Today I have the distinct pleasure of sharing with you my first author interview, and introducing a marvelous new book. Author Vivien Brown’s new release, Five Unforgivable Things, takes the reader through the frustrating, heartbreaking journey of the IVF experience. While her book is fiction, she has drawn upon her own real life experiences  to provide the depth and detail necessary to reveal the emotional struggle of the main characters. Not only does Brown convey the devastating lows and euphoric highs of the experience, she subtly portrays the thinning out of a marriage in the process. Love slowly degrades to tolerance, and then to disdain, even as the sought after family becomes reality.

Read below to learn more about the writing process, author Vivien Brown, and her latest novel, Five Unforgivable Things. Many thanks to Vivien for providing Novel Blondes with this opportunity!

 

Could you tell us about yourself? Professional background, studies and work history?

I trained in banking and finance, and spent many years working first in a high street bank and then a local government accountancy department. I realised I wanted to work with young children after having my own twins (born through IVF just as Kate’s children are in the novel). So I became a childminder, then a part-time library worker specialising in kids’ books, story and rhyme sessions, and training parents in how and what to read to their under-fives. At the same time I was writing children’s poetry, articles and book reviews for the childcare press and short stories for women’s magazines, all of which were regularly published.

 

When did you first decide to write and what got you started?

English was always my favourite school subject and I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t writing something. I only realised I could take it seriously and try writing for payment when I won a national competition run by a UK newspaper to find the best opening paragraphs to a novel, with the theme ‘power’. My entry was about a child forcing her younger sister to eat a fly, and I beat around 5000 other entrants to the prize – lots of books and a creative writing residential course. That gave me a huge confidence boost and my first introduction to literary agents and publishers.

 

Where have you found inspiration for your stories?

I read a lot of women’s magazine fiction, partly for research but mainly because I enjoy it so much. Everything I need is there – families, relationships, secrets, love, laughter, conflict, surprises, happy endings, sad endings… By writing stories for that market over the last twenty years I have learned what readers (and editors) expect from a good, strong, emotional story.

 

What is the best part about writing, and what is the worst?

For me, writing means creating my own worlds and peopling them with characters of my own making. I am in charge of who they are, what they do, whether they fulfil their dreams or get what they deserve. Being able to think up stories and bring them to the page is a joy and a privilege. The things I dislike most are the rejections (which come less often nowadays) and readers who leave nasty one-star reviews for ridiculous reasons, like the book being delivered late or arriving damaged. Books are not just a product like a toy or a pair of shoes – they are the result of an author’s long hard lonely slog, and we deserve better.

 

What is a typical writing day like for you?

That depends on where I am with a book. It starts slowly, with a lot more thinking and planning than actual writing, so at that stage I will not be at the keyboard so much, maybe just an hour or so a day of actual writing, but as the book gains momentum I start to get more involved in it and things speed up. It is at the editing stage, once my publisher’s editor has seen it and had her say, that I work the hardest, polishing and cutting and doing my best to make a story the very best it can be. That’s when I can easily be working long after midnight and forgetting to stop for food!

I write in an upstairs study overlooking the garden and I have a TV, an exercise bike, lots of books, chocolate, and my pet goldfish in there with me, with occasional visits from my two cats. I spend a lot of my non-writing time at writers’ events and groups, and on social media, doing my best to bring my work to readers’ attention. It can be a real juggling act at times, still promoting the first book while launching the second and starting to write the one after that.

 

How do you prevent burn out, writer’s block or dry spells?

By having other interests to turn to, so my whole life does not revolve around my writing. I allow myself time off for days out or just to sit in the sun and read, and I don’t let myself feel guilty about that.

 

Do you have your next book already in the works?

I am about a third of the way through a new novel about two sisters who love the same man, but I keep changing parts of the story as I am not yet full happy with it. Things will start to speed up at around the halfway stage, and I hope to see it published in the summer of 2019.

 

Can you walk us through the “birth” of a book, from conception of the idea to shelf or digital release?

Ideally it should take about a year in all, although the idea may have been ‘brewing’ for a lot longer. I am not a great planner, preferring to just start and see where the words take me. So, I write the first draft (around 100,000 words), which takes maybe six months or so, then my editor suggests structural changes if she feels something isn’t quite working. After that rewrite, we do the more nitty-gritty edits, looking at continuity, grammar, etc. A cover gets designed, the title may well be discussed at length and changed, then I write a dedication and acknowledgements.

The novel, in electronic form, then goes out to reviewers for a few weeks before official publication – e-book first, paperback three months later, and perhaps an audio version too. And while those later stages are going on I will be getting on with writing the next book, so there is always overlap.

 

What steps do you take to promote your work?

The publisher will do an official ‘cover reveal’, usually via twitter, a few weeks before release, and will design some shareable banners and adverts which we will both use as widely as we can. I then start promoting it via my own twitter and facebook pages, as many online reader and blogger groups as I can reach, and my own blog. Bloggers and reviewers are a really valuable resource, and for both of my novels I have arranged ‘blog tours’ where they have enthusiastically shared posts, reviews, interviews, giveaways and novel extracts etc during the initial weeks following publication. The Romantic Novelists Association also sends monthly lists of newly released books by its members to public libraries, in the hope that they will buy copies for their shelves.

 

How much reading do you get to do and what are some of your favorites?

I believe that reading other authors’ novels is still the best research a novelist can possibly undertake. It helps us keep up to date with what is selling now, and constantly throws new ideas at us about how to structure and tell a good story. I read around 50 novels a year, often written by or recommended by friends, books where I have read glowing reviews, or sometimes new authors I want to try out. I love a real variety of styles and themes – romantic comedies by Milly Johnson, the nurse series by Jean Fullerton, and Clare Mackintosh’s crime novels. Also, I read lots of magazine fiction and still write short stories for that market when an idea strikes.

 

What are your hobbies?

Cryptic crosswords – compiling them as well as solving them. Going to ‘boyband’ concerts. Horseracing. Pottering in the garden. TV game shows (I have appeared on three!). Theatre shows, especially musicals – ‘School of Rock’ was brilliant, but I adored ‘War Horse’ too.

 

Who do you like to spend time with when you’re not writing?

I spend time at home with my husband Paul, although his health has not been good recently so he has been unable to go out much. Also, I have twin daughters, both grown up and living independently, and two very small granddaughters, so we do have trips out to playgrounds, zoos, puppet shows and theme parks, which are great fun. I do socialise a lot with other writers too, including belonging to three active writing organisations. We share afternoon teas and lunches, go to author talks and attend conferences, talk over our writerly problems and celebrate our successes together.

 

Do you have a life motto?

Don’t give up. If you want it badly enough and work hard enough, it will come!

 

Any tips for would-be writers?

It doesn’t happen by magic. You need to learn your craft. Attend classes, Join groups. Be prepared to accept advice and criticism. And read, read, read!

 

 

 

ABOUT THE NOVEL

 

Almost thirty years ago, Kate’s dream came true. After years of struggling, she was finally pregnant following pioneering IVF. But the dream came at a cost. Neither Kate nor her husband Dan could have known the price they would have to pay to fulfil their cherished wish of having their own family.

Now, years later, their daughter Natalie is getting married and is fulfilling her own dream of marrying her childhood sweetheart. Natalie knows she won’t be like most brides as she travels down the aisle in her wheelchair, but it’s the fact her father won’t be there to walk beside her that breaks her heart.

Her siblings, Ollie, Beth and Jenny, gather around Natalie, but it isn’t just their father who is missing from their lives… as the secrets that have fractured the family rise to the surface, can they learn to forgive each other before it’s too late?

Available now through Amazon.

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR VIVIEN BROWN

 

 

Vivien Brown lives in west London with her husband and two cats. She worked for many years in banking and accountancy, and then, after the birth of twin daughters, made a career switch and started working with young children, originally as a childminder but later in libraries and children’s centres, promoting the joys of reading and sharing books through storytimes and book-based activities and training sessions. She has written many short stories for the women’s magazine market and a range of professional articles and book reviews for the nursery and childcare press, in addition to a ‘how to’ book based on her love of solving cryptic crosswords. Now a full-time writer, working from home, Vivien is combining novel-writing and her continuing career in magazine short stories with her latest and most rewarding role as doting grandmother.