bit so if pictures are your thing and you want to see what I’m up to then check it out HERE.

Next on my mission list for meeting new people is to start a regular Facebook Live broadcast where I can tell everyone more about my books, where I write, my process and all the news as we approach PUBLICATION DAY. I’ll post on the Facebook Page when those are going to be and hopefully my new friends and I will find a convenient regular time to meet up for a virtual cup of tea.

Lots of new books to discover too. As well as the Book Café there’s also my GoodReads page where I rate what I’ve read. Recently I’ve really enjoyed The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Break – both really different in style and genre but similar in that they kept me awake and turning the pages.

Right, that’s all from me. If you haven’t yet found me on Social Media then please come and say hello and maybe you can meet some new friends too.

 

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