Today I have the pleasure of handing my blog over to the lovely Colette McCormick.
Colette is the author of ‘Things I Should Have Said and Done‘, published by Accent Press this month (November 2016)
Colette has written a wonderful piece for us entitled ‘No Regrets’
I do hope you enjoy…
NO REGRETS
I’ve been writing “stories” almost all of my life (a long time) but it’s something that I kept a secret from most people so the fact that I was having a book published came as a shock because next to no-one knew that I had written one.
However, once they had got over that shock they usually had a couple of questions. Number one, what’s it about?
And number two, where did you get the idea?
In answer to the first question I usually gave them a brief outline and told them that they would have to read it to find out the rest but as far as the second one is concerned, I think they were generally disappointed by the answer.
I sometimes wondered if they believed me when I said it all started after a phone conversation with my husband.
Once upon a time my job would sometimes take me away from home and it was on one of those occasions that I rang home to see how everyone was. My husband told me that they were fine and I think he might have told me what he’d made for tea before he added, “We don’t need you.”
I wasn’t the least bit offended by the comment because I knew it was a joke. We have been married a long time and I’m used to his weird sense of humour.
But that comment got me thinking. How would they manage if I never came home?
That may have been the moment that “Things I Should Have Said and Done” was conceived, but it would be a long time before it was born. I am not a full time writer and when I was writing this I wasn’t even a part time writer, writing was my hobby, something that I did for fun. That’s not to say that I didn’t want to get it published but writing wasn’t my main priority and it was probably about three years before I wrote the final sentence.
I spent a year or so after that tweaking it here and there and sending it to various publishers and agents but without any success and I started to think that it wouldn’t happen for me.
Then in the early summer of 2013 without warning my kidneys failed and I found myself in hospital for seven weeks.
That gives a person a lot of time to think and as I lay in my bed in ICCU, while I honestly always thought that I could beat the disease that had put me there, if I didn’t…would I have any regrets?
I knew that I would have one and that would be that I had never fulfilled my childhood dream of having a book published. I didn’t want to die with regrets.
It would be almost a year before I was recovered enough to think about writing.
I looked at my manuscript again and started to write, or should I say, I started to rewrite.
I enjoyed the book and I thought other people would too so I took on board the comments I had received from those I had sent it to previously, rewrote some sections and sent it out again.
In February 2015 I submitted it to Accent Press and seven months later I was offered a three book contract.
When “Things I Should Have Said and Done” is published on 15th November 2016 my childhood dream will have come true.
Better late than never.’
Thank you so much Colette for this wonderful post. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
To find out more about Colette you will find her blogging at:
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Book Blurb:
Ellen never knew what hit her.
But when a drunk driver runs a red light her life is over in an instant. Her small daughter survives – and Ellen, hovering in the borderland between life and the afterlife, can only watch as her loved ones try to pick up the pieces without her. Her husband Marc, struggling with being a single parent. Naomi, her little girl, blaming her mother for leaving her. And Ellen’s mother, full of guilt, slowly falling apart.
Ellen isn’t ready to let go. She doesn’t want to say goodbye. She is confused, angry and hurting for her family and herself. And that’s where George comes in. He is her guide through her confusion as she witnesses the devastation among the living.
With George at her side Ellen learns that even though she is dead she is not helpless. There are things that she can do from beyond the grave to influence what happens in the world she left behind. But George is new to his ‘job’, and has issues of his own. A working arrangement starts to become something neither of them expects.
It is only after death that life can be fully understood.
Purchase Link :Things I Should Have Said and Done
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