_ I am thrilled to have this opportunity to launch my new e-book, LIFE CLASS, on Bookworm Ink. LIFE CLASS can be found on Amazon at:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007XWFURQ

I won’t detail the time, work, angst and sleepless nights it’s taken to get here.  All I need say is that I am very very relieved to find myself at this point. 

To celebrate the launch of my second e-book, LIFE CLASS, I am slashing to 77p (or 99c) the price of my first, TORN,  http://www.amazon.co.uk/TORN-ebook/dp/B004UVR81Y

Hurry, it’s for a fortnight only!

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The notion that you could write the novel you wanted to read, was first implanted in me by my older sister. Having exhausted the Regency romances of Georgette Heyer, she decided to write her own.  As a young teenager I too loved to read those Heyer romances, but as I matured my own writing settled into a more contemporary style, and dwelt in a darker, seedier world - a world I had no experience of.  I was a lazy and innocent middle-class teenager; I had to rely entirely upon imagination and, unsurprisingly, never finished anything. I never took seriously the idea of writing as a profession. After all, writers were clever, educated people. I was neither.  I was not a star pupil at school. I wasn’t even particularly outstanding in English.  I now realise that although I am on the mild end of the spectrum, I am almost certainly dyslexic. The only subject I unfailingly got good marks for was art.  So I knew what I was going to be.  I left school at 16, with just enough exam passes to go on to art-college. 

My career was in advertising, where I worked as an illustrator.  When I stopped work to have my son, I wanted something I could do at home. Believing it would be easy, I started writing a romance for Mills & Boon.  I may have been misguided, but at least I finished that book. My rejection from Mills & Boon swiftly followed, but undeterred I continued to send my manuscript of ‘Just Before Dawn’, one at a time, to a list of publishers. In hindsight I find it astonishing that within four months of writing ‘the end’, I had interest from a new publisher. It was the eighth I tried.

At the time characterised as the “thinking woman’s Mills & Boon”, ‘Love Stories’ was a one woman band.  Anne Dewe was looking for un-clichéd stories about women and relationships, with a love-theme at their core which need not be conventionally romantic.  My book fitted the bill.  Just Before Dawn went through its fair share of editing before publication. Now, feeling full of confidence, I let my hair down and wrote the novel of my heart.  Desires & Dreams, also published by Love Stories, revisited the darker world of my teenage imagination. In it I subverted the ‘romance’ stereotypes. I was allowed to design my own covers.  

It was the end of an era when publishing was a gentlemanly profession; the premises would be in the old parts of London - dark dusty offices, accessed by many flights of stairs, or those old clanky lifts with concertina metal doors - on the top floors of rabbit-warren buildings.  Publishers then were relatively small concerns, they were in the business for the love of books. They were willing to bring writers on and nurture them, allowing them to find their voice and their readership. But it was also a time when the bestseller list was filled with brick-sized block-busters, which sold in shed-loads. Suddenly publishing was ‘hot’.  There were amalgamations, flotations and takeovers, and what had been small UK based concerns became vast international companies.  The men and women who had been in the business for love not money were either eased out of this brave new world or they were sidelined and had to fight their corner against the real power in the companies, the moneymen.  What became important in all this was not the writer, but the bottom line. My own publisher shut up shop after a few years of battering her head against brick walls.  She couldn’t get the marketing, promotion or distribution necessary for the success of her business or her writers.  

And so started the next phase of my life.  The need to find a new publisher coincided with my move from Surrey to Gloucestershire.  For a while I did what I’d done in the past - sending the complete manuscript to publishers, but back it would come, with only the first few pages riffled, and with the advice to find a literary agent.  Although I soon learned the lesson of only submitting the first 3 chapters + synopsis to a researched list of likely agents, it did not produce the result I hoped for.  That I was a published author held no sway; quite the reverse I suspect. My association with a failed publisher looked more like a millstone. I began to accept that the world had changed and I went from complacency to depression.  

