Today, we’re talking with Kate Darroch, about her book Thanksgiving in Welcombe Bay (Sweets by the Sea, Christian Second Chance Romance Book 1).
Tell us something unexpected about yourself!
Seven times, I've been as close to death as you can be and not hear angels sing. I think I'm like a cat, and still have two lives left 🙂
Why do you write?
We live in a difficult world. I want to transport people into a happier place, if only for a few hours. And we all need laughter in our lives. Most of my books make most people laugh.
Where did you get the inspiration for your current book?
My most recent release, “Thanksgiving in Welcombe Bay”, is in the Christian Womens' Fiction/Christian Second Chance Romance category, and that's a new genre for me. I never thought I would write a romance, and I still haven't, because this book isn't a romance, it's a tender love story about broken people helping each other to heal. I was inspired to write it in part because, to my great surprise, one of my Cozies won the Incipere Best Christian Fiction award, and many of my readers wrote to tell me “you deserve it”. That was quite stunning for me, because I didn't think of my Cozy, the award winner, “Death in Paris”, as a Christian book. It was, in my mind, just a cute Cozy. Yes, there are faith elements, because the sleuth is a Catholic and her faith is an integral part of her life, but in my own mind I was just writing a Cozy mystery to make people laugh, and it never occurred to me that I was also sharing my own faith with my readers. So I thought, “Well, if people think I write Christian fiction well, maybe I should try to do that, because it's a hard world out there, we need all the comfort and inspiration we get from faith.” The story deals with recovery from addiction to alcohol realistically but sensitively and sympathetically, and I chose that theme because the melodramatic way this subject is usually tackled profoundly irritates me. I showed Eric as an absolutely typical member of AA in early recovery, the good and the bad. The unvarnished reality, factually presented. And one of my editorial team told me I had written a romantic hero of the “cinnamon roll” type. Which was a huge surprise, because I wasn't writing any kind of hero, I was just writing a well-meaning but flawed human being. The other part of my inspiration for this story was Robin Norwood's wonderful Self Help book, “Women Who Love Too Much”. The mental maelstrom in which the emotionally abused woman lives is incomprehensible to almost everyone, including the women themselves. So I presented Lily's mindset as typical of the abused woman who has managed to break free, who is trying to make a new life for herself, because I wanted to show how hard that is to do. I intended to write a story that isn't the story I've actually written. What I see in this book is different from what readers see in it. But I'm still glad that I wrote it because it has brought so much joy to lots of readers, and that's always what I'm trying to do.
What do you enjoy the most about your genre?
I don't actually have a genre. I write Cozies because I enjoy the puzzle type of mystery and I dislike gore; also because no-one minds when you write a Cozy tongue-in-cheek, and I have a dreadful weakness for writing tongue-in-cheek. I write thrillers because I can't help myself – an idea comes to me, and it's a dramatic, action-packed kind of idea, where the main character is pitted against an uncaring universe, and I have a weakness for the uncaring universe type of story. I write unusual ghost stories because I have my little follies and vanities like everyone else, and one of them is standing the conventional on its head. I write the occasional elegant heist because I have a passion for elegant heist and con-artist stories, there aren't enough of them in the world. I write comedy thrillers because hey, ya gotta laugh. As one of my readers once put it, “Everything Kate writes is different from everything else she's written.” And now I've written a series of Christian love stories. Which is really, really, different from everything else I've written. Gift of the muse.
How would you describe your writing process?
What process I've got comes from that famous writer who said, “It isn't enough to wait for inspiration to strike. Sometimes you have to go after it with a club.” The club, for me, is AI. The typical reader prefers the output from a well-handled LLM to the words I put onto paper with such effort. Not all readers, of course. If it were all readers, I don't think I could bear it. Some people do prefer my output to the machine's, and it is for them that I write. I get up each morning and I think, “Today I shall write xyz,” and then I fire up my laptop and my email Inbox opens up and sneers at me. There is nothing, IMO, more destructive to creative thought than email. I have over 4,000 unanswered emails sitting in my Inbox as I sit here talking with you, and every day I process at least 150 emails, often more. I have tried ignoring the Inbox by putting pencil to paper in a notebook before I turn on my laptop, but – and I fully admit this is a weakness in me – I can't do it. The thought of all that unanswered email bites at me, and I can't work creatively until I've spent at least 2 hours trying to reduce the backlog. I never can, of course. New email floods in faster than I can answer it. But after I've spent 2 or 3 hours in the fruitless attempt, I can admit to myself that it's hopeless and go on to other things. And that is when I commune with my muse, if she's in the mood to visit, and if not, I put words on paper anyway. Let us say that my muse has flitted off, as she so often does. The thing is, writers write. We do not allow the absence of our inspiration (or the presence of 4000+ crushing emails) to deter us from the crucial task of messing up a virgin sheet of paper with words. I call myself a writer. Perhaps that is vanity on my part. But as long as I'm calling myself a writer, then putting words on paper is what I must do daily. And the best method I have found is writing something other than what in theory I am writing. It destroys what many other writers have described as their nemesis, staring at a blank sheet of paper. I never stare at a blank sheet of paper. If my job today is to write another chapter of my current work in progress, or a fact article, or a blog post, and I just can't face doing it, then I write a letter, or I edit something earlier written, or add to my notes, or if I'm really desperate, I answer some more email. That is guaranteed to bring me to the point where eventually, words that I actually want to put on paper start appearing. The crucial thing is to keep on putting the wrong words on paper until the right words start to flow.
