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The Copy Edit and Cover Design

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If you follow me on social media, you will have already seen the beautiful cover for my book. I love it, because it conveys everything you need to know about Silver Spurs and a Twelve Pound Heart, a story of love, horses, and of course, vodka. However, before you rush out and buy me a bottle of Smirnoff to celebrate the forthcoming launch of my first book, I must tell you that I actually don’t drink the stuff. The characters, Katie and Shelley, are fond of a vodka and tonic, and the lovely Tom, drinks Salty Dogs, but not me. So, if you feel the need to send me anything, a mini bottle of Prosecco would be amazing or if you’re feeling flush, a box of Sainsbury’s finest Chardonnay will do the job very well. We can have a glass together, wearing cosy jumpers, beside my log burner, because the recent wet weather in Northumberland is definitely not inspiring me to go outside very often.

The journey to publication had been a learning curve, and I keep telling myself that writing is a job, and like any profession, you have to work hard and make sure you are fully prepared for any eventuality. Just like when I was nine-years old and my Mum told me that you weren’t a real rider until you had fallen off a horse seven times, I completely believed her. Until I fell off for the ninth time, and Mum said that actually, you weren’t a real rider until you had fallen off fifteen times. And yes, you’ve guessed it. When I hit the deck at the age of fourteen, falling off a racehorse on the road, cracking my riding hat, skinning my knuckles and knees and spending the next three days holding arnica-infused dressings onto my multiple black and purple bruises, Mum admitted that you had to fall off lots of time before you were a real rider. I stopped counting after that. There were ‘easy’ falls when you landed on the grass and got up and laughed, and there were ‘hard’ falls, when you landed from two metres up in the air onto concrete, knocking the wind out of your lungs and the colour from your face. Now, I have discovered that writing is similar to riding horses.

If you are an emerging writer, you have read everything you can get your hands on, you’ve watched authors, agents and publishers giving tutorials on YouTube, you’ve learnt something from every single book you have read and still, as you work with your publisher to bring your first book to publication, it becomes apparent that you know absolutely nothing.

Before I sent my manuscript out into the world – with its mittens dangling on a string from each sleeve of its Parka – I had spent a considerable length of time reading many books and researching how the book industry works. I read a huge number of books within the genre I am writing, but also read thrillers and crime books, learning something from each one I picked up. I thought I was pretty clued up, until I received the copy edited version of my own work. The copy edit reappeared in my life wearing a pair of Nike Air Force 1 trainers, a lot of black eyeliner and brandishing a set of limited edition GHDs and several TikToc accounts under various usernames. The grammar had been sharpened up and although I have a pathological hatred of a comma after the word ‘and’, I have to concede that sometimes, the Oxford comma is okay. I’m not saying that we’re great friends, but I might someday invite it to my house for a coffee and offer it a custard cream. I hate custard creams and that’s why I would offer one to the Oxford comma; the Tunnocks tea cakes and chocolate Hobnobs would definitely remain safely hidden in the cupboard beside the mugs. From the Nike-wearing, black-rimmed eyes of the copy edit, I also discovered that there are three different types of hyphens. I even had to ask Google how to reproduce them on my keyboard so that when I wrote the acknowledgements page, it was consistent with the Book Guild’s house style. There is the usual hyphen that we use to link two words, there is the ‘m’ hyphen which is used at the end of a line of dialogue when speech has been interrupted, and there is an ‘n’ hyphen which is used to replace punctuation is a sentence. So, if you open Microsoft Word and type: 2013, then hit ALT and X at the same time, as if by magic, an n hyphen appears. For an m hyphen, substitute 2014 and then ALT X and the alchemy happens again. Who knew? Not me, but I do now and as a friend of mine often says: every day is a school day.

Silver Spurs and a Twelve Pound Heart is now off to the printers, with its ‘orphans’ and ‘widows’ corrected (I had to Google them too, and discovered the terms relate to the opening and closing of paragraphs). It’s now wearing a rather smart pair of trousers from Zara, a long-sleeved fluffy jumper from River Island and I am looking forward to welcoming it back in January in its Dior suit and Christian Louboutin Suola Hot Chick pumps. In the meantime, I will keep working on the sequel and continue to read everything I can get my hands on, because every day is definitely a school day.

