I'm delighted to welcome Katharine E. Smith to Literascribe today. Katharine runs Heddon Publishing, freelances as an copywriter, editor and proofreader, has two very young children and, oh, has found time to publish two novels as well! Her second novel, Looking Past, has just come out. In this interview we discuss, among other things, the challenges of multi-tasking and a shared love of St Ives.
Welcome to Literascribe, Katharine. As writers we
often struggle with balance – you’re juggling writing, running a business and
looking after small children. Could you discuss the challenges you meet and how
you deal with them in order to keep your writing productivity going?
It’s
definitely a juggling act. I know that’s a real cliché but it’s true. My
children are two and five so really do need immediate attention much of the
time. They have to be my priority and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
However, I have two days a week when my two-year-old is in nursery so those are
my official work days, and I prioritise my paid work for Heddon Publishing and
freelancing during those days. I work
from home and I must admit I relish coming home to an empty house and being
able to get my head down, uninterrupted, for a few hours. I also fit in little
bits here and there, whenever I am able – great for emails, that sort of thing,
but for editing, proofreading and writing I need space, time and solitude.
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| Katherine's covers feature commissioned artwork by Catherine Clarke |
Then
there’s my own writing. This I do in my ‘spare time’ (i.e after children are
asleep, dinner’s been eaten, and when I probably should be in bed). My great
ambition is to get to a point where I am at least partially earning my living
from my books I don’t think it’s likely right now as I simply don’t have enough
time for the amount of marketing and promotion I think is necessary. I have
managed to complete and publish two of my own novels in the last few years,
alongside two pregnancies, and starting two businesses… putting it that way it
appears that good things come in twos for me. Having said that, I hope I’ll be
writing many more than two books (two children and two businesses is about
right though).
As
you can imagine I don’t get a lot of time for housework…
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| The view from The Island, St Ives (copyright Katharine E. Smith) |
I know that
setting is absolutely crucial in my stories and I see you’ve chosen Cornwall as
the location for your first novel and Yorkshire, your home county, for your
second. Which setting has been easier to describe?
I’d
say Cornwall has probably been easier, because it’s the place I feel most drawn
to, and where I’ve actually done a fair bit of my writing. My parents still
live in Yorkshire and I do love it, but there’s just something about Cornwall…
particularly St Ives. I know I’m not alone in feeling as I do about Cornwall
and I just find that when I’m there I feel really alive. I hate saying that as
I think it makes me sound a bit pretentious, or just a bit mad, but it’s the
best way I can describe it. I feel like I’ve got loads of energy and ideas seem
to come to me easily. I’m sure that’s partly just being on holiday but I really
do love being there.
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| The roofscape of St Ives features on the cover |
Writing the Town Read tackles interesting subjects: you have relationship
drama and self-discovery but also powerful social issues – gangs and terrorism.
Did you feel this made the novel cross-genre – or no particular genre? Did this
reinforce your desire to publish it through your own imprint? How did you set
about marketing it?
I
struggle with genres. I always plump for ‘Contemporary Fiction’ or
‘Contemporary Women’s Fiction’ but they are both so general. And also I don’t
really believe my books are solely for a female readership. I suspect that
their subject matter will appeal more to women than men although I’ve had
excellent reviews from an ex-US Marine so I reckon that’s a pretty manly vote
of confidence! Writing the Town Read
comes up in the Mystery and Romance categories on Amazon, neither of which are
quite right though there are elements of both in the book. I got a one star
review from an American reviewer whose only comment was ‘not a clean romance
novel’!
I
did send Writing the Town Read off to
a number of agents and I received some good feedback, particularly from one,
but in the end they thought that my main character, Jamie, wasn’t immediately
appealing enough. That is kind of the point with Jamie – she is a bit annoying
and opinionated but her heart’s in the right place and she does learn
throughout the book that there isn’t always a precise right or wrong.
