Victoria Walters's Blog, page 38

Welcome to 2016

It’s that time of year when we all take stock of what’s happened over the past twelve months and think about what we would like to happen over the next twelve. 

2015 was the year of having a book deal. It felt like it would never happen but then it was here and there wasn’t much time to let it sink in because the process of getting ready for publication began.

  

It felt as if I would be waiting forever for 2016 to arrive but here it is. The months of editing and preparing the book have flown by and now there is just single figure months to go. 

The work put into the book this year has made me more confident about myself as a writer and editor. Having a book deal has made me believe in myself more but I don’t think I will ever lose that self doubt that us writers have, and actually that’s okay. It means I am still passionate about what I’m doing. It means I’m putting my heart and soul into my writing and that will always be scary.

  

I am so excited to see my book out there in the wild – all the years of work that has gone into it will be so worth it when I hold my finished book in my hands. I will also be nervous to know what people think of it, seeing reviews, and the dreaded the sales figures. I just want to make sure I remind myself of how good getting that book deal felt when I’m inevitably caught up in publication day madness. 

I am a worrier. I have made not worrying so much a resolution in years gone past. But I accept now that’s not going to happen. I just need to remember to think positive thoughts alongside the worrisome ones, and accept that there are some things I can’t control or change no matter how anxious I am about them.

  

I am determined to enjoy the publication process even though it will be nerve wracking. This has been my dream for a long time after all. 

I wish you all a happy and healthy new year and I hope 2016 is everything you want it to be!

Victoria 

xoxo

Merry Christmas

  

A really quick post to say thank you to you lovely lot for all your support in 2015! This year has flown by and I’m so excited to share more of publication journey with you when 2016 arrives and I can finally say “my novel is being published THIS year!”

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year! And Harry sends you all a hearty meow too :)

  

See you on the other side! 

Lots of Christmas love,

Victoria

xoxo

Books read in November 2015

  

Jill Mansell – Three Amazing Things About You

Hallie has a secret. She’s in love. He’s perfect for her in every way, but he’s seriously out of bounds. And her friends aren’t going to help her because what they do know is that Hallie doesn’t have long to live. Time is running out…

Flo has a dilemma. She really likes Zander. But his scary sister won’t be even faintly amused if she thinks Zander and Flo are becoming friends – let alone anything more.

Tasha has a problem. Her new boyfriend is the adventurous type. And she’s afraid one of his adventures will go badly wrong.

THREE AMAZING THINGS ABOUT YOU begins as Hallie goes on a journey. A donor has been found and she’s about to be given new lungs. But whose?

Colleen Hoover – November 9

Fallon meets Ben, an aspiring novelist, the day before her scheduled cross-country move. Their untimely attraction leads them to spend Fallon’s last day in L.A. together, and her eventful life becomes the creative inspiration Ben has always sought for his novel. Over time and amidst the various relationships and tribulations of their own separate lives, they continue to meet on the same date every year. Until one day Fallon becomes unsure if Ben has been telling her the truth or fabricating a perfect reality for the sake of the ultimate plot twist.

Can Ben’s relationship with Fallon – and simultaneously his novel – be considered a love story if it ends in heartbreak?

Anne Tyler – A Spool Of Blue Thread

‘It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon…’

This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she and Red fell in love that summer’s day in 1959. The whole family on the porch, half-listening as their mother tells the same tale they have heard so many times before.

From that porch we spool back through the generations, witnessing the events, secrets and unguarded moments that have come to define the family. From Red’s father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red’s grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century – four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their home…

Huntley Fitzpatrick – My Life Next Door

The Garretts are everything the Reeds are not. Loud, numerous, messy, affectionate. And every day from her balcony perch, seventeen-year-old Samantha Reed wishes she was one of them…until one summer evening, Jase Garrett climbs her terrace and changes everything. As the two fall fiercely in love, Jase’s family makes Samantha one of their own. Then in an instant, the bottom drops out of her world and she is suddenly faced with an impossible decision. Which perfect family will save her? Or is it time she saved herself? A dreamy summer read, full of characters who stay with you long after the story is over.

Book of the month:

Jessica Knoll – The Luckiest Girl Alive

Ani FaNelli is the woman who has it all: the glamorous job, the designer wardrobe, the handsome and rich fiancé. But behind her sharp edges and meticulously crafted facade lies the darkest of pasts . . .

When a documentary producer invites Ani to tell her side of the chilling and violent incident that took place when she was a teenager at the prestigious Bradley school, she hopes it will be an opportunity to prove how far she’s turned her life around since then. She’ll even let the production company film her lavish wedding, the final step in her transformation.

But as the wedding and filming converge, Ani’s past threatens to come back and haunt her. And as her immaculate veneer starts to crack, she is forced to question: will breaking her silence destroy all that she has worked for – or, will it at long last, set Ani free?

