My Road To Publishing

From a young age I loved telling stories. I know that sounds like a cliché, but it’s true. At school, I couldn’t get to grips with maths, science or languages, but give me a novel and I was set. I would happily interpret them for exams and read books before they were on the syllabus – including Romeo and Juliet – and was the main reason I went on to study English Language and Literature at university. At 18, I had no real clue what I wanted to do with my life, but I enjoyed English, so decided to continue with it. I never in a million years thought that one day I’d be a published author.

My 30th birthday came knocking in 2015; I was in the middle of taking redundancy after working as an in-house assistant editor for eight years, and had a two-year-old son. My friends had got together and surprised me with a laptop and an online crime fiction writing course – I had confided in a few of them that I’d started jotting down ideas for a novel. However, I hadn’t realised how much I’d been banging on about my dream, yet was doing nothing about it.

Crime fiction was big on my radar at this point, and I think it was because I was in quite a dark place. My grandfather had been a big part of my life and had passed away earlier that year – yes, it was the C-word he’d lost his battle with. At the time, he was the closest person I’d ever lost and I let the pain eat away at me. To most people I was my normal self, dealing well with my grief, but to my family I was moody and angry – sometimes I didn’t even remember the mean things I’d said, or why I had said them. Nights were usually filled with secret tears. I used some of my experiences to write my first book, In The Shadows, and it helped me in a way I wasn’t expecting. I released my emotions in a different way – I didn’t talk about how I felt, I wrote about it, and it was a huge relief.

Looking back, I was very lucky to have some wonderful people in my life who cheered me on, supported me, mentored me and introduced me to a wealth of amazing online bloggers and readers who quickly became friends. Shockingly, by March 2016, I was ready to self-publish my first novel.

It did well, reaching the Top 100 UK Amazon chart, and by the August of that year I signed a book contract with Bloodhound Books. In my mind, In The Shadows was always a standalone crime book, but readers wanted to know more about the characters, and so DI Denis Hamilton was born into a four book series (after Bloodhound Books republished In The Shadows). I’ve read many police procedurals and watch them often on the TV; it was such a pleasure to turn my character into a loveable London cop. In the two years that followed, and the next three books in the series, a character continued to pop into my head – she was new, she was different, she was not part of the series.

I spoke with my publishers and they were excited about my ideas for a standalone psychological suspense novel, giving me the freedom to step away from the police procedural and try something new. The Paramedic’s Daughter was published this year, on the 1st of May, and I am amazed with the reception it’s received.

The Paramedic’s Daughter came a whole 10 months after my last book, is written in a first person perspective, and has nothing to do with the series – to say I was nervous about its release is an understatement.

Throughout May, it became an Amazon bestseller in the UK and US charts, topped over 100 reviews on Amazon UK and has totally divided opinion. It seems I have written a marmite book – readers are either completely loving it or completely hating it. While it’s never nice to discover people don’t like your work, I’m thankful to everyone who has given it a try, shared their review and recommended it to others. Abi Quinn was the character who kept niggling at me while I wrote other books, so I knew I had to tell her story. Whether people like her or not, that’s the beauty with books and characters: their subjectivity and the fact that no two people will feel the same way about them.

The Paramedic’s Daughter’s success has really pushed me on to write another book – another standalone – and I don’t want to wait another 10 months. Bloodhound Books have signed me for another two novels, and we’re scheduled to publish my next book at the end of this year.

I’m not going to lie, it’s a rollercoaster of a ride: signing a contract and then the fear you feel when you sit at the laptop waiting for the words to come, the late nights waiting for my children to fall asleep so I can write, the lack of food breaks when I’m really in the writing zone, and the sadness of reading another one star review. But I think of 18-year-old me who never thought this was possible, and 28-year-old me who was angry with the world when my grandfather died, and it makes everything worthwhile.

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Tara Lyons is a crime/psychological thriller author from London, UK. Turning 30 in 2015 propelled her to fulfil her lifelong dream of becoming a writer. In the Shadows is Tara’s debut solo novel published in March 2016 and later that year, she signed a book contract with Bloodhound Books – who have now published all four books in the DI Hamilton series. Tara’s first standalone suspense novel, The Paramedic’s Daughter, topped the charts when it was published in May 2019. She is currently working on her next standalone suspense novel. When she’s not writing, Tara’s time is focused on her family, especially her two young children.

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THE PARAMEDIC’S DAUGHTER

Would you lie to your family to protect yourself?
Paramedic Abi Quinn is hailed as a hero by the patients she saves with the London Ambulance Service, but a secret she’s kept since she was a teenager now threatens to shatter that perfect illusion.

When her daughter Rose goes missing while studying at Brighton University, and ghosts from her past return to haunt her, Abi’s caught in a race against time to untangle the web of lies she set in motion over twenty years ago.

Everyone has something to lose.

Everyone is trying to protect themselves.

Everyone is broken.

But what lengths will they go to in order to stop the truth from being exposed?

Tara Lyons is the bestselling author of The DI Hamilton Series. The Paramedic’s Daughter is a shocking, unmissable psychological thriller which is set to be one of 2019’s stand-out reads. Perfect for readers of domestic noir, it will appeal to fans of authors like Louise Jensen, Shalini Boland and Cara Hunter.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips