Once upon a time: Meet authors Mike Gayle and Miranda Dickinson

They say that everyone has a book in them. But what do you do if you have the idea for a potential bestseller but don’t know what to do next?

Quinton-born author Mike Gayle doesn’t mind admitting that the first draft of his hugely successful debut novel My Legendary Girlfriend was ‘terrible’.

“Characters would change their name in the middle of the sentence and there were plot holes you could drive articulated lorries through,” he tells Weekend.

But a desire to tell his story and his determination to see the process through to the end meant he didn’t give up. “It had a beginning, middle and an end so I could see it was a complete novel in that sense and each time I re-wrote it, it got better,” says Mike.

It had been a long-held dream by Mike to one day have a book published.

After graduating from Salford University with a degree in sociology Mike moved to London with ambitions of becoming a music journalist but instead ended up as agony uncle for teenage girls’ magazines Just Seventeen and Bliss.

“I was having a whale of a time but what I really wanted to do was to write a novel.

“But I knew nothing about the book publishing world because it’s a world that unless you’re part of it, it’s all a bit of a mystery. I was still living in London but I wanted to move back to Birmingham but I was thinking how could I be a writer and live outside of London?

“When I first moved to London I had started writing a novel, I had put down about 30,000 words before I put it in a drawer and left it.

“I picked it up again after I left Just Seventeen and moved back to my parents. I began freelancing for magazines like Cosmopolitan and Top of the Pops. I decided to finish my book,” explains the 47-year-old.

“The first draft was awful but it was at least something I could work with. I gave it to friends to read and critique. Using their feedback, I re-wrote it some more. Only when I was happy that it was as good as it could be did I send it out to three literary agents. I got their names out of the Writers’ And Artists Yearbook, they were three I had vaguely heard of.

“I waited several months and got the first rejection letter then that was followed by another. But the last agent wanted to see the rest of the novel. They said ‘we really like it but we don’t think it’s going to work and here are a long list of reasons why’.

“I took it on board, re-wrote it and they took me on. They gave me another long list of things that were wrong and we worked on that for the three months.

“In October 1997, it was sent to seven publishers on a Friday. By the Monday there were two offers on the table and it ended up going to auction – I’ve been a full-time author ever since.

“It sounds ridiculously easy when I tell it like that but a lot of hard work went in to it and I learned a lot about the process in a short amount of time,” Mike tells us. My Legendary Girlfriend entered The Guardian’s original fiction list at number two, and later on the paperback publication, entered The Sunday Times top 10 bestseller list.

Now he’s the author of 12 novels including Mr Commitment, Turning Thirty and Wish You Were Here and his books have been translated into more than 30 languages. While his most recent book The Man I Think I Know was selected for new ITV show Zoe Ball’s Book Club.

Much of his inspiration comes from his own experiences, what’s going on around him and from thinking about different situations.

“My Legendary Girlfriend came in part from my move to London but also lovelorn tales from friends. My most recent novel, The Man I Think I Know, emerged while I was taking my daughter to look at secondary schools and I kept meeting parents who were frantic with worry about which school their child would end up at,” explains Mike.

Keen to share the knowledge he has gained during his career, he agreed to teach a new novel writing course which will start in September at The Wellington on Bennetts Hill, Birmingham.

He has teamed up with Brighton-based Rufus Purdy who is the director of Write Here. . . and for six years worked as an editor at the Curtis Brown literary agency.

The 12-week course will offers budding authors the chance to hone their writing and learn more about the publishing world. It features weekly writing workshops, one-to-one tutorials, teaching sessions on topics essential to the writing of a successful novel and a question and answer session with top literary agent Carrie Plitt from Felicity Bryan Associates.

Mike hopes to provide a beneficial insight into the process and publishing industry as well as giving people the chance to develop and improve their writing.

Rufus, who has worked on books as diverse as Alex Gerlis’s bestselling spy novels and Squeeze songwriter Chris Difford’s memoir Some Fantastic Place, said one of the reasons behind the course was to reach out to people outside of London.

“Aspiring authors with time and money to spare are well catered-for by lengthy creative-writing MAs or pricey London-based novel-writing courses – both of which can be excellent.

“But what about those who only have the local amateur writing group to rely on for help and feedback?

“I’ve been aware for a long time that an increasingly London-centric publishing industry means talented writers outside the capital struggle to get the help they need and put their novels into the right hands. It’s my mission to find that talent and propel it into the spotlight.”

Mike said he was looking forward to teaching the course and hopes it will help to uncover new talent from the West Midlands. “When writing a novel, it’s not just about having a good idea, you also need the desire to get the story out to the audience. That’s why a lot of people say ‘I want to write a novel’ but not many of them do.

“When Rufus asked me to do the course I was thinking can I teach? But there are lots of things that are now obvious to me that people with no prior experience would not know like how to lay out a manuscript, how to create suspense and use dialogue,” he tells Weekend.

Just 15 students will be selected for the course on the basis of the opening 3,000 words of their novel-in-progress and a one-page synopsis. Mike says the aim is for participants to help each other and writers shouldn’t be nervous about others hearing their work.

“It’s a safe space. I’m not embarrassed to say my first draft was awful but by having other people read it, I was able to improve and re-write it. This is all about improving what we are do and being supportive whether they are a first-time writer or a long-time writer,” he explains.

“Having a book published is an exciting thing so I hope we can help as many people as possible on their way.”

• The Write Here. . . in Birmingham course will run from September 19 to December 12 and more information is available from www.writehereuk.com

Miranda Dickinson’s first attempts at writing were dismissed and it took her more than a decade before she got published. Nine books later, this is her story. . .

A picturesque Cornish fishing town has long held a special place in Miranda Dickinson’s heart.

