Author Interview: Elaine Everest

My guest today is Elaine Everest. With publication of her new saga, The Butlins Girls, around the corner, I just had to ask her a few questions.

Thank you so much for welcoming me to your blog, Natalie. I can’t wait for Thursday and publication day.

You join me just days before publication of The Butlins Girls. Readers of your Sunday Times bestseller, The Woolworths Girls, will be eagerly awaiting another dose of nostalgia. For some it may be a trip down memory lane, but you aren’t old enough to have lived in the period you write about, yet your research and attention to detail are impeccable. How do you do it?

I was fortunate to have been born in the fifties when times hadn’t changed that much. I lived in a town which not only had a lot of history but also still has many people who love to talk about ‘the good old days’. My family loved to chat about what happened (and when) so I grew up listening to stories of the war years. The next step was to read about those times in books – who doesn’t love reading a book?

Did you pick the era or did it choose you? In spite of the hardship of those post-war years, it seems a much kinder and gentler age than the one we live in now.

Like many writers I’ve dabbled with other genres. I have a modern romcom collecting dust but although never picked up by a publisher it did help me become shortlisted in The Harry Bowling Prize. I’d been a fan of Harry’s for years as he wrote about the area where my Aunt Doll and Uncle Geoff had their pub and his writing resonated with me. Somewhere inside me there has always been that interest in times gone by. So, to answer your question I’d say that history and sagas picked me.

Can your readers look forward to more of the same? What else do you have in the pipeline?

I’m thrilled to say that readers loved The Woolworths Girls so much I’ll be returning to Woolies later this year. Old friends and new faces - it was a joy to write. Then in 2018…

You allude to your family’s history in the world of the travelling fairground. What stories you must have to tell. Perhaps a future novel?

My love of the fairground is a link to my maternal family and my mum who died when I was seventeen. She told us of the hard life she had as a child and the bullying because she was so different to fellow school children – that’s when she got to attend school due to travelling with the fair. She made us value education and aimed to having good jobs once we had our exams. The fair closed down after WW2 so I never experienced the fun of the fair. My granddad did still own the ground and some of the old-fashioned caravans, which I remember fondly. Brightly polished lamps, china, a fierce parrot that hated kids! It’s all there locked in my memory ready to use in stories. Oh, and the family link to Billy Butlin…

In addition to writing novels, short stories and articles, you also run a creative writing school The Write Place in Dartford, as well as being in charge of social media for the Romantic Novelists’ Association. How do you fit it all in?

It’s a case of making sure I do fit it all in and all part of being a full time writer. I often tell new writers that if they wish to earn a living and be thought of seriously as a writer they need to do more than write a novel. We have to learn our craft and that can take years. Short stories help us create a piece of fiction with a beginning a middle and an end – just like a novel but not quite as long. I love the time I spent writing more short fiction. I could think of an idea and write it in one day. My record from having an idea to making a sale is 36 hours. Feature writing pays well and authors have to pay the mortgage and eat! Both fiction and features helped me build relationships with editors whilst learning the craft of writing novels. Teaching classes for Kent Adult Education Services in Dartford and Gravesend came about after I won the BBC Radio Kent short Story Writer of the Year competition in 2003 and was invited to run a few classes. I later moved on to run my own classes and workshops as I preferred to make my own decisions. Being part of the RNA committee is an honour as I get to meet so many authors and also watch as new writers progress with their career – they have great parties too!

Many of your readers will know of your love of and association with the dog world. In the past you’ve written non-fiction books on the subject. Is there any genre, fiction or non-fiction, you would like to turn your hand to in the future?
I could talk for hours about dogs and the show world! I’m honoured to have been part of a world where people breed sound healthy dogs and do their best to promote new owners. I’ve sat on a few breed committees and done my bit to keep the positive side of our breeds alive. Even though I’m not quite as active in the show world as I used to be I’m still called upon to broadcast about dogs – usually when something nasty happens. It is down to us to wave the flag for responsible breeding which means closing down puppy farms and not promoting designer dogs.

As a personal friend, I know how wholeheartedly you throw yourself into everything you do. Outside of the writing world, is there an unfulfilled ambition?

Are you giving me three wishes? To be honest I’m living the dream. I have a fabulous literary agent in Caroline Sheldon and I’m with a wonderful publisher, Pan Macmillan. So, outside of the writing world… Hmm I love Cornwall and would really like to move there but it would have to be a very large house so I can run workshops and writing retreats. I can be found most days on Rightmove dreaming over houses in the two million pound bracket. I suppose I’d better write faster!

