Jennifer Page's Blog, page 3

How I wrote my first novel

I wrote my first novel when I was 8. It was about ponies, unsurprisingly as I was obsessed with ponies and the only books I read were pony books. I wrote the novel in two exercise books – the kind we had at school – and drew a cover on the front. Then, in true Blue Peter fashion, I covered them in sticky back plastic, and handed them to my mum, asking her to send them to Puffin so they could be published. Puffin never wrote back.

Years later, I discovered why. Mum had never sent them. She’d f...

My last first date

It was February 2017. I had given up my job at the BBC in Salford where I was working on Songs of Praise, and was living on a canal boat in West London, and teaching music part-time in a primary school.

On the advice of a male friend, I’d joined a new dating app the previous week. He reckoned it was better than the rest but I wasn’t holding out much hope. In the 13 years since my divorce, I’d been on – well, I dread to think how many – dates with so many different men and most of them had bee...

DIY? Or pay someone else?

It’s been a week of frustration. Tearing out hair. Gritting teeth. And – I admit – quite a few swear words, all directed at my poor, beleaguered old laptop. And why? This website.

‘Pay someone,’ a friend advised. ‘You’re getting paid for your writing now so it’ll be tax deductible.’

Now I don’t actually know what I can expect to earn as an unknown debut novelist, but I’m not expecting it to be much. I don’t know how much it costs to have someone else design your website either, but I’d haz...

DIY? Or pay someone else to do it?

It’s been a week of frustration. Tearing out hair. Gritting teeth. And – I admit – quite a few swear words, all directed at my poor, beleaguered old laptop. And why? This website.

‘Pay someone,’ a friend advised. ‘You’re getting paid for your writing now so it’ll be tax deductible.’

Now I don’t actually know what I can expect to earn as an unknown debut novelist, but I’m not expecting it to be much. I don’t know how much it costs to have someone else design your website either, but I’d haz...

Getting Started

The final manuscript of The Little Board Game Café is now out of my hands. I’ve read it for one final time, agonised over every comma and double checked the spelling of all the Polish words in there. From here on, other people will take my precious debut novel on its journey towards publication and my part in its creation is over.

The first draft of my second novel (title TBC) is now with my editor Rachel, so there’s nothing I can do on that either except cross my fingers that she loves it.

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New Year resolutions?

New Year’s Day. Go back a few years and you’d have always found me scribbling away in my journal on 1st January, writing long lists of resolutions, hopes and dreams for the coming year.

This year I’ve made just two:

The first is to publicise The Little Board Game Cafe as best I can. I’m not an Instagram influencer – I barely have any followers. Sometimes I tweet something and don’t even get one like, let alone a retweet. But I’m going to try and engage more with people on social media beca...

What are your resolutions for 2023?

New Year’s Day. Go back a few years and you’d have always found me scribbling away in my journal on 1st January, writing long lists of resolutions, hopes and dreams for the coming year.

This year I’ve made just two:

The first is to publicise The Little Board Game Cafe as best I can. I’m not an Instagram influencer – I barely have any followers. Sometimes I tweet something and don’t even get one like, let alone a retweet. But I’m going to try and engage more with people on social media beca...

My Top Ten Reads of 2022

I’ve not read as many books in 2022 as I usually do, at least partly because I’ve been so busy working on my own first novel.

But of those I have read, these were my favourites, in no particular order:

The Switch by Beth O’Leary. Leena and her eighty-year-old granny swap lives and both end up – inevitably – having a bit of an adventure. I liked this even more than I liked The Flatshare and that’s really saying something. It felt cosier somehow, more heart-warming. The sort of book it’s g...

We are Inevitable – a review

Aaron’s Dad Ira believes that books are miracles. “Twenty-six letters and some punctuation marks and you have infinite words in infinite worlds….How is that not a miracle?”

I think he’s right. I am in awe at the way some authors – in this case, Gayle Forman – can use those twenty-six letters and some punctuation marks to create stories as beautiful as We are Inevitable.

We are Inevitabletells the story of Aaron and Ira and their failing business, the Bluebird Bookshop. It’s a story of love...

Three Memoirs

I love reading memoirs. A good memoir is, for me at least, better than a good novel. Of course, sometimes I can identify with the hero or heroine of a novel, see elements of my own story in theirs, explore my feelings through reading about how they feel. But a memoir goes one better, simply by merit of the fact that it’s about a real person, not a fictitious one. When I relate to their feelings or when they have experiences similar to my own, I think, “So it’s not just me.” And as a result, I fe...