When I graduated university in Lincoln, I didn’t want to the leave the city. After three years of exploring the area, spending time in coffee shops, and working in a team of friends, I felt I had found my place. Any writing I did was restricted to my Notes app and my uni essays.
But when my work contract came to an end, I couldn’t find another job to let me stay in Lincoln. Sadly, I had to move, and my Granma was kind enough to let me stay in her little attic room in Barnard Castle. Though two months of searching for a job in Lincoln had yielded nothing, two weeks landed me a part-time job at GSK. It was perfect, but I desperately missed my life in Lincoln and searched constantly for another job so I could move back.
I moved to Barney in August, and the summer quickly came to an end. Around my part-time job, I realised that I had a lot of free time and not much to do. So, during the grey winter months, I decided to return to my Notes app. It was full to buffering with story ideas and disjointed scenes that I had written from the age of sixteen. Nearly six years’ worth of careless writing had been abandoned and forgotten, so I made it my mission to organise and compile these random projects.
One story – a cheesy fantasy tale of magic, kingdoms, wars and princesses – stuck in my head. I formed it into a vague plan. Then I started to write.
I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to house-sit in a lovely, quiet house with two cats. For those three months, I spent hours each evening sitting on the sofa, a cat on one knee and my laptop on the other. When my fingers typed faster than my mind could summon new scenes, I went on walks around Barnard Castle and the fields beyond to daydream the next steps. My aunt, already a self-published author, listened and supported me as my enthusiasm grew for my new project. It took six weeks for me to get the first draft of the novel down, clocking in at a little over a hundred-thousand words.
Not far from the end, however, I was already planning the sequel. “It’s just a duology,” I insisted. But as soon as the first one was done, I started writing the second. This one took a little under eight weeks to write. I was in the flow of it now.
However…near the end of the second book, a plan began to form for a third book. I started on it immediately after finishing the second and got halfway before life caught up with me. I had found a job back in Lincoln!
Moving to Barnard Castle hadn’t been my first choice, and I had ultimately decided not to stay. But those eight months hadn’t been wasted. As soon as I moved back to the midlands, the first book I had written caught back up with me. I had sent it away to be proofread and the edits were back. They took two weeks. Then I thought, what am I waiting for now? It was all just for fun, after all. So, I did a bit of research, commissioned a nice book cover to be made, and self-published my first book!
I’m not a writer who can say I always dreamed of writing a book. I knew I would probably be creating stories in secret for the rest of my life – once you start, it’s almost impossible to stop, I discovered. I like my part-time admin job and my peaceful life outside of it, so I know traditional publishing with all its deadlines and responsibilities isn’t the route for me. All it took was me writing an original story that I could be proud of and putting it out there was easy!
And surrounded by the inspiration of the beautiful Teesdale countryside and the support of other writers in the town, writing and finishing my book was inevitable.
My book, The Deceiver, was published on the 20th of May and has been well received by my friends and family who have read it. It was worth the effort just to have it finished, but seeing it in paperback for the first time was an experience I’ll never forget.
What makes it better is that the second one is already going through edits, and the third is half done! It’ll definitely remain a trilogy…I think.
The Deceiver: Book One of The Deceiver Trilogy
WAR RAGES. A DEADLY MAGIC IS BROKEN.