And now she is helping her readers to fall in love with St Ives and its sandy beaches, pretty harbour and cobbled streets thanks to her new novel Somewhere Beyond The Sea.

“I just think St Ives is a magical place. It’s a place that artists, writers and poets have always been drawn to over the years. It’s got lovely light, a really relaxed vibe and that connection with the sea. It’s stunning,” says the author, who lives in Dudley with her husband Bob and four-year-old daughter Flo.

Somewhere Beyond The Sea is the writer’s ninth novel and with this latest one she relished the chance to write about somewhere she knows inside and out and describes it as her ‘happy place’.

“It’s really lovely to write about a place that we love so much and that is special to my family. We have been going there for years. I had no need to research it as I knew every street and every shop.

“I also liked writing about a place like this and looking at what it’s like when all of the visitors have gone home and what it’s like to live there all year round,” she explains.

The heart-warming story follows the parallel lives of Seren and Jack, who are both grieving, suffering financial hardship, and still trying to do the best for those that they love – for Seren, it’s her late father and his little art gallery and local community project, and for widower Jack it’s his daughter Nessie who he is now raising alone.

They both find hope and magic in seaglass stars they complete together on Gwithian Beach, not knowing who the mystery other creator is, or how much they are helping each other.

But when they meet in real life, it’s on the opposing sides of a battle. Jack is managing the redevelopment of a local landmark, and Seren is leading the community campaign to save it.

“They meet without knowing the other person. Jack and Nessie make a star of seaglass pieces. Seren finds it as she’s a beachcomber and because it’s not finished, she finishes it. Then Jack and Nessie find it and are amazed to see it’s finished so they leave another one half finished and this starts this game of stars.

“They are coming from two different places but they love playing this game of stars and the serendipity of it even though they know nothing about each other. It gives them something to focus on outside of what’s going on in their lives and makes them believe they can believe in magic. For me that’s what St Ives does.

“I liked the idea of how two people could fall in love without meeting in person and telling a love story from two sides gives readers an advantage. They get to see it from both character’s eyes and they can see what’s happening,” explains Miranda, who secured her first publishing deal after posting her work on the authonomy.com website and released her debut novel Fairytale of New York, in 2009.

It was also a very personal story for Miranda as sadly while writing both Seren and Jack’s grief she was also trying to cope with her own.

A short while after the synopsis for the book was given the green light by her publisher and she had begun, her beloved father Brian was diagnosed with late stage bowel cancer and passed away in October 2016, aged 65.

As part of a series of vlogs to help her readers better understand her characters and the inspiration behind the story, she also spoke about the impact her own grief had and its role in the story. “I was in the middle of writing this story where the main character loses her dad and it was incredibly difficult to write.

“It’s interesting that in the book grief is a really important theme. Both Seren and Jack are coming at it from different points of view and it was something I really wanted to write about because everybody’s grief is personal, it’s as personal as a fingerprint and yet we don’t talk about grief, particularly because we are British.

“It’s very awkward, we don’t know what to say to people who’ve lost people, we don’t know what to say when we’ve lost people and it just becomes this awful thing that you feel you want to talk about but you can’t talk about because there isn’t a vocabulary that we use.

“Going through grief, writing a story that has grief as one of its main themes was a very interesting situation to be in but I think I was kind of working it out as I wrote the story,” she says.

Miranda hopes the book will help anyone who is experiencing grief to understand that however they are feeling is completely natural and there is no rule that says we all have to deal with it in the same way.

It’s also her dream that readers familiar with St Ives recognise the sights and landmarks she has described while reading Somewhere Beyond The Sea – and others are inspired to follow in their footsteps.

“People can find the courtyard where Seren’s shop is and the caravan park where Jack is living. The beach where Jack and Seren play their game of stars is real – people can visit it and walk along it. I love being in St Ives and want people to visit and see how magical it is for themselves. I’ve loved writing about this gorgeous place,” says the 45-year-old.

Ahead of publishing day, she felt nervous but it was made extra special thanks to her friends organising a surprise celebration at Waterstones in Birmingham.

“It was really lovely. Normally it’s quite quiet with it being a Thursday. They had lots of books for me to sign and a cake with my book on it. It was really lovely. I had butterflies for two weeks before publication day. I couldn’t even walk into a bookshop. Every year I think it’s going to get better but every year I’m more nervous,” she says laughing.

As a full-time mother, she tends to write when her daughter is asleep so this can mean working into the early hours. “I tend to start writing at 9.30pm and might carry on until 2am,” Miranda tells us.

And her readers will be pleased to hear that work on her 10th novel is well under way. The Day We Meet Again, which is the first of a two-book deal with HarperCollins imprint HQ, will tell the story of Phoebe and Sam who meet by chance at St Pancras station.

Heading in opposite directions, both seeking their own adventures, meeting the love of their lives was not part of the plan. So they make a promise: to meet in exactly the same spot in a year’s time if they still want to be together.

Singer-songwriter Miranda, who to date has sold one million books worldwide, says she’s particularly excited as she’s had the idea for the story for two years and now has the chance to get it down on paper.

“This is a story I’ve wanted to tell for a while. I can’t believe I’m coming into my 10th year of writing. I feel very lucky to be doing this for a job,” she tells us.

“I love coming up with an idea and seeing if I can make it work as a novel. I like creating worlds I can get absorbed in because I think if I can be absorbed in a story then so can my readers. I absolutely love it when somebody says to me ‘I lost myself in your story’ because that means I’ve done my job.”

• Somewhere Beyond The Sea by Miranda Dickinson is out now, published in eBook, audiobook and paperback by Pan Macmillan. Follow Miranda on Twitter @wurdsmyth