United State of Love
My Journey as an Unpublished Author:-
“I have always dabbled with writing and always loved reading so when I had the opportunity last year to concentrate on writing, I grabbed it. It was a case of now or never to get that novel written.
So August 2010 I began my plotting and planning. I had one scene in my mind, a confrontation between two lovers over an ex. It had no story leading up to it and no story following it but it was the beginning of French Kissing in the UK, which has since become United State Of Love. I then went about building up other scenes that these three characters might find themselves in. My next step was to link these scenes with a story line. Funnily enough, the scene that started it all off never made the final manuscript, it just didn’t fit in with the story I had created.
While I was writing, I joined the Romantic Novelist Association under their New Writers Scheme and duly submitted my novel, receiving a critique back about four weeks later. Okay, I hadn’t written the perfect novel, I didn’t get a second read, I wasn’t put in contact with an agent and I wasn’t offered a three book deal with a mega advance. It took a couple of weeks for me to get over myself and realise that actually the critique had made some very valid observations, particularly concerning motivation of two of my characters. However, I wasn’t sure if I had the energy or enthusiasm to rectify this as it wasn’t something that could just be tweaked. Nonetheless, I didn’t want to give in and headed back to the laptop with a vengeance. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed the re-write, which was pretty much the first half with tweaking of the remainder.
My next step was to get some feedback from other people. The lovely Associate Reader Lou Graham and fellow Featured Author Nicky Wells both read it independently, giving me encouragement and advice for which I am very grateful.
My final step of the process was to have my novel professionally edited and proofread by Kit Domino, who is also a Featured Author with Love A Happy Ending. I am very grateful to her for ironing out the rough edges, leaving me with a polished novel ready for publication on 11 July this year.”