How losing my job while pregnant inspired my debut novel

It occurred to me recently that I hadn’t really talked about the inspiration behind my debut, The Rival, on my blog. So, I thought it’d be good to remedy that! Let me start by saying The Rival is a work of fiction. However, the seed of the idea came from my own experience of new motherhood. One of my friends once told me that giving birth was like being in a car crash, both physically and mentally. It stuck with me before I gave birth, and it proved to be surprisingly accurate.

“I’d been a wholly selfish ‘career woman’ up to that point”

I was 33 when I got pregnant, and although my daughter was very much longed for, I was shockingly naïve and had no idea what to expect. I’d been a wholly selfish ‘career woman’ up to that point – I was a successful journalist and PR consultant and knew nothing about babies, or how to care for them. Once the first few months as a new mum were behind me, I was amazed not to be able to find any novels on this subject, given all the women I knew who were also struggling to forge a new identity as a mum after so long in the world of work. And so I decided to write about them – a story for women who have struggled with this transition, in the face of a working world that is still so stacked against us.

I didn’t suffer from postnatal depression but like many women, my sleep deprivation in those early days reached the point where I started hallucinating at night, imagining the baby was in bed with me when she was actually asleep in her cot, and my moods swung from euphoric to desperate with exhausting frequency.

To add to my stress, I unexpectedly found myself on maternity leave without a job to return to. Sadly, this is an all-too-common situation. It was utterly terrifying: this open-ended new ‘life’ that was completely alien to everything I had ever known, and that I was woefully underprepared for. And when I did secure some freelance work when my baby was only four months old, I was averaging three hours’ sleep a night, none of my ‘work’ clothes fitted me, and I felt exactly as Helena does in the book: a misplaced lump between two stools. Not yet confident as a mother, no longer a career woman.  

“... despite my ferocious love for my baby, I felt bewildered by who I had become.”

It was the strangest time of my life. I had been the old me for 34 years by then, but a mother for only a handful of months, and despite my ferocious love for my baby, I felt bewildered by who I had become. I’d never really realised how much my identity was tied up in my work and independence.

Not working was very strange, and in the middle of the night I’d panic that I should be doing something with this time ‘off’. I read on someone’s blog that when you have a baby, it’s OK for you just to be looking after the baby. You don’t have to be trying to hold down a part-time job too, or finishing a long-neglected novel (!), or doing charity work, or whatever it is that you think is necessary to justify your existence as a stay-at-home-mum. That helped, a little. But it was still hard to give myself permission to do ‘nothing’. Even though I was exhausted and probably working harder than I had done in ages – just in a very different way.

I feel like I really lost myself in those early months. In fact, I would say it took a year for my confidence to return. Thankfully, Oli is super supportive and, thanks to the nature of his career, is around a lot more than most fathers. I genuinely believe my situation might have been very different were it not for the fact that I had him by my side every day during those life-changing early months.

Because this is what it boils down to, in my opinion. Support. New mothers need support. They deserve support. It can make a crucial difference - can truly determine whether they sink or swim.

Since The Rival was released last September, it’s been fascinating seeing how readers have responded to it. Many mothers have written to tell me that the feelings Helena experiences in the story echo those they experienced too. Many more people have said it made them cry. Other people have complained that it’s not a thriller, and despite my frustration that no one ever said it was (!), it actually just makes me sad that my message was completely lost on them.

“I still find it a bit frightening that I have shared that bewildering experience - that intense loss of identity that came with the loss of my working life - with the world”

It’s strange, your debut novel. You pour everything into it - it feels intensely personal, in a way that your second and third novels don’t. I still find it a bit frightening that I have shared that bewildering experience - that intense loss of identity that came with the loss of my working life - with the world, even if it was through a character who isn’t me (I promise!). Those feelings seem so far away now - my whole personality has changed over the past three and a half years, as my daughter has grown, and I’m more than happy in my own skin these days. In many ways then, I’m grateful that I managed to capture those feelings - the raw emotion, the little kernel of truth that was so painful to admit to at the time.

The Rival will always be a special book to me, a marking of time that reminds me how far I’ve come.

The RIVAL is currently available for just 99p in the Kindle Spring Sale! UNFOLLOW ME will be published in June.

Thoughts on a cover

Check me out - nothing for months and then two posts in one week! Can you tell I'm sitting on my hands at the moment, waiting to hear what my agent thinks of my latest manuscript?!

I heard from my publisher today that the proofs for THE RIVAL are at their offices, and soon to be sent to other authors, press and bloggers in the hope that they will enjoy it and write about it (and on that note, if you are one of the aforementioned crowd and would like one, please let me know!).

So I thought it was high time I officially shared my cover! I put the cover on my main website a while ago, but it was done without any fanfare so I wanted to give it a little bit of appreciation. Especially as I genuinely love it.

What many readers might not know is that the author has nothing to do with the process of designing the cover. In fact, I hadn't heard a word about it until my editor randomly sent me their proposed cover out of the blue last year. My heart was properly thundering as I clicked on the attachment in her email, and I'm happy to say that it was love at first sight. I actually got goosebumps when I first looked at it, and I remember being both surprised and pleased at what the cover designer had come up with.

So without further ado.... here it is:

My first thought was that it was quite filmic, or even Netflixy, and that this was a Good Thing as I think it's targeted at a similar demographic. I was also so pleased that they'd used two distinct faces on the cover, rather than anything more oblique. Psych suspense/thriller covers often have close-ups of things like crushed rose petals on their covers and I was keen that my book would stand out a bit from that crowd. The expressions on the women's faces are absolutely perfect - it's really creepy and draws you in I think!

