Cathy Mansell - In Dublin's Fair City

It’s a joy to welcome Cathy Mansell back to the blog to tell us about her recent book launch:

Cathy
with
Sharon Black on her right and Mary Bradford

Since my last visit in January 2015, good things have been happening. Galway Girl and Where the Shamrocks Grow have come out in paperback with Tirgearr Publishing and Magna large print. All four books out in audio by the end of 2015. Tirgearr has contracted my fifth book, Dublin's Fair City, and Magna have said they want that too. I couldn't be happier.

My recent book launch in Dublin to promote the Cathy Mansell Brand and my most recently published book, Where the Shamrock's Grow, was a great success but not without a few eye-openers along the way. The event took place in the lecture room of Blanchardstown Library.

Hard work went into arranging the venue. It took weeks to have the details confirmed. This particular library, I can't speak for other Irish libraries, don't do commercial. However, everyone I spoke to at the library was courteous and helpful. Yet it took many emails/phone calls before it was finally agreed by the powers that be that I could do a talk and sell my books at the same time.

Deciding to launch in another country is expensive, not to mention time-consuming where advertising the event is concerned. I approached websites, sent out flyers to libraries, newspapers and to people who were kind enough to advertise the event for me. Because the event took place in Ireland, I didn't have the opportunity of speaking with the organizers face to face, so, had to rely on things being ok when I got there.

Each book launch I've done has been a learning curve. For example; last year my Dublin book launch took place at my nephew’s. Over forty people turned up. It was a typical Irish get-together with family and friends, where I met my publisher for the first time. It was a great experience, and I sold lots of books. 

It never occurred to me that Irish library policies would be different to those of the UK. For instance; you can do a talk but are not allowed to sell books. No drinks or nibbles allowed. It would have been nice to have offered refreshments, as one lady travelled fifty miles from Cork.

I also discovered that, no matter how well prepared you are, you always need a plan 'B'.  My original plan to cover a two hour event gave sufficient time to each speaker with enough time at the end to sell books. As it happened, my publisher, Tirgearr, was unable to attend. I had advance warning that this might happen and totally understood the situation. I still had my guest speaker as a backup. However, I was totally thrown when he didn't show. Due to heavy Saturday traffic, people arrived late, and the event started half an hour later than planned. Still my guest hadn't arrived. I found myself in the position of having to improvise by lengthening my talk. I spoke about the inspiration behind each book. With the extra time, it enabled me to read a teaser from my newly contracted book Dublin's Fair City.

My husband had prepared a fun quiz on an excerpt I read from Where the Shamrock's Grow. It went down a treat. People were laughing and appeared to be having fun. The winner received a copy of the book. My granddaughter handed out a ticket to each person as they arrived for a free draw later.

The warmth and friendliness of the twenty-five people who turned up to support me was wonderful. I sold twenty-three books. It was certainly worth doing and in spite of the set-backs I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

Thank you for having me on the RNA Blog today.

About Cathy:

Cathy Mansell is an experienced writer of romantic fiction. Her early work was stories and articles published in national magazines. She edited an anthology of works funded by Arts Council England and appeared on the TV show Food Glorious Food 2012. Nowadays, she writes novels set in 19s Ireland, depicting the lifestyle and hardships of families in those days. Some of her characters become wound up in intricate criminal plots. She lives in rural Leicestershire with her husband, where she writes daily in her ‘Loft Study’

Links:

Amazon:

Website:  

Facebook: www.facebook.com/cathymansell4

Twitter:

Sounds like you had a wonderful experience, Cathy. Thank you for sharing.

The RNA blog is brought to you by 

Elaine Everest & Natalie Kleinman

If you would like to write for the RNA blog please contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com

Large Print: Another string to your bow?

Today we welcome Sarah Quirke to the blog. Sarah will be known to members through her work with Ulverscroft.

Welcome, Sarah. Many authors know the name Ulverscroft but can you tell us something about the company?

Ulverscroft Large Print Books has, under its umbrella, F.A. Thorpe Publishing, Isis and Magna – so between us we produce both large print and audio titles.  I work at F.A. Thorpe, which has been around for a while now; in fact, we celebrated our half-century earlier on this year!