What do you think authors have to gain from participating in social media?
The whole world. A writer I know, who is successful and wealthy, regularly rides the bus to his destination instead of driving there. Why? He wants to listen to people talking, get the cadence of their speech. But who needs a bus? Go on reddit, on Facebook, hey, even Pinterest can give you what you need, the daily interaction with the reading public which is the lifeblood of your writing. It is so sad that so many indie authors think that social media is about marketing, about posting Buy my Book! It is about Listening, about Conversing, about Learning how to write from the only people who can teach you, Readers. Plus, of course, it's the best and quickest way to “do your bit” in your author communites. We can't just take and take, we have to give back too. It's one of Life's funny little quirks, that the more you pour into your online communities, just from a grateful desire to give back what was freely given to you, to pay it forward, to make an effort to help those at the beginning of their journey, to share in the truest meaning of the word, then the better your writing will get.
What advice would you have for other writers?
The same as Churchill's. Never, never, never, never, never, never ever, give up! Keep on trying, no matter what. Send your soul out into an uncaring universe, clothed in words, even when your heart is naked and shivering in the biting winds of the callousness which surrounds you. Remember that there are people to whom your words will bring joy, even if that's hard to believe when it seems that your work is unappreciated. And join an author community for your genre, because the support of your fellow writers will uplift you.
How do you select your books’ titles and covers?
I am immensely lucky, because I have both a very engaged audience and a very supportive author community. I consult my Readers Club of over 9,000 members about my titles and covers, and usually I get 2000+ replies. So I'm pretty clear about what my readers want to see on my covers. The Cozy author community, of which I'm proud to be a member, and the Christian author community, are two of the most supportive author communities on earth. I shall never forget the kindness I was shown when as a fledgling writer I ventured to make a comment in a group or two. Well-known authors flocked to share their wisdom with me. The degree of encouragement I was given simply cannot be overstated. Everyone was so nice to me that it made me cry because I was so grateful to them for accepting me as a writer.
What's your next step?
I'm sending Màiri back in time. She's a child of the 1970s, and I'm sending her back to the 1920s. It should be a riot. I already have the covers, they're gorgeous. But not until after I've completed the Sweets By The Sea series. People really want to know whether things are going to work out for Eric and Lily in Welcombe Bay, and it's not fair to keep them waiting.
What book do you wish you had written?
I cannot even tell you which book I most admire. There are so many. At different times in my life, I have admired a particular book by a very special author more than any other, but later I would read another book, by a different author, and admire that still more. I have been reading omnivorously since I was 3 years old. And yet there are still literally thousands of authors on my TBR list. How can I choose just one book which sets my soul on fire, when so many already have? And so many are as yet unknown to me? Because my soul would have to be in a furnace, for me ever to wish that I had written another person's book, instead of wishing to write whatever is my own quintissential book – however inferior, viewed as a work of art, that book of mine may turn out to be. Half a dozen different books, by half a dozen great writers, have affected me so strongly that it is no exaggeration to say that they have changed my life. Yet the written opus which moved me emotionally most strongly, and continues to move me most to this day, is The Trojan Women, by Euripides, which is, of course, not a book at all, but a play.
How do you react to seeing a new review for your book?
Seeing a new review is a huge Uplift, a moment of great excitement. When the reader enjoyed my book and is saying something nice about it, that is a moment of absolute joy. I've been very lucky, because at least 4 readers out of 5 say something nice about whichever book of mine they are reviewing, so I get to feel that joy often. When the reader was disappointed by my book and expresses that feeling in a cruel way, it's distressing, but I try to learn from the criticism, and to remember that NO book pleases all readers. When Tolkein brought out “Lord of the Rings”, a work of genius 20 years in the making, which has inspired countless imitators, he was strongly criticised. When Oscar Wilde brought out his works of genius, he was lambasted in a horrible way. Why should my little books escape the calumny visited upon the work of giants, works of a standard so superior to my own writing that I cannot even aspire to it? And if a reader gives constructive criticism, expressing some thought in a way that helps me to see how I could write better, that is a wonderful gift which I treasure.