I was surprised by the black and red - I'd never thought about those colours being on my book, as it's a book about women and I guess (somewhat stupidly) I expected something a little softer. But I love how much it stands out, and I also love the blueish tint to the women's skin, which makes the whole thing look really dark and mysterious.

The strapline is bloody genius too, and I only wish I could claim credit for it, but, like the title, it was all the work of the clever team at Quercus.

Can you tell I love it?! I hope you like it too.

You can find out more about THE RIVAL on my website, and pre-order here if you want to make my day.

How I got my book deal

Hello, is there anyone still out there!? Long time, no blog I know. I’ve been quiet because I’ve been sitting on the most exciting news for the past six months or so (yes really, and anyone who knows me will know that patience is not my forte). But finally, it’s out there, my little news piece went live in The Bookseller recently, telling the world that Quercus will be publishing my novel, THE RIVAL, later this year.

When I was on submission, I pored over blog posts like this one. I don’t know why, it’s not like they were magic 8 balls that would reveal what would happen to my novel (ahem, I may have also asked a magic 8 ball what the outcome would be…). But somehow it made me feel less alone in the tortuous hell of a process that is being on submission and waiting for news.

My agent sent my book out to a select group of editors on a Thursday last year. And so of course on the Friday I was hoping that all ten editors would have fallen in love with it overnight and phoned her at 7am offering millions of pounds for it. That didn’t happen. In fact, nothing happened on that Friday. There was No News.

The weekend was fun. But by Monday we had some ‘positive noises’, which actually mean nothing I don’t think, but were like little gulps of oxygen on which I could try to stay alive. I’m exaggerating here for effect of course, but at times I did feel like I was running out of air. I don't think anything can prepare you for it - it's like waiting for your A level results but about a million times more amplified.

Then on the Tuesday, we had our first ‘turn down’ (my agent doesn’t call them rejections, which is both euphemistic and considerate of her!). It wasn’t bad news though – only that two editors in the same publishing house had read the novel, and one had decided it was better suited to the other, who was still reading. I was OK with that turn down, because it was a really positive one. I think I might have had another rejection that day too, but I didn’t really mind because my agent was feeling very positive that the other editor at the first house was likely to offer.

Wednesday rolled around, which was also the Faber Academy reading day. You can read my previous post for more details on this, but it was quite surreal as I was basically pitching my book (and myself) to a load of agents, while knowing that I was already ‘taken’ as it were, and that the extract I was reading out loud was no longer even in the book (it hadn’t survived my agent’s edit).

After the readings, the editor who had rejected me in favour of her colleague came up and introduced herself, which was surreal (I had no idea she was going to be there!). It was a crazy day, full of excitement and nerves - reading your work aloud to a lot of literary professionals is as terrifying as it sounds - and I remember looking down at my phone at one point to see a notification from Twitter that someone new had followed me.

I’m not sure what it was about her name, but I had a weird feeling she might be important. I looked, and she was the PR director for Quercus. I knew Quercus was one of the publishers reading my book and I thought somehow that might be significant – if the PR director knew about me, presumably the editor there had mentioned me to her? It was all so overwhelming!

I’m not sure when, either that day or the next, my agent emailed me to tell me that the Quercus editor was very keen and was sharing it with her colleagues. Meanwhile, we had a similar update from the other editor at the first house. I was really hoping by the end of that week I’d have a concrete offer, and was beginning to dare to dream that I really might end up with a book deal.

Alas, the next few days brought silence, but then on the Tuesday my agent told me the Quercus editor (lovely Cassie Browne) was taking the book to her acquisitions meeting. This is the Big Meeting where editors have to convince all the other departments (like sales and marketing) that they should buy the book. It was a good sign, but it wasn't a foregone conclusion. I remember my agent saying that we should hear the outcome of the meeting later that day, but there was nothing. Suffice to say, I didn't sleep well that night.

Thankfully however, the next morning, my agent rang while I was walking home from the playground, my nearly-two-year-old in tow, to tell me that Cassie had made an offer - and that it was a pre-empt (which is an offer that expires within 24 hours and is a way of avoiding a book going to auction). It was a really exciting moment – one of those life-changing phone calls that you’ll never forget. I think my overwhelming emotion was relief – relief that I hadn’t been kidding myself all these years, that I was actually capable of writing something publishable. And not just something publishable but also something commercial, that readers would hopefully (touch wood!) want.

Later that day, I also had an offer from the other editor who was interested. It was like having my lottery numbers come up twice in a row. It was interesting to see how each editor had a different ‘vision’ for the way they would publish the book and after much deliberation (honestly, there was a huge amount of agony involved and backwards-and-forwards with my poor agent), I decided to accept Quercus’s offer.

Both editors who offered were amazing, and I would have been thrilled to have been published by either of them (that’s not lip service either) but for various reasons my heart was telling me Quercus were the right fit. Also, and this is stupid, I know (my agent would roll her eyes at me for admitting this swung me a bit, but it did), I have a picture in my dining room – a print I bought a while ago, and at the bottom it says Quercus & Co. I don’t think it bears any relation to Quercus the publisher but for some reason it felt auspicious, especially as I stare at it every day.

Anyway this post reads like a long not-so-humblebrag, I know. Don't worry - I am still pinching myself. I know how lucky I was - especially to hear back so quickly. I was only on submission for just under two weeks in the end, which is really short and merciful. I do count my blessings, especially as I’ve known of friends who've been on submission for weeks.

However, before everyone reading this hates me and thinks I had it far too easy, I'd like to add that this is the third book I’ve had on submission with my agent, so trust me when I say I’ve been through the agony of being repeatedly rejected! Third time lucky – there’s definitely something in it!

You can find out more about THE RIVAL on my website, and pre-order here if you want to make my day.