Sue Watson
is my guest blogger today. She should be celebrating as her second novel is out
now. But I want to ask Sue about her first which had the wonderful title of Fat Girls and Fairy Cakes.
Can you tell us a little bit about Fat Girls…?
Yes, it’s a
novel about weight, motherhood, friendship telly and cake – all the stuff that
fills my life! Whilst working as a TV producer I’d often jot down funny,
overheard dialogue. I’d make notes and compose whole chapters in my head, but
it wasn’t until I left the BBC that I began to put notes and dialogue together.
Sitting, with
a blank page, at my kitchen table it really hit me how tough this was going to
be. However, as difficult as it was to write a novel from scratch, it was the
easy bit compared to getting published. The feeling of rejection, heartbreak
and sheer exhaustion that goes with finding a publisher was the hardest part.
Eventually I did find a publisher and today my second book comes out – can’t
believe I’ve done it again.
Wasn’t there originally a problem
with that first title?
Yes it just
came to me one day, funnily enough while I was eating cakes with some curvy
friends. But I did a straw poll and no-one liked the word ‘Fat’, my agent said
it wouldn’t sell books and my curvy friends said they would feel self-conscious
holding a book with fat written on - like a label! I desperately wanted to keep
the fat but it was changed, for a while, to Telly
Tarts and Fairy Cakes. My husband came up with that title - he works in TV
too and said radio staff often refer to people who work in TV as ‘Telly Tarts’.
However, later in the tortuous process of finding a publisher, I decided to claim
my original title and wear the word fat (literally in my case) with pride. I
thought it would stand out and as it sells so well on e-book, I guess those
beach beauties don’t have to wear the word ‘Fat’ across their tummies now as
they read it on their kindles!
And now we have Younger, Thinner, Blonder to look forward to reading. Another great
title. What is this one about?
It’s another
romantic comedy in a similar vein to Fat Girls but with a totally different
heroine. This time I wanted a challenge. I wanted to write about someone who
was totally opposite to me and Stella my first heroine. So my new heroine, TV
celebrity Tanya Travis is very slim and obsessively tidy. We meet Tanya just as
her perfect celebrity life is beginning to fall apart at the seams. She’s
constantly reading stories about her own life, her boyfriend’s apparent
cheating, and the public are only nice when she agrees to say cheese into their
cameras. Everything she does is up for scrutiny. Within seconds it’s online,
tweeted and Facebooked. But when Tanya tells a white lie to Hello – things
really start to go rapidly downhill. And with her career, relationship and
designer kitchen at stake, Tanya may have to agree to star in reality show,
‘Celebrity Spa Trek,’ with all the other has-been Z-listers.
I’ve heard many authors say that
their second book was more difficult to write than the first. Did you find
this?
Agony. You
go through a stage (I did) where you wonder if you can ever really write again.
They say everyone’s got a book in them, but you torture yourself wondering if
that was it – just one book? However, once I forced myself to sit down, stop
procrastinating with cake and face those writing demons, I suddenly knew
exactly where it was going. I loved writing Younger,
Thinner, Blonder, and I’m now grieving for the characters I’ve spent the
last eighteen months with. It’s like saying goodbye to a group of lovely
friends. I miss them.
Does your new title, actually do
either of them, reflect you or your desires?
That’s a
very good question. I wrote Fat Girls and
Fairy Cakes because I love cake but struggle with a weight problem – I also
like alliteration. While writing Fat
Girls... I put on two stone through no fault of my own (honest!). I selflessly
sampled those fairy cakes with no thought for myself, only my readers. Every
day was a new ordeal as a fresh batch of warm cakes were produced from the oven
for me to test... and you can never get the waft of warm vanilla from your clothes you know. Finally, after all the
sweat and tears and tasting, I had a complete collection of recipes to share in
the book. And, as a result of this deep and relentless research I’m still
wearing the coffee cakes and chocolate chilli cha chas around my middle.
I thought
that perhaps writing a book with a younger, thinner and blonder title might
help me lose the weight and look younger - it didn’t! I’m still struggling with my weight and on the
wrong side of forty I reckon it may have been more accurate for the title to
be, ‘Older, Fatter, Darker.’
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