C.L. Taylor

It’s 3rd March and in one month and one day the hardback (and ebook and audio book) of Sleep will be published. My editor Helen recently asked me how I was feeling and I said, ‘surprisingly calm’. Surprisingly because I’m normally extremely nervy before a book comes out. I don’t know if it’s because a month is still a relatively long time, if I’m too busy with book seven to give it much thought, too tired from being ill and then my son being ill, or if I’ve managed to achieve some kind of elusive author zen. No, it’s definitely not the latter but it is down to a combination of the first three. I imagine my nerves will kick in right around the time I receive a box of hardbacks and it all starts to feel real.

One thing that IS making me nervous is the thought of several upcoming flights. I used to be absolutely fine with flying but ever since my son was born I dread getting on a plane and have even been to see a therapist to get a relaxation mp3 to listen to while the plane is taxing on the runway (the book Fear of Flying helped a bit too – I have an image in my head of the air supporting the plane being as thick as jelly) . Anyway, I refuse to let my fear of flying stop me from saying yes to cool stuff and in this case it’s teaching a masterclass for Aye Write festival in Glasgow followed by a Bloody Islands panel with Anna Mazzola and Douglas Skelton (and a signing afterwards) . The MasterClass has sold out but you can still get tickets to the panel here. The other cool thing that involves flying is my first ever foreign publisher event – a crime festival in Denmark in April. Thank you Jentas.

2019 marks ten years since my first book was published and it’s a year of a lot of firsts – first foreign publisher event, first hardback and first book tour. I am genuinely very excited that I get to travel around the country (a small part of the country) chatting to fellow authors about our books, the writing process and the trials and tribulations of publishing. Here’s where I’m visiting:

Monday 8th April – LIVERPOOL, Waterstones Liverpool with Luca Veste. 18:30. Tickets available from Waterstones

Tuesday 9th April – BIRMINGHAM, Waterstones Birmingham with Gillian McAllister. 18:30 start. Tickets available from Waterstones

Wednesday 10th April – NOTTINGHAM, Waterstones Nottingham with Fiona Cummins. Time 18:30 start. Tickets available from Waterstones

Friday 12th April – BRISTOL, Foyles Bristol with Emily Koch. 19.30-21.00. Tickets available from Eventbrite

Saturday 13th April – CARDIFF, Waterstones Cardiff with Emma Kavanagh. 18.30. More information here. Please contact the store directly to reserve your seat. Call: 029 2066 5606 Email: cardiff@waterstones.com

Sorry if I’m not visiting a city near you. With any luck we’ll visit a few more places in September when the paperback comes out. If we do I’ll post about it here.

If you’re desperate to get your hands on a signed copy of Sleep, personalised to you, now you can! I’ve teamed up with independent bookshop Max Minerva’s Marvellous Books to offer signed, personalised copies of my books. To order order one just follow the instructions on the website then I’ll pop in to sign the book to you and Jessica will send it out.

And if you’ve ordered your copy elsewhere and want it signed do not fear because I’m offering a signed bookplate (with two signed bookmarks) to the first 100 people who email CLTaylorAuthor@gmail.com with a copy of their receipt for the hardback of Sleep.

Talking of independent bookshops, back in January I attended the HarperCollins Independent bookshop event and gave a talk where I showed the booksellers the first book I sent to a publisher (Ladybird books) aged eight and the rejection letter I subsequently received. It was a lovely evening and it was so nice to talk to so many people who are genuinely excited and enthusiastic about books.

In February I got to meet an audience that was equally as enthusiastic – about young adult fiction. There’s been a lot reported in the media about the dire state of the YA market and how sales have drastically fallen off. There’s no denying the figures and a lot of YA authors are leaving the genre to write adult fiction (which can offer a much healthier advance) and that makes me sad, not just for the authors who love their genre and just want to make a living, but also the fans of their books. Anyway, the room was PACKED for my event with Karen McManus, Emily Barr and Katherine Webber and that makes me hopeful that the audience for YA is still out there and publishers just need to find better ways to reach them.

