I am very lucky to have the gifted writer Holly Martin on the Blog today as part of #Bookouturexmas
Hi Holly Thank you for taking part in this q and a for #bookouturexmas would you like to start by introducing yourself to my readers..?
Hello lovely readers,
I’m Holly Martin and I mainly write sweet, cute romantic comedies. I have two books out this Christmas, Christmas at Lilac Cottage and Snowflakes on Silver Cove are both set in the same seaside town of White Cliff Bay.
How did you go about doing the research for these 2015 Christmas books I understand you visited a chainsaw carver for one of them?
I visited an ice carver as thats Penny’s job in Christmas at Lilac Cottage. It was very interesting to learn about the process and I chatted to them for several hours and watched them carve. For a previous book I interviewed a chainsaw carver and some of the skills I learned from him were transferable to ice carving too, in fact the ice carver i met used to be a chainsaw carver. I also interviewed someone from the lifeboat crew to get the details right for the lifeboat rescue that appears in both books (both books are set in the same week leading up to Christmas so we see key events from different points of view)
Who are your favorite Authors? And what genre of books do you enjoy reading? If you have time.
I don’t get a lot of time for reading but when I do I love reading the kind of books I write, I do love chicklit, it just makes me smile. It has to have a happy ending or I’m just not interested. I love Aven Ellis, Lisa Dickenson and Sarah Morgan.
What is the best thing about being a writer?
Getting to go to different places and meeting different people for research, creating the kind of stories i like to read, making people smile with my words. When i get a message from someone who has read my book and loved it, there is no nicer feeling than that
Do you have any advice you can give to new writers?
Write everything down, any idea, any scene, any conversation that pops into your head, write it down, it might then become a story, it might not but it will never become anything unless you write it down. It might be awful, but you can edit awful, you can’t edit nothing
Which book has been your favourite to write?
I generally don’t write sequels, my stories are all finished by the end of the book and I don’t see the point of returning to a character but there was so much love for One Hundred Proposals, I wanted to do a little Christmas bonus for them. One Hundred Christmas Proposals was a novella, only 30,000 words but I absolutely loved being back in the world of Suzie and Harry again. I enjoyed writing it so much that I finished the whole thing in 3 weeks while I was on holiday in Canada.
And finally – have you started writing your next book? Any clues as to what it maybe about? I am sure my readers would love to know.
I’ve just started writing my spring book which is set in White Cliff Bay again. Its set in a lighthouse and features Riley Eddison, a sexy American and Darcy Davenport, a clumsy sweet red head.
Thank you for taking the time to answer these
Holly Martin
Holly emerged onto the Chick Lit scene by winning the Belinda Jones Travel Club short story competition – and has not looked back since.
Her adult fiction debut, The Guestbook, hit number 5 in the Amazon chart and she has now written three books with Bookouture: Fairytale Beginnings, Christmas at Lilac Cottage and Snowflakes at Silver Cove.
NATSCLOUD 