Samantha Hayes - guest post

How I Got Published – by Samantha Hayes

 

I’ll be honest—my path to publication wasn’t an easy one, and there were many times I felt like giving up. I’ve wanted to be an author for as long as I can remember (with brief interludes believing I should have a ‘proper’ job, such as becoming a pilot or an accountant) and my first psychological thriller wasn’t published until I was forty. 

 

Obviously I’ve done other jobs to be able to live, though I was always writing—quite badly in the early days, I suspect. But all that practice was an important process. It was a bit like my own private university degree (seeing as I’d skipped that bit in real life). It was the 80s and I spent hours in libraries, studying the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, finally plucking up the courage to send work out to agents. I knew it was important to have one. But my self-addressed envelopes plopped back through my letterbox regularly with standard rejection letters. It was disheartening, but while my young kids were sleeping, I kept on writing. 

 

Over the next few years, my work must have improved. Some rejection letters now included handwritten notes – ‘I’ll pass on this, but please send me your next work…’ I was encouraged and kept going, holding each and every agent to their word. I made sure I read lots, and I went to literary festivals and events, learning as much about the business as I could. I kept on sending out material.

 

Then, late one night, everything changed. I received an email informing me I’d won a short story competition. An anthology was to be published, and mine was going to be the lead story. I was thrilled. This same one-man-band publisher then asked if I had written any novels… (er, yes…!) and a year or so later, my book was printed. I think I gave away more copies than weresold, including passing one on to an editor at a big publishing house. He liked it enough to commission a number of short stories from me. I was finally starting to feel like a proper writer! I then went on to write two erotic romance novels for the same publisher (under another name), which was all excellent experience – and great fun!

 

Meanwhile, I was working away on my first psychological thriller, as I’d finally discovered this was what I loved writing most. Once it was complete, the hunt for representation began again, and a children’s author friend mentioned that he knew an agent looking to build their crime list. So I sent it off, and everything happened really quickly then. The agent loved my book, took me on, and sold it in a two book deal a couple of weeks later. It was literally a dream come true, albeit a slow one. It was now 2006.

 

But nearly a decade later, I’m still writing thrillers and I’m veryproud to say that my publishers are Penguin Random House (I actually wrote to Penguin when I was about ten years old, asking how to get published!) My latest book You Belong To Me was released this week, and I’ve recently started work on my eighth thriller. Looking back, would I do things differently? I’d probably get those A Levels and go to university, but I wouldn’t change anything else. It’s important to have lots of interesting experiences, but it’s even more important to want to be an authorso much that you never give up.