Since those days, as we all know, the business of publishing has continued to change and not necessarily for the better. With the loss of the net book agreement, books could and were being discounted to the point where very little profit was being made for anyone other than Amazon, or the supermarkets, businesses that  are able either to make their profit from the vast quantities sold, or that can regard the top ten paperbacks as loss leaders.  Poor authors are the smallest cog in the wheel, it seems.  Even well established writers have to keep up their sales figures, book after book. It has become ever harder for the new writer - which, to all intents and purposes, is what I am - to win a contract. Publishers become increasingly risk averse, even more focused on the bottom line, even more determined to find the next Sophie Kinsella or the next celebrity to hang a book on. I felt that I was ploughing a lonely furrow.  I didn’t want to be the next anyone.  I wanted to be the first Gilli Allan.

I was already considering whether there might be a benefit for me with the advent of the E-book, when my husband bought me a Kindle, for Christmas, 2010.  I had heard about other writers self-publishing their back-list to Amazon Kindle.  I had a back catalogue on which all rights had reverted a long time ago, so I began to look into how to do this. There was a problem, however.  I’d written those books on an old fashioned ‘sit up and beg’ Olivetti.  To convert them into files on my PC I would need to scan them into editable text, but I don’t have an OCR programme.  Not an insurmountable problem but, on reflection, wouldn’t those two books be terribly old fashioned?  These days, even a ‘contemporary’ story written 5 years ago can seem out of date

I then discovered there was nothing to stop writers self-publishing original work through Kindle Direct Publishing. I knew people who had done this.  Having just received yet another, and to my mind ‘last chance saloon’ rejection for my book TORN - a book I love and really believe in - I decided that the only way I could share it with the rest of the world would be through self-publishing.  I looked up the KDP instructions but found them incomprehensible. Even a programme called Scrivener, which I’d heard could be used as a tool to self-E-publish, required an understanding of HTML code. None of it made any sense to me.  My grumbles on ROMNA - the Romantic Novelists’ Association e-loop - prompted several helpful replies. The source book didn’t need to be in HTML, I was told.  Amazon-Kindle will publish, as long as the text is in the proper format, with automatic page-breaks inserted at chapter ends, automatic indents set up, and a justified page layout. The advice included instructions for creating a cover.

It took me over a month to delete the old formatting and reformat as instructed. I guessed there were methods of doing this automatically, but remember I am a technophobe AND dyslexic, so I did it line by line. And then I had to check it all.  Eventually I believed I’d removed all the old formatting from my text and reformatted it all, as instructed. I created a copy-write page, an acknowledgements page and a dedication to my son.  Last but not least I created my cover.   This was fun, even though I only have the basic MS Paint programme.  I used my own photograph, cropping it and altering the colours. I added the lettering in ‘paint’, and then saved to ‘my pictures’ library.

Following the advice I’d been given I then prepared the cover.  It had to be saved as a PDF. When it opened in my ‘Adobe reader’, I copied the image and pasted it into the ‘paint’ programme. I needed to right-click to remove the selection rectangle, and saved it as a JPEG.  I then gave the file a unique name which I could identify when browsing for it. Naming the correct file was very important as, by this time I’d created many inferior versions, and I’m easily muddled. There was a very real danger of uploading the wrong one unless I was very careful.

The KDP Amazon site http://kdp.amazon.com/ where you upload your book, is self-explanatory, even for me.  But in typical dyslexic fashion, I managed to miss a stage or two, and clicked ‘PUBLISH’ too soon.  When TORN went ‘Live’ on April 1st, 2011, I was tremendously excited – until I discovered that the cover image on Amazon was miniscule, the price was too high (I’d not allowed for VAT), the downloaded book had no cover attached to it, and the formatting was all over the place!  I unpublished.

After my corrections, I uploaded again – previewing the book this time. I’d managed to attach the cover on this occasion, but the layout remained unacceptably erratic. It seemed that I had either not stripped out all of the old formatting, as I thought I had, and/or the book should have been converted to HTML after all. After many frustrating hours sourcing free HTML conversion programmes to download, and failing to get any of them to work, I complained to ROMNA again.  I had been typically stupid. Saving work in HTML is easy with Word7. If you click ‘Save As’, then choose the ‘Webpage’ option, this creates an HTML version of your document. So far so good, but in this format my book would not upload to Kindle with the cover attached!  

