Imogen Clark's Blog, page 8

What a view

Well, we may not have the summer weather but we’ve certainly got the countryside here in Yorkshire!

RANDOM GOOGLE SEARCH OF THE DAY:

https://thehouseofautomata.com/

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Testing 2

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I made a mess!

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Just yesterday this was a fully functioning part of my house. I broke it!! But soon it will be freshly painted and beautiful again.

Watch this space!

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Easy for some!

This is Merlin. He likes to think he’s my muse. I’m not so sure of his contribution! 😉

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View from my sofa

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My friend the seagull

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Every morning when I walk to the quay to check the river exe is still there I am greeted by this young gull. I am amazed how much rage he has in his little body. Yet he always wants to chat.

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The Story behind Postcards From a Stranger

The Story behind Postcards From a Stranger

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS!

Postcards From a Stranger was the first book I published under my own name. It came out in June 2016 as a self-published novel. It flew up the kindle chart and within a month I'd had offers from three major publishing houses. Later that year, I signed a three book deal with Amazon Publishing. My path to publication is that fabled, dream-come-true story - self-published author is picked up by a publisher and goes on to have huge success.

Since then I have signed four more contracts with the same publisher for a further eleven books. I have sold around 1.3 million copies and have been number 1 in various kindle stores around the world eight times. I've also been shortlisted for a major book prize (which I didn't win!)

Whilst this looks like an overnight success, it took me a while to reach the point where I was ready to publish Postcards. I began writing it, I think, in 2015 and to start with it was simply Cara's story, written in the third person past tense. This was how I'd written the previous four books so it made sense to do the same again. But when I got to the end it felt too simplistic. I wanted to know more about the other characters and particularly Annie. Why had she left her children and how did she feel about that? A mother who leaves her children was, after all, the catalyst for the whole book.

So I went back to the start and wove Annie's story through the present day chapters. I also wrote a storyline for Cara's brother Daniel too and gave him his own chapters. This version was much richer and felt more like the book I wanted to write. But it still wasn't right.

Next I experimented with Cara's voice. It felt too distant that she was speaking in the third person so I rewrote all her chapters into first person. And then I changed the tense as well. Now I felt much more connected to her as a character and it made sense to me that she would tell her story like this as opposed to Annie whose chapters, set in the past, were written in the third person past tense.

Finally I had something that felt closer to a book I might be brave enough to publish. I thought about sending it to agents. I'd sent it to one when it was just Cara's story and got a kind but firm rejection. I had no desire to do that again. Who wants to hear that their book isn't good enough?! So I decided to publish myself.

There then followed many months of study as I learned how to do that. It was hard. I had never used a computer before and nothing came naturally but I just kept going. There were a lot of tears when I just couldn't understand things everyone else found so obvious. My husband was very patient with me but I was determined to learn it for myself.

The best decision I made fairly early on in the process was to pay an editor to review the manuscript. Now that seems obvious but at the time it felt like a huge step.  It wasn't cheap to do but I decided that if I wanted writing to be more than just a hobby then I needed to invest in myself. That editor gave me enough confidence in my book to go ahead and publish it. This is what Postcards looked like when it first came out. I still really like that cover.

And the rest, as they say . . . The book has now sold well over a quarter of a million copies. The version that you can buy today no longer contains Daniels' storyline as my publishers decided it made the book too long. There are also a few of the early self-published copies with a repeated chapter because I got the formatting wrong!

I'm not sure it would be my favourite story but it will always hold a special place in my heart as being the first book that I felt brave enough to release into the world and which then launched my career as a full-time author.

If you're embarking on writing a novel or have one almost finished then I would say press on. Get it done and then see what happens next. Because dreams really can come true.

Want to know more? Then why not sign up for my Readers' Club? I'll send you a monthly newsletter to keep you up to date with all the inside information about life behind the scenes. You can also join me on my Imogen Clark Author Facebook page or Instagram where I post pictures most days.

I look forward to seeing you.

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Who is Izzy Bromley?

Who is Izzy Bromley?

You may have noticed a new kid on the block. You might not recognise her name but isn't her face is terribly familiar . . .?

Yes. Izzy Bromley, author of bestselling book The Coach Trip is none other than yours truly. Lots of readers have been asking me why I wanted to publish books under a second pen name when Imogen Clark is so well established so I thought I should explain.

A couple of years ago, I had an idea for a new book but I knew that it didn't really sit neatly with the books I usually publish. This is nothing new. I have plenty of completed manuscripts that don't fit. But this wasn't the only issue. My publishers only release my books every ten months or so but I was writing faster than that. I did the maths and worked out that I'd soon be years ahead of myself. I needed something to do in the gaps.