This book has a unique voice – Ani’s first person commentary is vivid and draws you in from the first page but there will be points where you really dislike her, points where you think ‘uh-oh I think like that too’ and as her past unravels, moments where you will realise why she is the way she is and have great sympathy for her. Ani’s past is a dark and tragic one and there are a fair few shocking moments as the story unfolds.

The novel has been pitched as a thriller but I found it to be more of a dark and compelling coming-of-age story. It was a page turner definitely and a complex character study. PREP meets GONE GIRL. It’s due to be made into a film by Reese Wetherspoon and I hope it keeps it’s bite when it transitions from book to movie.

What was your favourite read this month?

Victoria

xoxo

 

Journey to publication (part 3)

In the last part of my journey, I had sent back copy edits on The Second Love Of My Life to my publisher and that meant the next step was page proofs! This means the manuscript is typeset to how it will look as a book but on paper for me to go through and check for any errors.

  

This was the first time it started to look like a book and reading it through again was quite scary as I was looking for final errors and seeing it pretty much as it will be when you guys read it! Here’s a sneaky peek:

  

Once I sent back my corrections, I then started on edits for the short story ebook prequel The Summer I Met You, which will be released two months before the novel. 

I also wrote a blog post for Waterstones about how it feels to be both a bookseller and author: https://www.waterstones.com/blog/from-bookseller-to-author-by-victoria-walters

This has been helping to take my mind off the fact my bound proofs were being printed ….

  

And now here they are!!These are  uncorrected  proofs (so based on the copy edited manuscript and not including changes I made at page proof stage) and are produced for people to review the novel. So they get sent to magazines and book bloggers and booksellers and other authors to hopefully build buzz for the book.

  

They are so pretty!! My little story is a book!!! I still can’t quite believe it!!! 

   

 I’m running a giveaway over on Twitter to win a signed proof so pop over and take part:  https://mobile.twitter.com/vicky_walters/status/666900162070097920

We are getting so close to publication now! Just five months to go …

Victoria

xoxo

Books read in October 2015

  

Life and Death (Twilight tenth anniversary edition) – Stephanie Meyer

The Twelve Dates Of Christmas – Lisa Dickenson

At thirty, Claudia’s life is stale and the romance with long-term boyfriend, Seth, has disappeared. Determined to inject some festive spark back into their love life, Claudia and Seth go on their first date in a very long time. But when the night ends in disaster, Claudia suddenly finds herself facing life – and Christmas – alone.

Life alone is exciting, scary and full of soon-forgotten exercise regimes and ill-advised attempts at crafting sexy underwear. It’s also filling up with dates, surprisingly. With best friends Penny and Nick at her side, a surplus of festive markets, mulled wine and Christmas tunes, Claudia attempts to face all this change with gusto. One thing’s for certain: this year, Christmas is going to be very different . . .

This is the story of Claudia and her twelve dates of Christmas. Hilarious, uplifting and romantic, it’s a story about losing love, finding love, and discovering what’s been there all along. Expect Christmas sparkle, butterflies-in-your-stomach romance and a lot of very funny moments in The Twelve Dates of Christmas.

Did I Mention I Need You? – Estelle Maskame

It’s been a year since eighteen-year-old Eden Munro last saw Tyler Bruce: her stepbrother… and her secret love. Although they called time on their forbidden relationship for the sake of their family, Eden can’t help but feel excited when Tyler invites her to join him in New York City for the summer.

Anyway, Eden is happy with her boyfriend Dean, and surely Tyler has moved on too. But as they spend a long, hot summer in the excitement of the city that never sleeps, it soon becomes obvious that they aren’t over each other. But can they resist temptation?

In Did I Mention I Need You?, the second volume of Estelle Maskame’s phenomenal DIMILY trilogy, Tyler and Eden must face up to their feelings and decide what to do next. Is their love strong enough to face the challenges that lie ahead?

Book of the month:

The Paying Guests – Sarah Waters

If you’re looking for a fun, romantic Christmas read then Lisa Dickenson’s book is perfect for you, it made me feel all warm and fuzzy and definitely festive! I’m really enjoying the Did I Mention I Love You? series and can’t wait for the final instalment next year as book 2 has ended on a cliffhanger! But my favourite read of the month I have chosen ….

It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa, a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.

For with the arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the ‘clerk class’, the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. And as passions mount and frustration gathers, no one can foresee just how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be.

