Hello Rachel, thank you for joining us. We’re delighted to be part of your blog tour. Your new novel is called Stranger Child. What’s it about and what inspired it?
If I had to find one word which sums up what Stranger Child is about, it would have to be revenge – but that nowhere near covers it.
Emma Jacobs met David – now her husband – several years ago, but they lost touch when she went to Australia. When she came back, she was horrified to learn that David’s first wife had been killed in a car accident, and his six-year-old daughter had disappeared from the scene. Now, six years later, Emma and David have put the past behind them and are happily married with a new baby, Ollie.
And then a stranger walks into their lives, and their world falls apart.
Emma discovers things about her own past that shock her, and when she contacts her old friend DCI Tom Douglas for help, their pursuit of the truth sets in motion a series of terrifying events that neither of them could have imagined.
Emotions run high in this book, and each of the main characters has to face a dilemma that nobody should ever have to deal with.
Can you tell us a little about your route to publication?
I am extremely fortunate in having an amazing agent who really looks after me well. I start with an idea of the story and the characters, and I send it to her. She mulls it over and comes back with the things she likes and the things she hates, and somehow or other we knock the outline into shape.
And then I write. I do nothing else – just sit at my desk and write. I love it, but the first draft is always pretty dire. However, it creates the framework, and from there I can go back and work out the detail.
When I’m happy, it goes for first edit – and I know that there will be lots of changes to be made. These are structural – sometimes quite major – but always good. There are a couple of rounds with the editors, and then it goes to line edit where we argue about the detail. Is this sentence necessary? Would we lose anything if we chopped out this paragraph? Then finally the copy edit – when I’m always surprised at the little details that I’ve missed.
We have Advance Review Copies prepared in paperback – this is something we have started with Stranger Child – and my publicists send out copies to anybody who is keen to review the book.
And as an independent author, I also have to think about the marketing, the cover, the blurb – it’s very much a full time job at every stage.
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