I won’t describe every subsequent trauma.  Suffice to say, the peerless Freda Lightfoot, multi-published member of the RNA, came to my rescue, again through another appeal to ROMNA. There are two free downloads called MobipocketCreator and MobipocketReader.  The first of these programmes would put my HTML text together with my cover and ‘build’ it into a book. The second would allow me to look at the finished product before going further.  Then, when I returned to my Kindle page and browsed my PC for the correct file, she told me I would find it in ‘My Publications’, in the Documents Library. True to her word, there it was!  The named folder contained 4 files.  I selected the PRC file and uploaded it to Kindle, where I previewed it again, before clicking ‘publish’. Success.  

Kindle is not the only e-reader available, of course, and now that I had the bit between my teeth, I decided to publish to Smashwords, which allows the downloading of your book to some of these alternative devices.  In many ways, I wish I had done this before the KDP experience. The instructions for formatting a book for uploading to Smashwords are longer, but are much more simply expressed. The explanations are stage by stage, with images of the computer page you will need to be on and what or where you need to tick or untick - for someone like me, invaluable. As I still wasn’t entirely happy with the way my book looked on Kindle - the formatting was still a bit irregular and idiosynchratic in places - I actually re-uploaded to KDP once I had put my book through the Smashwords process.  I now feel like a professional ‘E-publisher’.  One of the symptoms of dyslexia, however, is a poor memory, and I only hope I can remember what to do next time!

Of course, publication is only the beginning of the process of getting your book to the public.  Selling it is a whole different ball-game. It would require another article to describe how I try to raise the profile of TORN above the myriad other e-books available. It is slow and time consuming, and you have to train yourself to be brazen.

I cannot follow any kind of a formula in my writing, which is probably why I have remained unpublished since 1987.  Love may be the engine of the plot (not that my characters are necessarily aware of this) but I try not to romanticise. TORN is a contemporary story, which faces up to the complexities, messiness and absurdities in modern relationships.  Life is not a fairy tale; it can be confusing and difficult. Sex is not always awesome; it can be awkward and embarrassing, and it has consequences. You don't always fall for Mr Right, even if he falls for you. And realising you're in love is not always good news. It can make the future look daunting......

Gilli's third book 'Torn' can be found on Amazon and Smashwords:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TORN-ebook/dp/B004UVR81Yhttp://www.smashwords.com/books/view/61772

I'm thrilled to be welcoming Gilli Allan, the author of 'Torn' to Bookworm Ink. Gilli writes contemorary romance and 'Torn', her third book, is available on Kindle.

What started you writing and is it something you always wanted to do?

I think I was always a writer.  I made up stories in my head from as far back as I can remember.  I hardly ever played formal games but was forever play-acting. I forced my friends to take the roles I gave them and we’d play out the scenarios I’d devised, about princes & princesses, fairies, or cowboys and red Indians. 

My older sister loved Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer.  Influenced by the latter’s Regency romances, she decided to write her own.  I was still at primary school, so she couldn’t have been more than 15 or 16.

I was an avid reader and it seemed to me a brilliant idea to write the book you wanted to read. It’s what I still do.

The story I then started, aged 10 or 11, was set in ‘the olden days’. It was about a group of ladies - one of them, my teenage heroine - who were visiting a lighthouse, set on a rocky islet. They had to get there by boat.  The weather deteriorated and while the women were temporarily trapped there, the lighthouse-keeper’s 16 year old son went out into the storm, for some unspecified reason and fell on the rocks, injuring himself. My young heroine nursed him. At this point, a few laboriously written pages in, my imagination failed

 I wrote copiously and continuously throughout secondary school, but never completed anything. My notebooks were massively illustrated and doodled on.  But I NEVER dreamed of becoming a writer.  After all, writers were clever, educated people who had always gone to Oxford or Cambridge. Though I’d got into grammar school I scraped along in the D stream.  The only subject I was demonstrably good at was art.  So art was the career I was aiming for. I left school at 16 with the minimum number of O levels necessary to get me to Art College.