This is the fourth book by Sarah Waters I’ve read and is set in a new era the 1920’s and is at essence a love story with a crime thread to it too. I was drawn in from the first page, she really is an excellent writer, and although it’s a long book I remained captivated for all of it. I must say though that I didn’t think I would be at the end when I suddenly was (there’s extra material in my copy at the back) and so I finished it with a “huh”. I wish there could have been an epilogue as I really wanted to know where the characters went from there, what happened next and it’s because I had spent so long desperately hoping things would work out. For such a long book I suppose I hoped for a stronger resolution but it is a really entertaining story, dark and twisty with strong characters and the typical Waters forbidden lesbian romance that you’ll be rooting for even when you’re not sure you should be.

Has anyone else read it?

Victoria

xoxo

Judging a book by its cover

We all do it, don’t we? In the visual world we live in where we watch screens for way too many hours a day, we are programmed to respond to visuals which catch our eye. It’s the same with a book cover – it needs to catch your eye in the bookshop, online or in the supermarket. You need to have that first reaction to the cover to then pick up a book and read what it’s about and whether you want to read it or not.

As a reader, author and bookseller I see book covers every day. The surround me at work and home and when shopping because I almost always go into a book shop. So, I’ve seen many different types of covers and can usually tell instantly what genre the book is inside. This is what you want. You want a reader to know what type of book this is but you also want to intrigue them to want to read inside. If they think they already know exactly what to expect from a book, they probably won’t bother parting with their money.

It’s a tricky thing to get right then. A cover needs to stand out but also fit with other covers in the genre, and it needs to let you know what to expect from the book but pull you in to reading it. I’m actually glad I’m not a cover designer!

I am really happy with the cover of my novel because I think it does all of this! And I can say that as I didn’t design it :) What I was intrigued about was how the cover for the short story prequel to the novel would look like. Would it be similar to the novel? Would people realise it was written by the same author and the books were linked? But would it also be clear you could read the short story as a standalone piece as well?

Again I’m so happy with what my publisher has created because thankfully I think my short story cover hits all of these things.

Ta-da! ….

For me, it complements the novel cover perfectly. The design is similar so you know the stories are linked but it works for a romance story in its own right. I love the pink so much! Plus you may have spotted the butterflies, which made me so happy because as you know I love them and have a tattoo of a butterfly. I think it’s super pretty and would stand out to me when book shopping (the book is also a bargain at 99p, just sayin’ – pre order here: http://amzn.to/1VGdI50) so I really hope it will do to readers out there.

What’s most exciting to me is seeing the covers together and realising this is the start of my author brand! Look at my little name on TWO covers. I may have to go and have a lie down :)

What kind of covers stand out to you the most?

Victoria

xoxo

Books read in September 2015

After You – Jojo Moyes

Lou Clark has lots of questions.

Like how it is she’s ended up working in an airport bar, spending every shift watching other people jet off to new places.

Or why the flat she’s owned for a year still doesn’t feel like home.

Whether her close-knit family can forgive her for what she did eighteen months ago.

And will she ever get over the love of her life.

What Lou does know for certain is that something has to change.

Then, one night, it does.

But does the stranger on her doorstep hold the answers Lou is searching for – or just more questions?

Close the door and life continues: simple, ordered, safe.

Open it and she risks everything.

But Lou once made a promise to live. And if she’s going to keep it, she has to invite them in . . .

All Of The Above – James Dawson

When sixteen-year-old Toria Bland arrives at her new school she needs to work out who her friends are, all in a crazy whirl of worry, exam pressure and anxiety over fitting in. Things start looking up when Toria meets the funny and foul-mouthed Polly, who’s the coolest girl Toria has ever seen. Polly and the rest of the ‘alternative’ kids take Toria under their wing. And that’s when she meets the irresistible Nico Mancini, lead singer of a local band – and it’s instalove at first sight! Toria likes Nico, Nico likes Toria . . . but then there’s Polly.

Love and friendship have a funny way of going round in circles.

Why Not Me? – Mindy Kaling

Mindy Kaling has found herself at a turning point. So in Why Not Me?, she shares her ongoing journey to find fulfilment and adventure in her adult life, be it falling in love at work, seeking new friendships inunlikely places, or attempting to be the first person in history to lose weight without any behaviour modification whatsoever.

In “How to Look Spectacular”, she reveals her tongue-in-cheek solutions for guaranteed on-camera beauty. “Player” tells the story of Mindy being seduced, then dumped, by a female friend in LA. And in “Soup Snakes”, she spills some secrets on her relationship with ex-boyfriend and close friend, B. J. Novak.

Mindy has put the anxieties, the glamour and the celebrations of her second coming-of-age into this book, to which anyone can relate. (And, if they can’t, they can skip to the parts where she talks about meeting Bradley Cooper.)

Book of the Month:

I enjoyed all the books I read this month especially All Of The Above, which is a great contemporary YA novel set in the UK but for my book of the month, I had to pick the 700 page epic A Little Life. Here’s what it’s about:

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is an immensely powerful and heartbreaking novel of brotherly love and the limits of human endurance.

