Red Magazine

DECEMBER 2010 3.60 www.redmagazine.co.uk

Miranda Dickinson

Welcome to my

WORLD

INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW

WELCOME TO MY WORLD A WRITER A DREAMER A hopelessly ROMANTIC, eternal optimist...

And she isn’t bad at singing, either.

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INTERVIEW

M

iranda Dickinson has always had a head full of stories.

Coming from a creative family where stories and songs were always present, it was perhaps inevitable that she would end up adoring words A songwriter for over 15 years, Miranda has successfully penned over thirty songs, delivering both live and recorded performances in a range of venues across the UK and Europe.

RED Magazine: Your publishing journey is a remarkable one.

Tell me a little about it Miranda Dickinson: I uploaded a novel I had written (then called Coffee At Kowalski’s) onto Authonomy.com, HarperCollins’ site for unpublished writers, just to see what other people thought about it. It never occurred to me that anyone would want to publish it, so when I received an email from an editor at Avon (Harper Collins) asking to read the full manuscript, I was flabbergasted!

I sent the whole thing off, never thinking I’d hear from them again, but two weeks later they emailed back this time asking me to call. I did and - to my utter surprise they offered me a three-book deal! My debut novel was renamed Fairytale of New York and was published in November last year.

when I’m not working I’m writing, so free time is a bit hard to come by. But what’s been amazing is that so many people who have been to New York felt that Fairytale was a really accurate representation of the Big Apple. That means that all the hours of research and grilling people who’ve been there paid off!

RM: You write and produce music (do you sing as well?).

How does this differ from writing a book?

MD: I do sing as well! I would say that writing music is quicker, except that I’ve been working on my album for four years!! I think the main difference is that in songwriting you need to get an idea or an emotion over very succinctly, so you haven’t got the luxury of expanding on something too much. But that really helps when I’m writing a novel because it stops me waffling too much - and it also encourages me to come up with different ways of expressing love, fear, regret, etc.

M RM: And then Fairytale of New York, sold and sold and sold In your words, it went stratospheric. What do you think was its appeal?

MD: I really don’t know, to be completely honest with you!

Since Fairytale was published I’ve had fab letters from people who said they loved the story and cared about the characters - and that’s wonderful because it means I’ve written something that entertains people, which is all I ever want to do. I think the New York setting attracted people, too. I’m completely in love with the city (from afar still) so I poured years of reading about, hearing about and watching films set there into the book.

I wanted it to be a love song to New York, with people you want to get to know. Hopefully I did that!

RM: Having read the book, I can’t believe you haven’t been to New York. When are you planning on going?

MD: The plan is to try to get there next year - so fingers crossed! The main reason it hasn’t happened yet is that I haven’t had time! I work three days a week and

‘when I heard I’d made the shortlist it was like a dream come true’

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RM: How did it feel to be shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists’ Association Novel of the Year?

MD: It was awesome and a real surprise! I was chuffed that I made the longlist, so when I heard I’d made the shortlist it was like a dream come true. I loved the whole thing and getting to go to my first awards ceremony with my first book was an absolute honour.

It meant the world to me to be recognised by the RNA who do so much fantastic work to promote romantic fiction in all its forms.

RM: You’ve just signed another deal with Harper Collins (Avon) tell me about it.

MD: That was a massive surprise! I’ve signed for another three books, which means that I’ll be releasing a book a year to 2014. It’s amazing and I have lots of ideas to keep my books a bit different from others in my genre.

I really want to keep surprising the lovely people who pick my book up from the shelves.

RM: What are you working on now? (Welcome to my World and a bit about it?)

MD: I’ve just finished the editing process for my second novel, Welcome to My World and it’s being typeset as we speak! It’s the story of Harri Langton, a travel agent in a Black Country village, who knows everything about the world but hasn’t been able to travel to see any of them for herself (not unlike me with New York!).

She’s happy with her boyfriend Rob, even though he hasn’t proposed yet after seven years and only likes to holiday in the UK. Then she meets Alex, who has been

INTERVIEW travelling the world for ten years and returns to Stone Yardley to open a coffee lounge. They become great friends and he shares his travel stories with Harri, in return for her relationship advice for his nightmare love life.

Then Alex’s mum (and Harri’s friend) Viv suggests her Big Idea - to nominate Alex for a my single friend- type column in a glossy magazine - and all hell breaks loose!

It all leads to Harri fleeing to the Ladies’ loos at Stone Yardley Village Hall and locking herself in the middle cubicle, , after it all kicks off at a party. So for most of the book, Harri is locked in the loo, reflecting on the events that led to what has become officially The Worst Night of Her Life!