Do you write full-time or do you have another career?

I’ve worked as a shop assistant, a beauty consultant, a bar maid ... and a job where a band of girls were deposited at various tourist hot spots, where we were supposed to approach couples we suspected were American tourists. We had to hook them with the promise of a free tour of London and a free lunch at the Hilton. The catch was that when they’d eaten their lunch, they were subjected to a high-power pitch, selling real estate in Florida.

I was a shy kid.  I found it hard to talk to strangers.  So why I thought I could do any of these jobs, let alone the last, is inexplicable. I was pretty poor at all of them and was very relieved when, by a fluke and a coincidence, I found my dream job as an illustrator in an advertising design studio.  I didn’t start writing again until after I’d had my son, Tom. 

I wasn’t desperate to get back into the advertising rat race and I fancied doing something that would allow me to stay at home with Tom, while he was little. That’s when I had the brainwave. ‘I could write a romance!’ I’m slightly ashamed to say I’ve not done a day’s paid work since then, other than some evening bar work in our local squash club.

Describe your typical writing day.

I’m glad you ask about a typical “writing day”.  There are too many days in my life when, typically, no creative writing gets done at all! But if I am in a writing phase, and it’s going well, I can start immediately after breakfast and work through till six, hardly leaving my desk.  And that can go on day after day after day.  Then I have to be disciplined about the other things in my life, like the need to do a bit of shopping, go to my art-class or even to have shower!  And I can edit endlessly.

What inspired you to write ‘Torn’?

Whenever I start the process of developing ideas for a new book I will always begin by reviewing my own life. I can honestly say that some real experience appears in every book I’ve written. This doesn’t mean that every book is autobiographical.  None of them are.  The autobiographical elements might be quite insignificant, used as a starting point or as a method to explore the emotions of the characters. An incident can never be slotted into a story exactly as it happened to me.  I always find I have to alter it, to shade and embroider. I went through this process with TORN.   But if anyone wants to know which bits in the book are real, I am afraid I have to answer, ‘That’s for me to know and you, the reader, to guess.’

The spark which started TORN, happened while travelling to Somerset by car.  I was a passenger on the nearside and was looking out at the passing scene.  We passed a turning on the left.  In the moment or two I had to take it in I saw the road led steeply down to the heart of a village.  The road we were on had obviously been widened and made into the A road, to by-pass the narrow village centre.  At that moment the random thought which went through my head was:  ‘I bet those villagers were pleased.’  But then I thought, ‘But I doubt the people who lived up here were so chuffed to have the main road re-routed past them.’  I went on to reflect that life is actually never that simple or black and white, and........    The whole story grew from there.

In TORN, Jess has taken her 3 yr old son and moved away from London intent on escaping her past.  She expects life in the country to be simple, peaceful and undemanding. Here she will be able to concentrate on being a good mother.  But there’s conflict over a proposed bypass, conflict between friends with very different agendas, conflict between her own nature and her good intentions. And she’s torn between the suitable man and the unsuitable boy. 

What projects are you working on now?

I have just been offered a contract by a new e-publisher, Lysandra Press, for my latest book Life Class. So there may be some more editing work I’ll need to get on with for them. But I’m planning that my next book will be set in and around the world of academia and archaeology.  I’m never sure of the plot, the underlying themes or where and how a story is going, until it’s finished. So it’s a bit too soon for the elevator pitch.  But maybe something like - ‘Educating Rita meets Time Team.’?  What do you think?

How do you publicise your work?

Ineffectively.  I am on Twitter and FaceBook, and several email loops for writers of women’s (romantic) fiction. And I have a blog.  I try to ‘big myself up’ when I have some good news.  But mostly I’m just trying to create a presence, to be friendly, and to mention my book from time to time, hoping people remember TORN by Gilli Allan when they come to make a book-buying choice.

Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

When you are introduced as ‘a writer’ people often respond by saying that they’ve often thought about writing a book themselves.  My advice is always: If you’re really serious, don’t wait.  Start now. It’s what I did. 

