Sally Quilford's Blog

  Five Years Later   It’s been a long time since I blogged. On my last post, I wrote about how my husband, Den, was undergoing treatment for cancer. As you can imagine, fighting that consumed our lives at the time, and whilst I shared a lot with friends on Facebook, I didn’t blog about it. What followed his diagnosis in May 2016 were probably the worst eighteen months of my life. Sadly, despite continuing treatment and his own bravery and determination, I lost the love of my life on 18 th December 2017. Although we lost him a week before Christmas, we vowed to have the big family Christmas lunch he would have loved, and we laughed and smiled for my grandchildren. We said our final goodbyes to him on 4 th January 2018, where I had Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You , and her duet with Kenny Rogers, Islands in the Stream , played at his funeral. He adored Dolly, so it was my way of telling him that she sang for both of us. The crematorium was packed and in lieu of flo...

Sorry I've ignored the blog for so long. As you all saw in my last post, we've been battling with Den's cancer. Three weeks ago he finished a course of radiotherapy, and since then it's been a bit up and down. He has started eating solids again, which is a good thing, but unfortunately he still has days when he can't keep anything down. We see the doctor again next week (on my birthday of all days), to discuss further options, including chemotherapy. But at the moment we're taking the view that he's still here, he's still functioning fairly well, so we're not ready to give up just yet. We know he can't be cured, but we can work on keeping him here for as long as possible. It's a bit 'one step forward/two steps back' around here, but we keep on going and are trying our best to carry on as normal (whatever normal is). With this in mind, I've signed up to do an MA in Creative Writing with the Open University, which starts in Oc...

It seems that my joy at sorting out my own health was to be short lived. I had only just been declared fit when we learned that my husband, Den, has Oesophageal Cancer. He'd had problems swallowing for some time, but refused to go to the doctors until I was sorted out. You can imagine how guilty I feel at the moment, though I've been assured that these things don't happen overnight and it's something he'd have had for a long time before symptoms appeared. We've known about it for a week or two, and I have mentioned it on Facebook, but things have moved so fast, I haven't had a chance to share the news here. I now feel it's time to share it with those of you who perhaps aren't on FB. Den has to have more tests, as they now fear the cancer has spread to his lymph nodes. I Googled that, and wished I hadn't... As you can imagine, it's a very difficult time for us and it isn't over yet. Den is a fighter. Fifteen years ago, he survived an...

<br /> I am delighted to announce that The Secret of Lakeham Abbey  is now published and available to buy.  You can order it from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Smashwords using the widgets above. There is also be a launch party on Facebook, where I promise to bring Chocolate flavoured prizes, but you'll have to work for them as I have some dastardly questions planned! I will also be appearing on some blogs, and into June, so watch this space for news.   1948 When Percy Sullivan’s family take over Lakeham Abbey for the summer, it was a chance to get away from battered post-war London and be cossetted by the capable and pretty housekeeper, Anne Pargeter. They soon learn that the Abbey conceals a dark secret; one that someone was willing to kill to hide. When Anne is convicted of murder and sentenced to execution, Percy is determine...

Some of you may know that I've had a bit of a problem with my tummy for quite a few years. There was a lump above my belly button that just kept getting bigger and bigger. Of course, my first thought was cancer. Isn't that the way we all think? It wasn't. I was first told it was a divaricated rectus muscle, and that it was not hospital policy to operate on them as they weren't life threatening.  It wasn't exactly life-enhancing either! But I couldn't argue, as it was the policy. I know I'm a big girl anyway, but it made me feel a bit freakish having this lump sticking out. Especially in the last couple of years when it got bigger still. The only positive was that I always got a seat on the tube as people assumed I was pregnant. I didn't disabuse them on the notion and was always rather flattered that they thought I was still young enough.  Luckily Fashionworld do a nice line in tents so I stocked up on those... It didn't only look awful. It was u...

To those who have only known me in latter years, it probably seems that I’m all about the pocket novels. This is not entirely untrue. I’ve been writing them since 2008, when I penned The Secret of Helena’s Bay and tentatively sent it to Maggie Swinburne (nee Seed) at My Weekly Pocket Novels. I now have over 20 under my belt (not all published by DC Thomson, but all published by Ulverscroft in Large Print), and I have to say it’s my first love. However, I started off writing short stories (actually I started writing fanfiction, but that’s for another day and is not about original work), and had some success in women’s magazines, with over 60 stories published. That took some time though, and I remember receiving 9 rejections in one day from one magazine. Ouch. I did okay, but never as well as my more talented story writing friends. I know I did much better when I was in the fantastic Story a Fortnight Group and learned so much from those talented friends. You can see our joi...