Wishing you a very Happy New Year from Northumberland and may all your dreams for 2023, come true.

Helen.

How the Journey Began

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During the spring of 2020 and owing to the country being gripped by a killer virus similar to that of a very good sci-fi film, there wasn’t much happening on the work front. Although this meant I had no money coming in to pay for all the rubbish I was buying on Ebay, I was able to spend many happy hours encamped in my conservatory with a good book. My sister in law, the Verruca Expert and my friend, the Cleaning Co-ordinator even subconsciously started a kind of unofficial book club. With little else to do, paperbacks were passed around like a can of cider at a Young Farmers’ convention.

It was during this time that I tentatively suggested to my husband that I should, maybe, kind of, perhaps, possibly have another go at writing a novel.

I had a really terrible attempt at writing a book many years ago. I say ‘book’ but it was really more of a novella, around 40,000 words. I feel faintly sick when I recall that I actually sent it to a number of literary agents in London. Oh, my, Lord, I had no idea. You must remember though, this was back in the time when not everyone had access to the screechy noises that signified you were joining the worldwide web. The Writer’s & Artist’s Yearbook was all we had back then. Now, you can submit to these literary agent gods by email, in those days, you posted the first three chapters of your manuscript and your truly awful synopsis with a stamped addressed envelope; and waited. Every day the postman didn’t return your horrendous attempt to you, was a triumph.

In June 2020, I re-read this appalling thing that I wrote and could have dug a hole with my bare hands and thrown myself into it. Dreadful doesn’t even come close. I had no clue about writing, structure and the synopsis (which I have discovered since, is the most difficult thing in the world to write) would have been better if I had selected some scrabble letters at random and thrown them into a Nutribullet. Dire. Absolutely dire.

I wrote the first draft of Silver Spurs and a Twelve Pound Heart in eight weeks, sitting in my conservatory, writing from nine in the morning until early afternoon. Some days I only stopped tapping on my tablet’s keyboard, because I knew no-one in the household had anything clean left to wear and the cat was eyeballing me from the chair opposite.

I emailed the first draft to some literary friends and they all liked it. They gave me incredibly good feedback with my tall friend, the TK Maxx Ambassador, telling me I simply couldn’t leave the ending as it was. She was absolutely right and I wrote another two chapters to bring the book to a close. The Book Critic in Edinburgh, was an even better reviewer and sent me back a list of her thoughts. Some I chose to ignore, two, I acted on and one word she used, literally one word, sparked something in my creative brain that prompted a huge edit and re-write. And that wasn’t even one of her suggestions, it was just a word she used in a suggested blurb for the back of the book.

Fast-forward to August 2021 and I was absolutely sick of this manuscript. I had edited and edited, read it out loud, used text to speech in Word in an attempt to pick up any errors and needed to get it out there. Using my Writer’s & Artist’s Yearbook, (backed up by the internet), I made a list of six agents who represented authors writing in the same genre and submitted my work to three of them.

One replied two days later, saying she felt my book didn’t fit with her portfolio, the others didn’t reply at all. This is why the whole process takes so long. Most agents state that if you haven’t heard back from them within twelve weeks, you must assume that you have been unsuccessful. So, in October that year I sent the first three chapters, synopsis, one line elevator pitch and the blurb for the back of my killer novel to another two agents on my hit list; and heard nothing. So, in February this year, I sent the whole bundle to the last (and I have to say my favourite) agency on my list. Once again, there was no reply and just to check that my debut novel was as good as I thought it was, I sent it again to the TK Maxx Ambassador who hadn’t seen it since that very early draft. She pointed out that I still couldn’t spell the word ‘drawer’, but other than that, she loved it.

Having still not heard back from my favourite agent, by the end of May I had sent the full manuscript to a publisher and then read L J Ross’s article in Writing Magazine and decided, like her, to self-publish it for free on Amazon. I had even got as far as setting up the typeface when I received an email from the Book Guild. There, were some of the most magical words I have ever read: ‘We believe your book has commercial potential…’.

The publication date is 28th February 2023.

A huge thank you to the TK Maxx Ambassador, the Book Critic, the Duchess, Gothic Niece, the Country Park Owner, the School Governor, the Polo Player and the Aigle Welly Wearer for reading the drafts and giving such honest opinions.

The journey has begun.