So I approached my publishers and told them about my cunning plan, to write books in two separate genres under two separate names. They liked the idea and so Izzy Bromley was born.

And where did the name come from? Well, Bromley is my maiden name and the publishers suggested Izzy. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Coach Trip is full of the kind of characters I love to create as Imogen but the story is more light-hearted and readers seem to be enjoying that about Izzy's writing. At the moment I'm busy writing the second Izzy book which will be published next summer, with the next Imogen book, In a Single Moment due on 9th November this year.

And so that's how I've ended up writing under two names for the same publisher. Cool huh?

Want to know more? Then why not sign up for my Readers' Club? I'll send you a monthly newsletter to keep you up to date with all the inside information about life behind the scenes. You can also join me on my Imogen Clark Author Facebook page or Instagram where I post pictures most days.

I look forward to seeing you.

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Starting a new book.

Starting a book.

I am starting to write book ten. (It’s actually book nineteen, I think, but this will be the tenth published as Imogen Clark.) So, I thought it might be interesting for both of us if I recorded the process from day one!

At the moment, I feel a bit like the boy in the picture standing at the bottom of an enormous flight of steps. It looks like a terribly long way to the top. But that daunting feeling is only part of how I'm feeling. Bigger than the fear is the buzz of a new project. I love writing the first draft of any novel. It is absolutely my favourite part.

So far, I only have the vaguest idea what the book is about. And I mean vague. The concept includes four main characters although they don’t yet have names and so aren’t very real in my head. They haven't started to talk to me, but they will. I also have a sketchy house and garden in my mind's eye too, but I can’t visualise any details. And there's no plot either, just these ghostly outlines of people and a theme or two.

So, armed with such flimsy building blocks where do you start?

Well, I start with the people. I think about who they are and what makes them tick.  Then, after a while, their names will come to me. I am currently trying a few on for size but there are no definite decisions at this very early stage.

But even if they still don't have names, I can give them birthdays. This one simple act starts to solidify them in my mind. When I know how old a character is I can start to see what they have lived through, what might have shaped their lives so far, where their cultural references are. And when I know those details it often triggers plot points for what is to come.

And so there they are – my four characters at the very heart of my next book.

I wonder where they’re going to take me.

Want to know more? Then why not sign up for my Readers' Club? I'll send you a monthly newsletter to keep you up to date with all the inside information about life behind the scenes. You can also join me on my Imogen Clark Author Facebook page or Instagram where I post pictures most days.

I look forward to seeing you.

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An Unwanted Inheritance

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My latest book An Unwanted Inheritance  is published worldwide tomorrow.

The story is about the Frost family, close knit and loving, who discover a large quantity of money stashed under their father's bed when he dies unexpectedly. No one knows where the money has come from or why it is there but everyone knows exactly what they should do with it. The difficulty is that none of them agree about what that should be, and they all have secret motivations that they'd rather not share with their siblings.

So this is what the story is about - but what about the book?

Well, as the author I would say that the book is actually about honesty and integrity and what they look like to you.

When I wrote An Unwanted Inheritance, the UK was in the throes of restrictions on personal movement brought about by the coronavirus pandemic. There were varying degrees of restriction depending on where you lived and how severe the infection rate there was. I live in a small rural town, surrounded on all sides by green countryside. Infection levels were, in the main, manageable. However, the infection rates in the metropolitan area into which my town falls were very high and as a result we had a more severe level of lockdown imposed on us than many other places. Yet less than a mile up the road they had no such restrictions.

We were asked by the government to 'stay local' to prevent the spread of the virus but no parameters were set as to what this meant. And so I watched with interest as people interpreted the rules. Some thought local was where you could walk to. Others thought that a short car journey was acceptable. If your family lived twenty miles away was that still local? What about jumping borders into places with less onerous restrictions? In my case that was just up the road but was that still local if it broke the spirit of the lockdown?

I found this fascinating and I watched as people argued to justify their own interpretation of the rules even when no one had challenged them. Integrity, it seemed, did not mean the same to everyone. I was reminded of the parts of Othello which focus on reputation and the way Iago manipulates the truth to suit his own needs. And as I wrote the story of the Frost family, I realised that deciding upon the right thing to do is rarely black and white. Even when the answer appears simple.  everyone has something personal that makes that decision harder to make than you might imagine.

I hope you enjoy the book and it makes you think about where your integrity sits on a scale.  I'd also love to hear what you would have done if you had faced the same dilemma as the Frosts. Would you take the money or would you hand it in? I know what I'd have done.

Want to know more? Then why not sign up for my Readers' Club? I'll send you a monthly newsletter to keep you up to date with all the inside information about life behind the scenes. You can also join me on my Imogen Clark Author Facebook page or Instagram where I post pictures most days.

I look forward to seeing you.

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