I like a nuanced ending to stories as much as the next person. I’m an intelligent woman so I know that there isn’t always a ‘somewhere over the rainbow’. Neither in real life nor in fiction. Yet nowhere are happy endings more vilified than in romantic fiction. A fellow romance writer recently linked to a review of her novel, which, quite apart from suggesting my colleague was ‘frittering’ away her talents writing romance (talk about damning with faint praise!), also dismissed happy endings in romance, as ‘boring as hell’ (I won’t link to the review as I suspect there’s some subtle trolling going on). As many other romance writers pointed out, no one complains when Poirot gets the killer the end of an Agatha Christie novel. Okay, someone is dead, and others have probably died too. But for the purposes of the sleuth having solved the riddle, it is, to all intents and purposes, a happy ending. The bad guy/girl is punished and the worthy get their reward (usually the fortune ...

I'm delighted to announce two new releases on Amazon Kindle today. <br /> Big Girls Don't Cry is the 3rd instalment of my Bobbie Blandford series, telling the tale of a 60s policewoman. The novel was published as Big Boys Don't Cry by My Weekly Pocket Novel, but I've decided to go with my original title for the Kindle Version. Loosely inspired by the Great Train Robbery, Big Girls Don't Cry sees Bobbie face a criminal gang and prejudice in 1960s Derbyshire. <br /> Eye of The Storm is set in Egypt, and inspired by the Saturday Matinees I used to love as a child (and also a little by Indiana Jones!). Nadine Middleton joins Countess Chlomsky (who has appeared in two previous novels as Mrs Oakengate) as a companion, but she has other fish to fry. She intends to find the mythical Eye of the Storm, a jewel that will clear her father's name. But she first has to deal with Lancaster Smith, a sexy archaeologist w...

A writer friend sent me a message the other day, asking my advice on how to dispense with her heroine’s absent husband. Should she kill him or just send him off to another country? It set me thinking of the tricky business of dispensing with the ex-boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse in romantic fiction. Jane Austen and Barbara Cartland had it much easier as their heroines were always unmarried maidens who usually fell in love with the first truly handsome man they met so didn’t have to be written out of a bad relationship. There might be a false love interest, such as Wickham in Pride and Prejudice, but there was no romantic relationship to speak of. It’s an unwritten rule that where there is an ex involved, either for the hero or heroine, it must be the ex’s fault that the relationship ended. In the past it was also required that the dead spouse of a heroine/hero had to be less perfect than the new lover, though thankfully that’s not the case anymore. One thing I love about Kate W...

Orson Welles as Mr Rochester The tortured hero is the staple of romantic novels. Mr Darcy, perhaps a mild version of the tortured hero, felt awkward in public situations, giving Lizzie Bennett the idea he was a bit of a dry stick (I still find him a bit of a prig, I’m afraid). Mr Rochester (my personal favourite) was tortured by an ill-conceived marriage to a woman who turned out to be insane. But it seems to me that there is a worrying trend amongst romance writers to create heroes who are not just tortured, but who, as a result, torture others, particularly the heroine. I don’t necessarily mean physical torture, unless we’re talking Fifty Shades, but certainly emotional torture. Christian Grey is the epitome of this type of hero, with his emotional abuse of Ana Steele. I’m told, though I have no personal knowledge of this, that American readers in particular will forgive a hero anything as long as he turns out to be a nice guy at the end. Because we all know that in...

© Marilyn Barbone | Dreamstime Stock Photos I have touched on this subject before, in relation to conflict within a romance. But I thought it was a topic worth visiting in depth. It is a tendency of newer writers – myself included way back when – to give their hero and heroine rather convoluted and angst-ridden back stories. It is, after all, how we gain sympathy for them and get the reader on their side. Even now I will often make my heroines orphans just because it's a quick way to establish her need to love and be loved. In Dickens times, such angst was the staple of the novels he wrote in serial form. Poor little Oliver Twist was born in a workhouse, treated abominably by the people who were supposed to care for him, and then walked all the way to London alone, before being taken up by Fagin and his gang and terrorised by Mr Monk and Bill Sykes. He had a lot of angst to go through before he found his happy ending. Despite that, Dickens managed to include humour an...