Sarah Quirke

Thorpe Publishing was founded in 1964 by Dr Frederick Thorpe, who had a bit of a battle on his hands at the time. Publishers were reluctant to risk allowing their authors’ work to be reproduced in this new medium, but a chance meeting with Dame Agatha Christie changed that.  She thought the idea a great one, and gave Fred Thorpe permission to reproduce her titles in large print which, in turn, helped break down resistance throughout the industry. Today, the Ulverscroft Group is owned by a charity, the Ulverscroft Foundation, which supports research into and treatment of eye diseases. For example, the Foundation funds the Ulverscroft Unit at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children.

What does your job entail?

We’re a small team in the Publishing office (four of us, including me), so we work quite tightly together. I’ll be setting lists, while someone else is sorting out the cover artwork and editing down back cover blurbs.

A big part of what I do is sifting through the titles that are submitted to us (we’re surrounded by book-mountains in our office!) and deciding which ones to go for. There’s the nitty-gritty part of that – looking at production costs and sales figures and working out our margins – and the more mundane part: do we really need any more non-fiction titles on our ‘bought’ shelves at the moment? No, but we could do with getting some more mystery titles before next month...

Much of the time I’ll base my decision on an author’s previous sales records, and we have people who read submissions from authors we’ve not published before and write reports for us, which is very useful.  But sometimes a book will just grab you, and you know it’s worth offering on straight away. That was the case with Vikas Swarup’s Q&A (which eventually became the hit film Slumdog Millionaire), and with Emma Donoghue’s Room, which I knew was a winner the second I read the strapline on the proof’s cover.

Once I know I want to acquire a title, there’s the bidding process.  For the larger titles, it can sometimes be a case of a one-off bid securing the large print rights, but more often there’s an auction. It can be galling to wave good bye to a title you’ve set your heart on acquiring, but we win a lot of the auctions too!

What kinds of books do you accept for large print?

As a second rights publisher, we really only want to publish work that’s either already been published in standard print, or has been accepted for standard print publication. There’s also the practical consideration of word count, which has a bearing on whether a title will be suitable for our lists. We have our genre fiction lists – the Linford Romance, Mystery and Western imprints – which are shorter reads, and our Ulverscroft and Charnwood imprints. These latter two contain longer fiction and non-fiction titles, of varying genres.

Are there any subjects you avoid?

Some years ago there was a glut of ‘misery memoirs’ which, for the most part, I tended to avoid; there were also an awful lot of books with suspiciously Da Vinci Code-esque plots... I’d say the main criterion for our titles is that they have mass appeal, and I do think we have a good, wide selection of titles: light-hearted reads, thriller titles, serious and not-so-serious non-fiction, the occasional horror, a goodly amount of crime, some family sagas – basically, I think there’s something for everyone. I can’t walk through a bookshop now without a running commentary going through my head: ‘We’ve got that one… Oh, and that one.  Bidding on that one, fingers crossed…

Who is your typical reader?

I’m not sure we have a ‘typical’ reader.  Our titles are, of course, intended to be read by those with poor or failing eyesight, but just as there isn’t a typical person affected by macular degeneration, so there isn’t a typical reader.  This is why we try to get titles with a broad range of appeal into our lists.  It’s a shame that all books can’t be reproduced in larger print, but I think it’s great that we can provide a good number of titles, so that anyone who needs to make use of large print has a range to choose from when they head to their library.

How many books are submitted to libraries each year?

At F.A. Thorpe, we publish 36 titles per month across all our imprints, so that’s 432 titles per year available for libraries to buy. We also do one-off Special Collections – for example, we re-published almost all of Agatha Christie’s titles a few years ago, and we’re looking at doing something similar again with another author (yet to be confirmed!)

 

Do you write yourself?

Not yet!

How would we submit to you?

Those authors who are submitting titles for consideration for our Linford Romance series tend to email me. As many of you will know, we no longer set titles directly from the D.C. Thomson booklets. Instead, we now need to see the manuscript, so it’s helpful if this is attached as a Word document.

