It’s a Rocky Road To Publication

May 15, 2019 | By Sally Harris | Reply More

So, where does it start, this road to publication? A few minutes on the internet suggests some authors pick up the trail around the time they start to write, others only when a manuscript is ready to submit to publishers or agents. Stories come from deep within us, partly from nurture, partly from nature.

Mine are the dark kind, the sort to send a shiver down a reader’s spine. I suspect these gothic tendencies developed early in life, long before I scribbled as a toddler or properly formed my first letters. So what set me along this path? Why not a romance writer, psychological thrillers or chic lit?

Before I started school my mother would take us out each afternoon; a visit to my grandparents, a trip into town or often a walk with her old schoolfriend. Her boys were close in age to my younger sister and I. One of our favourite haunts was the local cemetery. It may seem an odd choice for two young mothers with prams and preschoolers. Why wander between gravestones rather than head for the park with its swings and slides, open spaces and cafe with tea, cakes an ice creams? Looking back now though, I see it made perfect sense. An obvious choice.

The cemetery is large and rambling. One section is modern, new headstones laid out, neatly tended with flowers, some with pictures of the dead beneath a wide Suffolk sky. Paths weave and interweave. Benches and litter bins are plentiful and it was safe to let us children off reigns and out of prams to run free. No traffic to worry about other than the occasional slow-moving hearse.

I favoured the far side of the cemetery where black yews pressed close to the winding narrow paths. High domes of cedar flung their arms wide, deep springy carpets of needles beneath them scattered with strange rolled up cones we would stuff into our pockets. The headstones were larger here, better to hide behind. Some monuments were the raised kind, stone boxes above ground often surrounded with rusting metal railings and a stone angel to guard them. One such sarcophagus fascinated us week in, week out. It huddled beneath an ancient dark yew beyond the cedar and some way from the path. Ivy and nettles all but smothered it until one week we grabbed sticks and beat back the foliage, better to see its lid which was slightly askew.

A triangular void gaped between the wall and lid. The crack was big enough to peek into, big enough to enable a small hand to squeeze inside. For weeks we dared each other to squat down and peer into the opening. We made up stories of what might lurk there, a rotting corpse, skeleton, or, so we hoped, long forgotten treasure. We frightened our younger siblings and ourselves half-witless and got a severe telling off. Don’t play there, show some respect, look after the younger ones.

We did as we were told for some time but the lure of that dark space never left me. One week, as our mothers pushed the younger two to sleep in their prams, I grabbed my playmates hand and we made our escape, ran along the narrow tunnel of trees to the cedar. We stopped before the sarcophagus, still we hung back, both convinced something might grab us, pull us in and murder us horribly if we moved any closer.

For several more weeks we still did not look into the gap, our imaginations conjuring up such horrors only the human mind can inflict on a person. When we finally did, there was no gold or treasure, nothing to harm us, only dust and a mound of dead leaves.

There have been many other influences, books from writers such as Mary Shelley, Daphne Du Maurier and Susan Hill. Films too, Halloween, Poltergeist and I particularly remember the TV version of Salem’s Lot with the young vampires floating outside the darkened window, nails scratching against the glass. Even now, when it’s dark outside, I like to have the curtains tightly drawn.

So, that elusive path to publication? I joined a writing group and began work on my manuscript. Once I had a tidy draft I wasn’t sure what to do next. Not submission ready but how best to move it forward? I submitted it to an editor. She read the manuscript twice and her clear and focused advise encouraged me to redraft it. The novel inched further along the path. The editor stayed in touch, the occasional email exchange and piece of advise, a kind word to keep me on track.

When it came to finding an agent and publisher, I discovered ghost stories are not at the top of most of their lists. I was a horror writer apparently and horror never occupies a significant section in bookstores in the way some genres do. The usual round of submissions, rejections and maybes followed.

I had felt for a long time the story was good but not completely coming together. By the winter of 2017, I had a lot of helpful feedback from agents, several asking to read a redraft. I was close but not quite there. Over the long winter months, I structurally edited the novel. Scenes changed, whole chapters moved within the narrative. By spring 2018, I was as satisfied as I can ever be with my writing. The novel was working. It was ready to go out again on submission. Agents read it, one offered as did three indie publishers. Finally, the journey, so I thought, was coming to an end. I signed with Salt Publishing and was over the moon for weeks. Further edits followed, proofs came for checking, at last, the novel was on its way to press.

In less than a month Haverscroft will be on sale in all good bookshops as they say, and of course, on digital download. But that is not the end of the story, there will be events to attend, a launch, readings and reviews and the next book, a bubble of ideas in my head, just waiting to be written. So the journey to publication rolls on…

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Find out more about her website https://www.saharrisauthor.com/

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HAVERSCROFT

Kate Keeling leaves all she knows and moves to Haverscroft House in an attempt to salvage her marriage. Little does she realise, Haverscroft’s dark secrets will drive her to question her sanity, her husband and fatally engulf her family unless she can stop the past repeating itself. Can Kate keep her children safe and escape Haverscroft in time, even if it will end her marriage?