I hope they do because this year I am putting the finishing touches to my second YA thriller and delivering it to my editor. I recently thrashed out a schedule for delivering my seventh psychological thriller to Avon and my second YA thriller to HQ and basically I’m working flat out between now and December (I have managed to claw a two week holiday in August between structural edits and line edits).

Book seven is going well *touches wood* or as well as it can when I am writing and I am not exactly sure what happens at the climax of the book or what the twist is. But I’m trying not to let that worry me too much. I didn’t know what the twists were in The Fear or Sleep were either until I got very close to the end and when I reached the end of the second YA thriller I decided to ditch the ending I’d had in mind and go in a completely different direction instead (which is why I need to write a second draft before delivering it to my editor). It’s a scary way of working but exhilarating too because I get to be as surprised as the reader.

I’m doing something a bit different with this book – it’s a three hander like The Fear but unlike The Fear there’s no main character and it’s all written in the third person. I SO enjoyed writing in the third person (for Wendy and Chloe) and it’s a refreshing change after writing six books in a row with at least one character in the first person present tense. Whether my agent and editor think it works may be a different matter but I can’t think about that now (that’s what structural edits are for!)

For the first time I’ve documented the planning phase of this novel – how I get from the initial idea to a rough road map. Check out Part 1 and Part 2 on my YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/c/CLTaylorAuthor and do subscribe to see future updates.

So that’s it from me. Do book tickets to the Waterstones events if you live locally, it would be lovely to meet you (I am also doing events in Woking and Stockton this year – check out my events page for details). And don’t forget to place an order with Max Minerva’s if you’d like a signed, personalised copy of Sleep.

Signed and personalised hardbacks of Sleep 
Only available from Max Minerva’s Marvelous Books in Bristol (postage available)

Unsigned hardbacks, ebooks and audiobooks
Pre-order from Amazon.co.uk
Pre-Order from Hive.co.uk
Pre-order from Waterstones
Pre-order from Audible (narrator: Clare Corbett) 
Pre-order from iBooks
Pre-order from Kobo 
Pre-order from Google play

It’s publication day for THE FEAR and I couldn’t be more proud of this book. I’ll freely admit that I struggle with endings – I find them the hardest part of a book to get right – but something almost miraculous happened as I was writing the first draft of THE FEAR and I suddenly realised how to tie all the threads of the story together as I hit 85,000 words. I’m also proud of this book because, as a Goodreads reader said, it isn’t just about a dark and disturbing crime it’s also about sisterhood and strong women. If THE LIE was about women turning against each other THE FEAR is about women discovering their lives share a common thread and…well, that would be giving too much away.

My publisher, Avon HarperCollins, commissioned the most amazing book trailer for THE FEAR and I’m thrilled to be able to share it with you now. Make sure you have the sound on to experience the full, spooky effect!

And here’s a video of me reading the first chapter (how funny is that freeze frame?!):

As for the ‘tattoo’ in the title of this post. Well, here it is (when it was still a work in progress).

If you bought my first book, THE ACCIDENT, you might recognise it. It’s the illustration from the front cover of the original version. That’s not my leg by the way! Whose leg is it and how does it tie in with THE FEAR? Well you’ll have to buy a copy and read the dedication and acknowledgements to find out!

I’ll be spending publication day writing the first draft of the next novel (28,000 words in and counting) and taking my son to karate grading (which is somewhat ironic given the storyline of THE FEAR…). Tomorrow though should be a much more relaxing day. I’ve got a hair appointment in the morning and my first book launch in nine years (mostly out of choice) in the evening. I’m very excited about celebrating the launch of this books with friends and family. A huge thank you to everyone who’s trekking to Bristol to raise a glass with me.