The idea that I might actually try to write for publication came to me while I was ironing. I suddenly thought: ‘I used to write romances when I was a teenager, I’m sure I could knock off a Mills & Boon now.’  (Famous last words!  It’s not easy, and like so many writers who’ve tried, I was rejected very firmly.)

Recalling the advice from English teachers that I would write better if I confined myself to what I knew, I thought back over my life.   For me it was a no-brainer. The event chose itself.  It was something I had often considered writing about, but........

 I was an artist. How, where, why would I write about this experience?  Suddenly I had a vehicle. So, by the time I’d finished the ironing, I had my starting point ‘miscarriage’. Even though I suspected that the subject - and the way I planned to weave it into a romance - would probably disqualify the book from consideration by M & B, I knew I had to do it anyway. You have to be a bit obsessive to a writer!    As soon as the ironing was put away I found a notebook and a pen and started.  That book - Just Before Dawn - was the first I ever finished and was accepted by a publisher very quickly.

It is too easy to let yourself be put off from writing until you’ve got the time, until the children have gone to school, left home, until you’ve retired.  In my view the ‘start now’ principle is the best one.  You can always find time or make time. 

What is your favourite work of fiction?

I’m sorry, this is going to sound incredibly pretentious and I’ve no idea if, reading the book for the first time today, I’d feel the same. But cross my heart, my favourite novel is Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment.  When I claim this, I mean that it is the book which had the biggest impact on me.  I first read it when I was about 16 (before leaving school and going to Art College). I still have my school library copy somewhere, which I never returned, re-reading it five times before I was twenty.  The other novel(s) that had a similar effect on me was the Gormenghast trilogy, by Mervyn Peake.

Favourite authors recently are Kate Atkinson and C J Sansom.

Which author had the greatest influence on you as a child?

This is a hard one.  I was given all the A A Milne Christopher Robin stories and poems when I was young, but my enormous love for these developed more in my mid-teens.  Thinking back, the book which left the strongest impression when I first read it was probably Heidi, by Johanna Spyri. I was given it on my eighth birthday, around the time I suddenly ‘got the hang’ of reading.  (And once I’d started I never looked back.)  It’s special for me because it was one of the first books I read to myself after I became a fluent reader. I can even still recall the smell of it.

You recently appeared at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, was this the first festival you’ve spoken at? Is it something you’d like to do again?

I cannot, in all conscience, allow readers of this interview to think I am some kind of literary celebrity - I wish! The event I appeared at was on the Festival fringe. The Daffodil restaurant in Cheltenham was hosting writers to talk and read, every afternoon throughout the festival, while their audience took tea.

It was the first festival, the first anything, I’ve spoken at.  I was very nervous. But nowadays writers have to be able to get out there and talk to the public. So I prepared well and gave a short talk about myself, my writing ‘journey’ and an overview of the changes in publishing since I started.  I then did an introduction of TORN, giving the audience a bit of the back-story, and sketching in the first few chapters up to the passage I intended to read. 

In case you’re wondering, the reason I didn’t read from Chapter One is because it describes an aggressive drunken altercation outside a pub. I try to write honestly and don’t pull my punches.  So there was no way I was going to read this unexpurgated passage to ladies taking afternoon tea in Cheltenham!  

I was hugely relieved when it was all over and am now confident I could do a talk and / or a reading again. I am not saying I was particularly good at it, but I managed to get through it without hyper-ventilating, freezing, fainting or losing my place.  I’d still be nervous but it’s one of those things, once you’ve done it you know you could do again. So I would accept any feasible project that came my way. 

Finally, and most importantly, you’ve lost your wallet, who do you enlist to help you find it, Poirot or Miss Marple?

Definitely Miss Marple.  And not any old Miss Marple.  I want the Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple, from those classic old black & white films. Never bettered.


Gilli has a blog at: http://gilliallan.blogspot.com/2011/04/extract-from-torn-out-now-as-e-book-on.html

and can be found on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1182311866) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/gilliallan)