Links:

The Butlins Girls

Facebook author page

Twitter: @elaineeverest

Thank you for such interesting questions. Xx

I’m delighted, as I’m sure your readers will be, to hear that Woolies will be returning later in the year. In the meantime, very best wishes for The Butlins Girls. I may just have to book a holiday

Retreat to Advance

The title of this blog is not to suggest I am a military tactician but to establish how much progress a writer can make by removing her/himself from the ‘normal’ world.

For this year’s annual writing retreat, Elaine Everest, Elaine Roberts, Francesca Capaldi Burgess and I chose Ramsgate on the Kent coast. For one week we lived and worked in a delightful house overlooking the beach and the harbour. We all had different aims but the ambition of each was to focus on our work away from the distractions of everyday life. There was a level of concentration that was impossible to maintain every waking hour so I make no apology for admitting that we sampled many of the diversions on offer – and the ice-cream was delicious.

I asked each of my companions to tell me about their week.

Elaine Everest

I like to plan what I'll be working on while on a writing retreat. Clear the decks so I'm not working on admin or blogging if at all possible and stick to my writing. This year the sun has been out most days and our lovely four-bedroomed house overlooks the sea. There's a buzz from cafes and the harbour nearby which can make it extremely hard to concentrate on words. Worse still was waiting on news from my publisher with the Nielsen Bookscan results for The Woolworths Girls. Tuesday started with much chewing of fingernails and ended with ice cream and bubbly when I learned The Woolworths Girls was number 15 in the Sunday Times Bestsellers chart. Apart from that I wrote around 2.000 words before moving onto edits for my second book The Butlins Girls. With a fair wind behind me and not too much sun to distract me I should have cleared the track changes and possibly even written another short scene before we head for home on Saturday.

Elaine Roberts

Left to Right
Elaine R, Francesca, Natalie and Elaine E
in Corby's Tearooms

The week before the writing retreat, I made a plan and chapter breakdown of my new novel. In my mind, I thought I’d write around 10,000 words; the final figure was 6,335. No, I am not disappointed; tiredness got the better of me. I lost two days writing, one travelling to the RNA Summer Party, which was great, and the following day. Wine, travelling and lack of sleep did play its part for me.

The week did bring lots of writerly discussions. We celebrated Elaine Everest’s success with excessive ice cream and champagne, not at the same time. An afternoon coming up with book titles caused a lot of laughter as we sat near the marina; we got some funny looks from people sitting close by.

It was a good week of sea and sun, with lots of food and wine, even if my word count was down.

Francesca Capaldi Burgess

View from our balcony

A week away to write, research and edit the second part of my serial for People's Friend was what I was hoping to achieve during our week in Ramsgate. Happily, I can report I managed it. I'm sure I'll do a couple more edits, but it's more or less ready to send off. A retreat is a good way to escape the everyday stresses and have some dedicated writing time. It's also valuable having other writers to hand as you can throw ideas around and get feedback. Not all the ideas are sensible but they are fun! I find that our down time, sharing meals etc, is an important component of the week as it refreshes us and sets us up for the next bout of work.

Natalie Kleinman

For a while there I felt as if I was in no man’s land. I had not yet engaged with my new novel and I was waiting for track changes to arrive from my agent, Lisa Eveleigh. Arrive they did and I set to with a will.

We took a day out to get the train to London for the RNA Summer Party, arriving back at the house in Ramsgate close to midnight. We walked each day, on the promenade, on the beach, inland, exploring this lovely seaside town which I had never before visited. We ate a lot. We drank…some. And we worked!

Edits were resumed. They are time-consuming and require much concentration, but are very rewarding. I still have a lot to do but at least I can now foresee the time (I hope) when my book will be ready to submit to publishers. So let’s return to the title of this post. Retreat to Advance. It is unlikely that I would have achieved as much had I remained at home. Every writing retreat I’ve been to has pushed my work forward, given me the time and space to focus on the job in hand. Though the edits are not finished they are well in advance of where they would have been. So, here’s to next year’s retreat. To more eating, drinking, walking and exploration. And above all, to more writing.

My thanks to Elaine E, Elaine R and Francesca for their contributions.