© John Siebert | Dreamstime Stock Photos The language of love in romance novels is important in order to set the scene. It has also changed much over the years. Gone are the flowery purple passages of Barbara Cartland novels, where heroines swooned and ‘touched the stars’, or whatever other euphemism Barbara used to describe an orgasm. Love scenes now use more realistic language, sometimes explicit, sometimes not, depending on the market and intended readership. But I’m struck by how some authors get it completely wrong. A  Facebook friend recently pointed out the blurb of a novel which describes the heroine’s ‘sexy snort’. Even in the film Miss Congeniality , Sandra Bullock’s snort is shown to be an unattractive aspect of her behaviour. Though with Sandra Bullock being so beautiful, I think most men would probably forgive that! But such a snort cannot be described as sexy. At least not with a straight face… I have also read novels where the designated hero ‘leers’ at...

I’m only just getting my breath back after an action packed November. You’ll be able to read about some of it on the RNA blog soon as I tell Elaine Everest all that goes into arranging the RNA Parties. So to my big news regarding my writing. I had two acceptances in November. One was from exciting and well-respected publisher, Crooked Cat , who have accepted my crime novel, The Secret of Lakeham Abbey . It is an unofficial sequel to The Dark Marshes, but set about a hundred years later, just after World War II. It will be published some time in 2016 so more details when I have them. I also had another acceptance from the wonderful Maggie Swinburne at My Weekly Pocket Novels for what Maggie calls an ‘epic yarn’, Eye of the Storm , which is set in Egypt at the dawn of World War II (yes, I know I obviously have a thing about World War II...) and inspired partly by the Saturday matinees I used to watch at the pictures as a child and partly by the Indiana Jones films (with a hero c...

Hello folks. I really ought to keep this blog updated more often, so this is my attempt to do that. I don't normally write about my day to day life on my blog, as I'm mindful that I owe privacy to others in my life. But I figure I can keep everyone updated more regularly as long as I don't get too personal about others. Since 9th August I have been on a healthy eating plan as I need to lose 3 stone so that I can have an operation on my hernia. Those who have met me in the past year or so will have seen it, as it sticks out a mile (not quite literally, but it can feel like it at times). Sometimes people think I'm pregnant, which is quite flattering, considering my baby-making days are long since gone. However, as I tend not to disabuse people of the notion, it does get me a seat on the tube whenever I'm in London. For me the lump just brings to mind John Hurt in Alien, lying back on the table as his stomach explodes... It looks awful (to me) and I have to w...

This post has been inspired by the recent release of Grey, the latest blatant money-spinner, sorry, novel, from E.L. James. The novel tells the story of the original Fifty Shades of Grey, but this time from Christian’s point of view, not Ana’s. My first question when I heard this was why is Stephanie Meyer not suing? She did exactly the same with Twilight, from Edward Cullen’s point of view. That novel was stolen and leaked online, so Meyer didn’t publish it after all. Wouldn’t you know that just days before Grey was released, that too was ‘stolen’. I’ve had fun reading some of the reviews of Grey on Amazon and elsewhere. It’s definitely a Marmite type of book that people either love or hate. There’s very little middle ground. I’m not going to rubbish the book here (much…). I’m only going to talk about it from a craft point of view. One of the biggest criticisms is that the book is basically a cut and paste job of the first   novel in the series. Actually basically is ...

Originally posted on the Pocketeers blog. When I presented a workshop for the lovely Write Place Writing School at the beginning of November, I touched briefly on ‘writing in the now’ and wanted to explore that point further. As it wouldn’t be fair to share my students’ idea I have come up with a scenario to explain what I mean. Annie and James meet in university when they join the same band, with Annie as the lead singer and James as the lead guitarist/singer. They are each other’s first love, but at the end of university life they go their separate ways because James decides to move to America to pursue his musical career. Ten years later they meet up again, and James is a huge star, whilst Annie is a backing singer, working to keep a roof over her and her young son’s head. Annie is still hurt that James left her and thought his career more important than their love and she is also angry that he stole the song that they wrote together and which became his biggest hit. S...