Please welcome the lovely Alice Raine to my site today, with a special Mother’s Day post.
Over to you Alice…
To celebrate both Mother’s Day this year, and the fact that the complete Untwisted series is now available on Kindle, I was asked if I’d like to write an article that described a significant memory of when my mother’s input changed my identity as a writer, or some words of encouragement she gave me which may have inspired me, or a story she read me that inspired my own interest in writing. It’s ended up as a bit of a rambling tale, but here goes …
There were always books around our house when I was a child, and Mum and Dad would read to me daily; everything from princesses, to explorers to fire breathing sea monsters, which certainly helped spawn my overactive imagination from a very young age. I wasn’t what you would describe as an engaged writer at school, my interests lay in sport, art, geography riding my bike, and falling off my skateboard (frequently), but at some point I must have developed the urge, because to this day my mum still recalls the day she found a book that I had written in my bedside draw.
By this point I was probably early teens, and yes, I’ll admit it … I had a crush on Kevin Costner. Quite an embarrassingly big crush actually, to the point where I had his pictures blue-tacked to my cupboard door and copies of his films lining my shelves. The film “The Bodyguard” had been released a year or so before, and if you’ve seen it, you’ll know the ending is quite open to misinterpretation – are the two main characters still together? Or have they split up and gone their separate ways? This was the question which must have burned in my curious teenage mind, and already being a bit of a sucker for a good romance story I decided that quite simply, the uncertainty just wasn’t good enough. So I sat down and started to write a sequel.
I got sixty pages in – double sided and hand written in neat lines on that old fashioned computer paper with the holes down the side – before preparation for my GCSE’s got in the way. I’d completely forgotten about it until last year when I was on a phone call with my mum excitedly explaining about signing with Accent Press for my Untwisted series, and mum mentioned that she’d always thought I might end up as a writer after she’d found the book in my bedside draw all those years ago. I have no idea if it was any good, or if my mum read any/all of it, but I suppose that can go down as my first official attempt at a manuscript.
Since then I have written far more prolifically, most of it just for my own amusement and stored away on my computer. I must be slightly obsessive/compulsive when it comes to writing, because once I get an idea I simply have to write it down. I now have stacks of projects on my laptop which have never seen the light of day, some of which run to hundreds of thousands of words, but I can be very self-critical, so I tend to keep them hidden away, happy with the knowledge that the idea is out of my brain and at least in print somewhere, even if it is just on my memory stick!
People often ask me if my mum has read my Untwisted books, and the answer, in short, is no (at least I hope she hasn’t!). Once the series got taken on by Accent I politely requested that she didn’t read it because of its, er … steamy contents … Mum was happy enough to oblige, but asked if I could send her something else that I had written so she could read that instead. As a writer I have an overriding predilection for romance, but not always the darker form of romance that is included in my Untwisted series, and many of the bits and pieces on my laptop are actually Chick-Lit. So I looked through my memory stick and selected one of my favourite gentle romances for her. It’s a light-hearted, comical take on real life, containing no steamy stuff what so ever, apart from a bit of innuendo thrown in here and there. After reading it, my mum said, and I quote: ‘I enjoyed it, but it’s a bit rude in places isn’t it?’ Hmm. I hadn’t thought it was rude at all, so I dug deeper and discovered that she was referring to one of the scenes involving a bit of flirting and innuendo. If mum thinks that’s rude, then I’m certainly glad she has taken my advice and stayed away from the Untwisted books!
As for words of encouragement, my mum is great at them. Even though she hasn’t read the published series, still frequently tells me how proud she is of me for pursuing my dream, which means so much to me, and she even bought me a little number ‘1’ pendant when my first book got published which has pride of place on my bracelet.
All in all my mum is pretty amazing, as is my Dad. Love you both, and happy Mother’s Day to all the mums out there.
Alice xxx
The complete Untwisted series is available on Kindle now, and coming to bookstores near you in paperback too. http://tinyurl.com/o87oczp
You can also expect the first instalment in Alice’s new series by Summer 2015!
If you’d like to get in touch with Alice, please feel free using the links below:
Twitter: @aliceraine1
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Alice-Raine/1433662383579684
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Many thanks for visiting today Alice!
Happy reading everyone,
Jenny xxx