This week I am delighted to welcome lovely Kitty Wilson to the blog. An author chum and fellow RNA member, Kitty has just celebrated her first publication day and I am thrilled that she has found the time to pop along and share her obvious joy and excitement with us!
This Monday I had my first ever
publication day, it marked both the end of one stage of my writing career and
(hopefully) the beginnings of the next.
My route to publication had been a
long run, a marathon that suddenly turned into a sprint and that at one point
had me jumping up and down on my landing wearing nothing but a towel, shrieking
utter nonsense into the phone (I might have even moo-ed) as I thought my best
friend was pranking me by pretending to be an agent. She wasn’t.
After years of writing and
submitting, an offer of publication led to me pitching up on my neighbour’s
doorstep and sobbing with such passion that they thought I had suffered a
family bereavement. It took me gesticulating wildly and proffering my laptop
before they realised that the tears were because my hopes had become a reality
and I needed someone to check I hadn’t misinterpreted. More importantly, this
offer led to me landing my dream agent (surprisingly, a different one than the
one who had been subject to my virtually naked squawking) who quickly got to
work.
The next, very speedy, step was the
opportunity to choose between two publishers. It was like living someone else’s
life. Suddenly I was catapulted from being someone awfully keen on pyjamas and
not brushing her hair into an author. An actual author with a book deal! I went
to London, nipped in and out of cabs wearing heels with a glitzy purse and did
all the things I imagined real life writers did. Still, it didn’t really sink
in.
I worked tirelessly on social media
and badgered all my friends in real life to buy the book, share the book and to
bully others into doing the same. I was shameless. I even had a handbag full of
flyers I would press on unsuspecting people that were foolish enough to stop
and speak to me in the supermarket or on the street. Needless to say, Cornwall
is now littered with flyers for The Cornish Village School (I’m sure they’ll
decompose in no time) and I had discovered a whole new side to myself. But
still it hadn’t sunk in.
I wrote blog posts, answered
questions and even held a launch party where I read an excerpt - I have never
been so terrified, and I have jumped out of a plane and left to live in a foreign country with only the clothes I was
wearing. But it wasn’t until publication day itself when friends started
sending me screenshots of them reading my book, the book they had paid for,
that I began to realise I might actually be an author.
A few days on and the dog is
beginning to get a bit fed up with me wandering in and saying ‘I’m a writer,
you know’. I now have a whole series to write, based around a village full of
characters that I love and I couldn’t be more excited.
I’m Kitty Wilson and I am an
author.
Kitty
Wilson has lived in Cornwall for the last twenty-five years having been dragged
there, against her will, as a stroppy teen. She is now remarkably grateful to
her parents for their foresight and wisdom – and that her own children aren’t
as hideous. She spends most of her time welded to the keyboard or hiding out at
the beach and has a penchant for very loud music, equally loud dresses and
romantic heroines who speak their mind.
Find Kitty online...
Amazon UK https://amzn.to/2sltOLD
Amazon.com https://amzn.to/2HCKO5O
iBooks https://apple.co/2sRcf7u
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