Indie Author Month: Guest post – Rosie Threakall

Hello! I’m Rosie and I blog at https://rosiefrecklereads.wordpress.com/ and when Nicola tweeted about Indie Author Month, I knew I HAD to get involved. Me and my friend Josh Baldwin are bringing out a young adult contemporary, dual perspective novel on the 4th September.

I have always loved writing and making up stories. Whether it was setting up a school for my teddies, playing Harry Potter in the school playground or wishing away my science lessons with the characters I created in my head, it’s always been a part of my life. It wasn’t until university where I thought “yeah, I could do this.” I did a drama degree, so I was no stranger to my work being criticised and you have to get over that self doubt pretty quickly. I mean, with performing I’d done that by age five, but my stories had only ever been for me. It was a whole other ball game allowing people to hear my stories. Some were awful and I mean AWFUL but that was first year. I didn’t want to take a playwrighting class in second year so I didn’t get back into writing until third year. I would feel so nervous to the point where I’d get sweaty palms but my friend would read my work, and people wouldn’t cringe. This was, in my mind, a huge achievement. It was a natural choice for me to do an extract of a novel for my final piece and it was the best thing, writing it. I fell in love with characters I can’t wait to revisit at some point. when I got more into book blogging and saw authors at events talking about their books, I felt “that could be me one day” (thank you Katie Webber).a

This wasn’t always easy though, my creative writing by far got the lowest marks out of any module at university and I doubted if writing was really my jam. In fact, I questioned what was my jam at all. Those doubts didn’t leave me when I saw Josh had put a call out for a co-author. I sucked up my pride,screwed up my self doubt and threw it into the waste paper in in my mid and submitted the best of the best from my creative writing submission.

Reader, he loved it. He called me and the deal was done before I barely finished university. When performing, no one really took a chance on me, that’s I decided not to go to drama school. But the first time I put my writing out there, it was picked up. It felt meant to be but I also recognise that I am incredibly lucky.

Co-writing an independent novel is a wonderful experience. We have no restraints and the writing is so natural to us. We live to write these characters and we are both so so excited for you to meet Heidi and Eli! Our book is Parent Trap meets I’ll Give You The Sun, full of family, friendship and teaches us to appreciate what we have and take pride in who we are – a lesson I have only recently learnt myself.

 

And Then We Collided comes out through Noctis Book Company an ebook and in paperback on the 4th September