When four graduates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they’re broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their centre of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome – but that will define his life forever.

The first thing to say about this book is not everyone is going to want to read this. Based on reviews I’ve seen, it’s a Marmite book. It’s an epic read and it’s one of the darkest and saddest books I’ve ever read. Seriously, it will break your heart. I’m still devastated about it!

This book is so emotive, you care so much about the characters and the author really puts them through hell. It deals with some pretty tough subjects such as child abuse and for this reason, it’s hard to say that I liked this book but I admire it a lot. It’s compelling and I found it brilliantly written with such well-drawn characters that at one point, I threw the book down unable to bear what was happening to them. I picked it back up again though. I couldn’t stop thinking about the book and hoping that things would turn out okay. I think the book had to end how it ended but I’m still upset about it.

So, I’ve never read anything like this book before. However, I won’t recommended it to everyone because of the subjects it deals with and how difficult it is to read about them. I think reading the blurb and reviews will help you decide if it’s for you or not. And if you do read it, just have a light-hearted book ready to pick up when you’re done!

Has anyone else read these books? What did you think?

Victoria

xoxo

Come and see me over at Goodreads!

Sunday Songs

I’ve decided to stop my Sunday Songs post as I now spend most of my music time over on Spotify.

But don’t worry you can see what I’m listening to by following me over there!

I have a Current Faves playlist, which will work like this post did by listing the new music I’ve found and what I’m loving right now. Follow the playlist here:

I’ll also be uploading playlists for all my books and coming soon a Christmas playlist!

You can also check out my playlist of Theme Songs – if you any suggestions for me let me know and see if they added:

Who else is on Spotify?

Victoria

xoxo

Journey to Publication (part 2)

Since we last caught up with my journey I have been working on copy edits for my novel The Second Love Of My Life. I’ve just sent them back to my publisher Headline. The edits pretty much focused on grammar mistakes, spelling, repetition of words and making sure each sentence flowed correctly with commas and so on.

I’ve also visited the London offices of Headline to meet with my editor, agent and publicist to talk through publicity ideas for the novel and meet all the team. I also got to see their roof garden, which provides an amazing view of London:

Here I am up there with my lovely editor Emily:

But the most exciting development since we my first journey to publication post has been my cover reveal! I was so grateful to book blogger Sharon for exclusively revealing the cover for me on her blog.

Seeing the cover was probably the most exciting and nerve wracking part of the journey for me and I was thrilled that Headline produced such a gorgeous cover for me. I think they got the tone of the novel spot on with it and I think it will stand out really well in bookshops – it’s the kind of cover that would catch my eye.

What do you think??

I hope you guys love it as much as I do!

Don’t you can pre-order the paperback or e-book now on Amazon.co.uk or from Waterstones and check it out on Goodreads.com!

Victoria

xoxo

I AM A WRITER

I saw this quote online and I just loved it instantly. I remember how hard it was to start telling people that I was writer who was writing a novel and who wanted to have it published one day. I remember the fear that came with declaring myself to people I know and then people I just met.

I still get nervous saying the words “I’m a writer”. I think it’s because in saying it we are revealing a large piece of ourselves. We write because we are passionate about it, writing is part of our hearts and souls, writing is part of a dream we may have had since we were little and to tell people about it is a really big deal. There is also the fear of how people will react. Often the words are followed by a lot of questions – what do you write? Would I have read anything you’ve written? Do you have an agent? Do you have a book deal? Are you the next JK Rowling? etc.

We experience so much self-doubt in our writing that talking about it is difficult. We lack confidence generally as writers and telling people who we are and what we do requires a leap of faith in that moment – it requires us to confidently declare ourselves and that’s hard.

But I agree with this quote that by declaring ourselves we put ourselves on the path we need to be on. By telling first yourself then others you will start to believe it, and will work harder to achieve the goals you have as a writer. People will ask you where you are on your journey (hopefully supportively!) but it’s not about pleasing them but pleasing yourself.

I see a lot of bios on social media using the words ‘aspiring writer’ and I long to message the person and tell them if you write, you’re a writer – do not aspire to it, be it, live it and be proud of it. But I’m pretty sure I used those very words myself at one time. Choosing the life of a writer is choosing an uncertain life – there will be ups and downs, there will be fear and rejection, there will be difficult questions, there will be times you want to give up but hopefully you will see your dreams come true and the journey to get there will be a worthwhile one.

Not many people get to live their dream so if your dream was to be a writer and you’re writing then be proud as hell because you’ve made your dream come true.

No matter what your goal as a writer is – to write 1,000 words, to finish a book, to find an agent, and so on – it begins with saying those four words:

I AM A WRITER.

Are you??

Victoria

xoxo