Posts Tagged ‘author’

Things He Never Knew has officially been released! It is – The Day.

Friday, September 24th, 2010

And so…..here we are. We have arrived at The Day that I have been waiting for most of my life. The day that I finally become a published author!!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s right, Things He Never Knew is officially released today, Friday 24th September. The countdown to publication is over.

If we tally up everything that has been building to almost this precise moment, it’s quite a lot:

–          28 years of life for a start.

–          19 ½ years of full-time education (we won’t calculate the school/Uni fees as I’m not sure that my royalties will EVER cover them. Sorry Daddy.)

–          I estimate 300+ examinations (as in the test kind, not ill-health kind), including 11 GCSEs, 3 A-Levels, an AS-Level and a Law degree. And all the years of work they entailed.

–          One ‘discussion’ with my husband about exactly why I should be allowed to stay at home and write stories, rather than get up and go out to work like most people.

–          Literally thousands of hours of creativity poured into my various stories/poems/manuscripts.

–          Even more hours spent in perfecting Things He Never Knew so that I have told the story in the best way that I can, that it will hopefully draw you into Steph and Theo’s ravaged world and that you will be both intrigued by and sympathetic to them.

–          A LOT of determination and perseverance to get where I am now.

Obviously now that the book is released, it’s available online at www.amazon.co.uk and at www.waterstones.com, as well as at all good bookshops. Well, I say ‘all’, I don’t actually get told where it’s being stocked so the best thing if you hope to buy it from a bookshop is go in and ask if they stock it, and if they don’t or they’ve sold out they will certainly be able to order it for you.

And once you have it and you’re reading it, can I ask – please don’t take against poor old Steph too much. In a sense what she did wasn’t her fault and her best excuse is that it was unintentional, although an excuse is all it is. You will all see the drama that unfolds across the pages and although Steph deserves this, it isn’t a nice thing to have to go through. As for Theo, it would be easy to sympathise wholeheartedly with him, but I would ask that you bear in mind that he hasn’t been quite as accommodating or understanding to Steph as he might have. Over the next couple of weeks or so, a complete in-depth blog about the background to Things He Never Knew will be appearing here which will reveal why what happens in the book, happens. But for those of you who read immediately, do try and keep an open mind for Steph. And whilst I’m on the subject of Steph – I’d also like to make it clear that her character is not me! I wasn’t expecting so many people to make the assumption that it is; maybe I made a mistake in casting myself in the role of Steph on the front cover. But no, she is not me, nor anyone of my acquaintance. She is entirely fictional, she exists only in my imagination and in the pages of the book where the consequences of her rash actions are played out.

I’m going to leave it here for today because I think the events of the day kind of speak for themselves and I am happy to let a brief and reverential silence descend across Revelations and Revelry for now. I am thrilled, delighted and awed to have finally become a published author….it really is a dream come true for me. Thank-you to everyone who has supported me and bought it so far, I really hope that you all enjoy reading it and witnessing Steph’s apparently perfect life coming undone at the seams. I would love to have any comments on the book, either here or on my facebook page or via email, sarah@sarahhaynes.me.uk. I’m impatient to know what everybody thinks! So if you read it and have something to say, please do let me know.

So I shall sign off for now: Sarah Haynes LLB (Hons)…………and  PUBLISHED AUTHOR 🙂

My display!

A quick aside

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

This is ridiculous and I am going home. I had planned to stay until tomorrow but on hearing the plans for the day I decided to revise my timetable and go back to Hampshire tonight. I have concerns about my lack of an author press kit so I want to get going on that (author bio, photos, etc.) but also a situation has arisen here.

Steve, my step-father, hates cats. With a passion. I don’t know where this antipathy comes from but for years my brothers have been begging for a cat, and he has steadfastly refused. He doesn’t like the look of them, the feel, the way they climb all over you or anything about them at all really. As I mentioned before there are already two (formerly three) dogs, a pygmy hedgehog, a tortoise, a tank of tropical fish and a handful of chickens. And it is this last which is causing the problem, because along with chickens come rats. Hundreds of them if you listen to my mother, which I generally don’t, but how to keep the rat population down has long been a major concern here. For a while my parents experimented with allowing my brother (he who eats peas wrongly) to shoot them with an air rifle. But then presumably it occurred to them that allowing a fifteen year old to roam freely round the garden in the dark with a gun might have dangerous repercussions for anyone else out there.

So I got up this morning and my mother announced “I’ve discovered a way to get rid of the rats.”

“Really?” I said.

“Yes, really. I’m going to get some cats. Feral ones that will live in the garden and keep the rats down.”

“But doesn’t Steve hate cats?”

“Yes but these ones will be fine because we won’t see them, they can sleep in the shed in the straw and they’ll eat rats so we won’t need to feed them. I’ve found out where to get them – we’ll go today.”

So my poor step-father, who is currently working abroad in Ireland, will travel home at the weekend to find that my mother has got not one cat, or even two. No, she will have installed a flock of cats in the garden. Quite apart from Steve’s view I find the idea ludicrous. Clearly, I can have no part in this.

The other thing I noticed last night was that my mother is growing some plants in the corner of the large and beautifully decorated sitting room. I imagine most of you are now thinking of nice pots and flowers and things but NO, do not leap to this logical conclusion. I mean that there are two green things with leaves literally growing through the carpet by the window and have been for some time. When I saw that they hadn’t been removed, I commented, something along the lines of “Mummy! Those plants are still there?!” My mother looked unconcerned and said “Yes, I know. Steve thinks they’re disgusting but I want to see how big they get.”

I rest my case.

How do you discover new authors?

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

To help me plan my book promotion campaign I’d love to know how do you all choose the books that you read? Where do you buy them and what influences your choices? When do you try new authors?