RM: Have you always enjoyed writing? What made you turn to writing novels?

MD: I started writing stories when I was little and it’s always been there in my life, but I didn’t realise that I was a writer until about eight years ago when I started to write a story which grew and grew. It was only when I realised I’d written 60,000 words that it occurred to me that I was writing a novel! I really enjoyed being able to expand on a story idea (having mainly written short stories previously) and I found that writing novel-length stories gave me more scope to investigate my characters’ lives.

RM: You are the main example held up when people talk about Authonomy as a way to “beat the slush”. In light of your own experiences, do you think that the view of Authonomy as some sort of short cut to publication is an accurate one?

MD: I’m not sure that the view of Authonomy as a ‘short-cut to publication’ is accurate - it’s certainly not what the team behind Authonomy would say it is.

What Authonomy is, however, is a brilliant place to showcase the wealth of amazing writing out there. It gives unpublished authors the chance to show their writing - and compared to the slush pile, the site also gives editors and agents (not just from HarperCollins) the chance to search new writing more specifically, working on the tags that each Authonomy author chooses for their own work.

T

here’s no doubt that without Authonomy, it would be very unlikely that I would be a published author today. I’d always intended to submit my work to agents at some point but I always talked myself out of it.

Because of this - and because of the fact that the book which was discovered was one I never thought anyone else would be bothered about - I do feel somewhat of an ‘accidental novelist’: I still feel shell-shocked that I’m now writing for a living and I feel like the luckiest person alive.

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‘Being nominated for the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year Award was a tremendous honour’ RM: What is your proudest moment to date?

MD: There have been so many! Walking into my favourite bookshop in Birmingham and seeing my book on the shelves was probably the best one, because for years I’d driven my boyfriend mad by saying ‘one day my book will be in here’ every time we walked in! Being nominated for the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year Award was a tremendous honour and although I never thought I’d win, it was such a great feeling to know that my peers had recognised my work like that. Also, becoming a Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller was pretty cool - completely crazy, of course, but thrilling. But what gives me the most pride is when I receive emails from people who have read my book and loved it. That’s all I ever want to do: write stories that entertain people.

RM: You’re a very creative person! Does your experience writing music influence your novels, and vice versa?

MD: Yes, I think it does. My third novel is actually based around a wedding band (not unlike the one I sing with now) and will bring together all my gig stories and experiences of singing with various bands over the years. I think that if you are creative, then you can utilise several different avenues for your creativity. I’ve always been involved in music in one way or another and have been writing songs seriously since I was 19. I just love the buzz you get from creating something out of nothing - whether that’s a song, a story or a film. I think songwriting is great

INTERVIEW for influencing story writing because you have to get across your theme/emotions/story in relatively few words.

You also have to delve deeper into your feelings to be able to express them through music.

I like songwriting, singing and performing music because by and large I get to do them with other people, whereas my novel writing is an almost wholly solo pursuit. That suits both sides of my character: the gregarious side and the more introspective.

different genre novels, too, at some stage in the future - I’ve two comedy novels waiting in the wings (more in the ilk of Jasper Fforde and Sir Terry Pratchett) that I would dearly love to see published one day.

Most of all, I don’t ever want o think I’ve got writing sussed. I want to continue to challenge myself and grow as a writer - and hopefully have some readers come along for the ride!

RM: And finally, if you had to sum up a key piece of advice for aspiring writers in one sentence, what would it be?

MD: Keep writing, keep creating and NEVER, EVER stop believing!

RM: What is your ultimate goal in the writing world?

MD: To keep writing books that surprise people. I’m very fortunate to now be able to write six books in total for Avon, so I want each one to be better than he one before. I’d like to write

‘Keep writing, keep creating and NEVER, EVER stop believing!’

Close your eyes and imagine the world is your oyster…And now imagine never seeing it.

Welcome to Harriet Langton’s world. All her life she’s dreamt of travelling the globe - fate always got in the way.

Working as a travel agent, the closest Harri comes to her dream destination of Venice is booking the trip for someone else. But everything changes when travel fanatic Alex drops in.With her boyfriend Rob tied up with work, Harri is persuaded to help Alex in his quest for love. But in her attempts to help, Harri soon

discovers that she’s alienating those around her.

Desperate to leave her life behind, will her dreams finally come true?

Or will Harri’s leap of faith be her biggest mistake yet?A gorgeous love story for fans of Sophie Kinsella and Jill Mansell.

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