I
had a growing interest in self-publishing and I was approached during my
maternity leave during 2012 by an author called Michael Clutterbuck, with
regards publishing his book Steaming into
the Firing Line. It’s a book of short stories about the days of steam, and
this became the first Heddon Publishing title. Mike took a chance on me,
allowing me to work on this when opportunity allowed, and the rest is history.
Heddon grew from there and I decided that if I didn’t find a publisher by my
birthday last year I’d add my own book to the Heddon titles – which is what I
did.
In
all honesty I’m still working on the marketing side of things! I really don’t
have a great deal of time for marketing my books, and I wish I did, but I do my
best. I have had the cover re-done this year, by an excellent artist –
Catherine Clarke – who has also done the cover for Looking Past. I think this has really helped, and I had an
excellent result from a free promotion recently but I’m still chasing the
elusive recipe for marketing success.
Do you edit and
proofread your own work, given that’s what you do professionally, or do you ask
someone else to bring a fresh eye to it?
I
do actually do the majority of this work myself. I feel like I should be able
to, given that it’s my profession, however I do also acknowledge that I’m that
bit closer to the work and more likely to miss something. Luckily I have my dad
and mum who are always willing proofreaders and, I’m sure Dad won’t mind my
saying that he can be quite a pedant. I’ve also had a trusty band of beta
readers working on Looking Past, who discovered
an excellent typo – ‘an udderless boat’. Although to be fair, the boat probably
didn’t have udders so it wasn’t strictly untrue.
What do you like
and dislike about being an independent publisher?
I
like the freedom and the flexibility that comes with independent publishing. It
enables anybody and everybody to become published if they wish. I enjoy the way
that authors retain control of their books. For my own books, I get to decide
what goes into, and comes out of, them – and the authors I work with at Heddon
have that control as well. I will always consult authors on major editorial
suggestions and they have the final say.
The
downside, I suppose, is the world of marketing independent books which seems so
vast, and I’m only now really starting to try and find my way around it. Whilst
I make it clear to the authors I work with that I can only do so much with
regards marketing, I would still like to have some more tried and tested
methods which I could share with them, as well as use for my own ends…
What do you most
love about writing?
I
just love writing. That’s not a great answer, is it? But I love sitting down
and knowing roughly what I want to write about then finding all these words and
ideas flowing onto the page/screen, which seem almost to come from nowhere.
It’s
exciting and I just really enjoy it. I do like a bit of peace and quiet and
losing myself in my writing – so I can get a bit grumpy if interrupted. Writing
can be a good way of venting frustration. I’m getting better at expressing
myself verbally but writing always had the upper hand for me. There is more
time to think about what you are writing, whereas speech is immediate and
usually spur-of-the-moment, and it can easily come out wrong. There is usually
more time with writing to get it right.
What’s your favourite
piece of advice for writers – or your favourite quotation about writing?
OK,
I didn’t have a favourite quote prior to this but I’ll be honest and say I
Googled ‘quotes about writing’ and unsurprisingly there are a lot of good ones!
I’m going to use this one because I read her book when I was at primary school
and I reference it in Looking Past –
and I think she is someone who wrote for the best reasons, and whose writing
will, I hope, always provide meaning and food for thought for us all.
Thanks
so much for agreeing to be interviewed on Literascribe, Katharine, and good luck with all your writing and publishing activities!
LINKS:
Writing the Town Read
Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00C2QQK2C
Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C2QQK2C
Looking Past
Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00PHU71RS
Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PHU71RS
Katharine's blog, Jumping off the Page: http://www.katharineesmith.com
Heddon Publishing website: http://www.heddonpublishing.com
I totally echo what Katharine has said about St Ives - and bookings are now open for my next Fictionfire by the Sea Writers' Workshop and Retreat in April. If you're keen to recharge your creative batteries in Cornwall, visit www.fictionfire.co.uk/page28.htm to find out more!
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