Sarah can be contacted on: s.quirke@ulverscroft.co.uk

Thank you for finding time to answer our questions, Sarah.

 

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Chatting with Cathy Mansell

Today we are delighted to welcome Cathy Mansell to the blog

Thank you Natalie and Elaine for having me as your guest today. It's a pleasure to be on the RNA blog again.

In 2013, when Shadow Across the Liffey became a contender for the Joan Hessayan award, I had no inkling of what was to come. You know that old saying; you wait ages for a bus and then three come along at the same time. That's the best way to describe what happened next. Two more books followed in quick concession. Her Father's Daughter in June 2013, and Shadow Across the Liffey came out in paperback. Galway Girl was released in May of this year, followed by paperback of Her Father's Daughter. Where the Shamrocks Grow, my recent novel, was released as an eBook this month. All published with Tirgearr Publishing who have mentioned doing paperbacks of Galway Girl, and Where the Shamrocks Grow, next year. If that wasn't enough excitement, Magna have taken all four books for library large print and audio. Audio is scheduled for 2015. This is a dream come true for me, and to say I feel fortunate, is putting it mildly. These four books went through the new writers' scheme where the feedback was invaluable. 

In a past life I edited an anthology of works funded by Arts Council England. I also appeared on the TV show Food Glorious Food in 2012. Nowadays, I write novels set in 19th century Ireland, depicting the lifestyle and hardships of families in those days, together with the emotions of her characters when they become wound up in intricate criminal plots. 

We asked Cathy a few questions: 

You began your writing career with short stories and articles. What made you decide to move to novel writing?

While writing articles for Woman's Way, Woman's Own and Yours etc., I embarked on writing my life story. Just for my family. It turned out to be 90,000 words. It was then that I realised I wanted to write novels and joined the RNA NWS in 2002. I still write the odd article and short story, but mainly stick to writing novels.

How much did your upbringing in Ireland help in the setting of your novels?

It helped enormously. Having lived my childhood and teenage years in Dublin, Ireland during the 1950s/60s, it gave me plenty of ideas. I write my stories around things and events of the rimes I remember, without having to do too much research.

Your latest novel, ‘Where the Shamrock Grows’, has recently been released. Is there another in the planning stage?

Oh, yes. I'm writing another romantic suspense set in the 60s Dublin. I'm half way through writing it, and have given myself a deadline to finish it by February 2015.         

How good are you at planning your work? Do you prefer to ‘wing it’?

I'm not that clever. I would never get away with "winging it!'  I'm a planner. The story is usually in my head long before I start to write it. I need to know where I'm going and work out a chapter chart and then I follow it like a map. It works for me.

Following that, how do you fit your writing round your family life?

That can be hard at times, especially with grandchildren. I have quite a few, so birthdays and Christmas can be expensive. My eldest granddaughter lives in Perth, Australia, and my son and his family live in New Zealand. Even so, I still have enough grandchildren here to keep me busy. My husband is amazing and gives me space to write. As a writer who loves writing stories, I will always find time to do what I love. Life is too short not to.

Finally, what aspect of your writing do you most enjoy?

All of it, but I have to admit there is a certain amount of satisfaction in editing the finished manuscript. I enjoy researching especially when it takes me over the sea to Ireland. One of my favourite places in the world.

‘Where the Shamrocks Grow’ is set against the backdrop of the Irish Civil War, Jo Kingsley is transported from her turbulent childhood to the sophisticated life at the beautiful Chateau Colbert. She meets Jean-Pierre, grandson of her employer Madame Colbert, and discovers the desire of men.

Destiny takes Jo to America where she experiences more than dreams of becoming a music teacher.

Amazon UK: Where the shamrocks grow

Amazon UK: Cathy’s Books on Amazon:

Contact: 
Facebook:    www.facebook.com/cathymansell4

Twitter:       https://twitter.com/cathymansell3

Linkedin:     http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/cathy-mansell/46/b50/550/

Website:     www.cathymansell.com

Thank you for joining us today, Cathy

This blog is brought to you by Elaine Everest and Natalie Kleinman. If you would like to write about the craft of writing or perhaps be interviewed about your writing life please contact us at elaineeverest@aol.com