If you live in the UK you can order your ebook copy of THE FEAR from:

Amazon.co.uk

Google Play

iBooks

Kobo

And the paperback from:

Amazon.co.uk

Waterstones

WH Smith

You can also buy paperbacks from the following supermarkets: Tesco, Sainsbury (where it’s just £2.99 for the first two weeks after publication), Morrison, Waitrose and ASDA. It’s also available in WH Smith Travel and High Street and most branches of Waterstones . Select independent book shops also stock copies and if they don’t have it to hand they’ll definitely be able to order it for you.

If you live outside of the UK and The Fear is not available in your country you can buy it from the The Book Depository (free worldwide shipping).

Earlier this year I was invited to the Specsavers Nielsen Bestseller Awards to receive two silver awards for The Acccident and The Lie (for sales of over 250,000 copies).

It was SUCH a glamorous affair. The wonderful Mariella Frostrop was the MC and so many amazing authors were honoured with awards including Paula Hawkins, Maggie O’Farrell (I had a bit of a fan girl moment when I realised I was standing behind her in the queue), Peter James, Phillipa Gregory, Dougie and Tom from McFly, Jill Mansell, Clare Mackintosh and so many more. It really was a ‘pinch me’ moment and one of the most magical nights of my career.

Here’s a selection of photos from the official website and by my friend Rowan Coleman who came with me,

And here’s a video of me being interviewed after I received my awards (terrible freeze-frame!).

Not long now until THE FEAR is published (22nd March). I have been so chuffed with the reaction from authors and readers who’ve received advance proofs and am excited and nervous about the book coming out.

I’ve just started writing my sixth psychological thriller and life is becoming increasingly hectic as I try and balance writing the first draft with  posts for the blog tour, articles for magazines and websites, and answering Q&As. I need more hours in the day.

Plotting a novel: if all else fails – draw little stick men and women to try and make sense of your idea. It works for me (sometimes).

It’s a question that comes up in interviews a lot:

‘What inspired your novel?’

It’s always a difficult question to answer, not least because it’s normally at least 12 months since I wrote the book and 18 months since the first spark of an idea.

The more novels I write the more I realise how much an idea twists, squirms and transforms after the initial spark. THE MISSING was originally going to be about two boys who run away in different circumstances and their stories intersect when boy 2 finds the dead body of boy 1. Why didn’t I go with that idea? I honestly can’t remember. It’s that squirming thing I mentioned at the start of this paragraph. An idea is a bit like a piece of plasticine. It appears to be to be a certain shape but when you try to find out more about it – when you prod it a bit – it changes shape.

I am currently prodding an idea for my sixth psychological thriller (to be published in March 2019). The initial spark was an eight word sentence in an email of three or four different premises I ran by my agent. Maddy liked it. More than that she got excited by it, so did my editor, but it wasn’t really an idea. It was a setting. Over the last month or so I have been mulling it over in my head. I’ve got the setting but what’s the plot? Who are the characters? What’s the twist?

I’ve swung, pendulum-like, between different possibilities – some clichés, some tired, some ridiculously OTT. I’ve felt lost, panicked and frustrated. What is this book? What is it that I am trying to say?

In a recent newsletter to members of the C.L. Taylor Book Club I admitted that an author often doesn’t know what inspired a novel until years after it’s published. Hindsight allows you to draw parallels between your novels and your life – parallels you couldn’t see at the time because you were too enmeshed in the day to day.

That doesn’t help me now as I try to pull together the threads of a story to create something that will hopefully be gripping, addictive, unpredictable and original with characters that are fascinating, flawed and three dimensional. I don’t mind admitting that I’ve been struggling. Each time I prod this idea it changes into a new shape or else shoots across the room and completely evades me. But I love this stage of the process. It might be frustrating and terrifying but when all the pieces start to fall into place (to continue the analogy – the plasticine begins to take form rather than looking like an amorphous blob) there’s no feeling quite as thrilling.

And I might just have a had a little break through yesterday…

(Thank God)

Before I go – if you haven’t read THE TREATMENT or THE ESCAPE they are currently just 99p across all ebook platforms. But not for long.

Also, THE FEAR has had some amazing reviews from my fellow authors. Check them out here.