Mel Comley - You must read this!

Mel Comley's story is a must-read. I thought I knew her. What a surprise!  


In the Summer 2011, I was approached by anotherwriter Cheryl Shireman who wanted to pull a group of women writers together tocreate a unique book. The object of the book would be to inform readers aboutour personal struggles to become established authors. Every story is aninspiration, some sad, some happy and some tell of great obstacles these 25women have had to overcome to get where they are today. The proceeds of thebook are being donated to a Breast Cancer Charity. We called it The IndieChicks.
French fancies!
In 1993 I walked out on my sad and abusivemarriage, one that I had stuck with for seven years. At the time I jointlyowned a shop with my ex-husband and my Mother, so we had to sell the businesswhen the marriage broke down.
If I thought that was hard it was nothing to what Ihad to endure the following six years. To make ends meet, I had to work twojobs for 70-80 hours a week over 6½ days. Take my word when I say it wasn'tfun.
But onwards and upwards, when Mum retired we made aspur of the moment decision to leave England and move to France. We'd never setfoot in the country before we came out here to house hunt, I know, we're eitherbrave or stupid. I like to think we're the former, but I sometimes wonder ifthat's the case!
We bought a farmhouse and barns that needed totalrenovation. In 6 months I decorated 22 rooms while a local builder created agîte (a holiday home) out of a couple of the barns. After the renovations werecompleted I grew bored with my 'early retirement' and enrolled in a creativewriting course. I threw myself into it and over the next 4-5 years I sat downand wrote three romances and two thrillers.
In October 2009, I discovered the writing site runby Harper Collins called Authonomy where I uploaded the first 10,000 words ofmy thriller Impeding Justice. It took me 8 months to reach the editor's deskwhere I received a favourable review from a Harper Collins editor. The troublewas they weren't taking on any thriller writers at that time, they wereonly interested in printing Celebrity Autobiographies!
Therefore, in October 2010 I decided to uploadImpeding Justice as an ebook. It took a while to take off but in January 2011sales really started gathering momentum, but it wasn't until I released thesecond book in the series, Final Justice that sales really took off.
After selling over 30,000 books in April, I was inthe fortunate position of having several agents knocking on my virtual door. Ifinally agreed terms and signed a contract with top New York agent, RichardCurtis. I sent him Cruel Justice the third book in the thriller series and hetried for 4 months to get me a traditional publishing contract, but at themoment he admits he's finding it difficult to place any books with publishersbecause of the Indie revolution, which I'm extremely proud to be part of.
During last Summer, I edited the romances I wroteat the beginning of my journey. I uploaded A Time To Heal towards the end ofAugust and immediately received a couple of 5 star reviews (no they weren'tfrom my family, they don't know I write!) some of them were from my thrillerfans who were equally impressed by my romance endeavours.
At the beginning of September I uploaded A Time ForChange, another romance which is actually a TRUE story of how my dear friendsmet and fell in love. Obviously they're names have been changed, the story hasa mystery element to it too.
In October 2011, I uploaded the third book in mythriller series, Cruel Justice, which is actually the prequel to my best-sellerImpeding Justice. It's been very well received and has even reached #2 in thePolice Procedural chart on Amazon.
I'm very fortunate to be able to write full-time(it's addictive, don't you know!) and have several more projects outlined thatI intend tackling over the coming winter months.
This is how my day pans out, first thing, providingit isn't raining, I take my two dogs for a walk, actually they tend to drag meround our small village. Then I sit down to answer any emails and facebookmessages I've received overnight from fans (yes I do have them) I then set outto write a minimum of 2-3000 words per day, before I dip into hours ofnecessary promoting. That's the hardest part of being an Indie writer, thefact that we have to promote ourselves long and hard. I used to be quite a shyperson, but I've had to overcome that quickly. I think deep down, every writerwould love to be a recluse and be able to focus full-time on their creations,unfortunately that's unrealistic in an Indie world.
Do I ever think about my life back in England? No,never, but my ex features heavily in my books. When I need to think up a baddiecharacter it's his image I picture in my mind. As for my murder scenes, I findthem VERY easy to write. LOL













You can find out about me and my books at thefollowing blogs.
http://melcomley.blogspot.com/
http://melcomleyromances.blogspot.com/
You can purchase my books in ebook format orpaperback from my website. http://www.melcomleybooks.com/
Or follow me on Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mel-Comley/264745836884860
My twitter id is @melcom1
You canfind out about me and my books at the following blogs. http://melcomley.blogspot.com/  http://melcomleyromances.blogspot.com/