Joan Hessayon Contenders 2017: Vivien Hampshire

Today we welcome another of our contenders for the Joan Hessayon award.

Welcome to the RNS blog, Vivien, and many congratulations on being one of the contenders for this year’s award.

How long have you been writing - Is this your first published piece?

I started writing fiction more than twenty years ago, and won the Mail on Sunday’s annual ‘Best

Opening to Novel’ competition at my first attempt. This attracted an agent and the finished book did the rounds of all the big publishers without success. If only digital publishing had been around then I might have been published a lot sooner! Since then I have concentrated most of my efforts on writing short stories for women’s magazines although I did also self-publish a short e-book novel in 2012.

How many years were you a member of the NWS and did you submit a manuscript each year?

I graduated during my fourth year. In year one I only submitted a partial, then completed the book for my year two submission. ‘How To Win Back Your Husband’ was my third year book, and I have since sent another through in year four.

What came first, agent or publisher?

I did have an agent representing me for a different book a year or two ago, but we have since parted company. That book and ‘How To Win Back Your Husband’ were both taken up following direct submissions to publishers.

How did you find your publisher?

I had never heard of HQ Digital until I attended the RNA Conference in Lancaster last summer. After a one-to-one and then listening to their editors giving a talk, I sent the manuscript in and it was accepted within just a few weeks.

Do you have a contract for one book or more?

Just one with this publisher, but my year one/two NWS manuscript has since found a home with Harper Impulse who have given me a two book contract, under a different author name!

When was your book published?

It came out as an e-book on 18 January, and I held a lovely online launch party with competitions and prizes to welcome it into the world.

Tell us something about your book

Nicci has made a huge mistake that her husband Mark can neither forgive nor forget. It’s in the middle of her own divorce party that Nicci realises she will always love him and just can’t let him go. So, with the help of a scatty best friend, an old lady she has never met, and a little bit of Christmas magic, she sets out to regain his trust, earn his forgiveness and save her marriage. But she only has thirty days to do it before the decree absolute ruins everything. The clock is ticking!

What are you currently working on?

I am in the final stages of editing my book ‘Lily Alone’ for Harper Impulse, which comes out as an e-book in June and paperback in October. This one does have romantic elements but also looks at the much more serious issue of child abandonment and will be published under my married name of Vivien Brown.

What piece of advice would you give current members of the NWS?

It’s easy to feel disheartened and overwhelmed when confronted with a blank page, a jumble of ideas and too little time. Look upon your novel as your baby, taking many months to develop inside you before it sees the light of day. When it’s ‘born’, people will offer advice and help – so listen carefully and don’t ever turn that help down – but in the end you have to do what feels right for you. Write from your heart. Look forward, never back. Want that publishing deal more than anything else in the world, and you just might get it!

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Thank you, Vivien. Congratulations again on graduating the New Writers’ Scheme and I hope you enjoy the Summer Party.

Vivien Hampshire: A successful route to publication

It is such a pleasure to invite Vivien Hampshire to the RNA blog. Viv is known to many of us due to the years she’s spent as a successful published writer. Viv, tells us about her journey to becoming an author and how she wrote for her living along the way.

Thank you for inviting me onto the blog today.

Although ‘How to Win Back Your Husband’, published by Harlequin HQ on 18 January, is my first

commercially published novel, I have actually been writing for a very long time. I won the annual ‘Best Opening to a Novel’ competition run by the Mail on Sunday way back in 1994 and then came second two years later. Both of those were just short 150-word pieces written to draw readers in and make them want to read on. Having beaten around 5000 other entrants to make it to the winners list, I had clearly got that bit right, but sadly the full length novels that grew out of them never made it to publication.

With young children at home and limited time to myself, I turned my hand to short stories. They were quicker to write and far more likely to bring some more immediate financial reward. I sold my first – an emotional family story based at Christmas - to Woman’s Weekly in 1997, and have continued to write and sell stories to all the usual UK women’s magazines on a pretty regular basis ever since. I have stories in issues of both Woman’s Weekly and The People’s Friend Special this month, and usually manage to get one into the People’s Friend Annual every year too!

As my confidence as a writer grew, I also ventured into poetry and non-fiction. Several funny poems for young children found their way into school anthologies published by Macmillan, and I won a few minor poetry competition prizes, including an all-inclusive weekend hotel break, only spoilt by the fact that they misspelled my name and had me living in the wrong home town in hundreds of printed copies of the love poetry booklet they gave away free to all their hotel and wedding guests! 

By day, I was working with young children in libraries and children’s centres. So I started pitching article ideas to nursery and childcare magazines, got myself regular commissions, joined the editorial board of one of them, and have now had over 250 articles and children’s book reviews published in that field. I also drew on my hobby of tackling cryptic crosswords and wrote my first book, ‘How To Crack Cryptic Crosswords’ (How To Books), and started a small business compiling my own personalised crosswords as gifts, with all clues individually tailored to the recipient. 

Joining a creative writing evening class and then a local writers’ group early in my career was probably the best move I ever made. I came across like-minded people, learnt a lot about technique, found out about markets, and began to share my work and receive criticism. Within a few years, I ended up both teaching the evening classes and running the local group! Writers’ holidays at Caerleon followed (I went eleven times!) bringing me into contact with some lovely writers who have remained good friends, and I joined the Society of Women Writers and Journalists, where I now serve on Council and administer the Society’s competition programme.

With the children grown up and gone, I made the decision at the end of 2013 to quit my job and write full-time. I had self-published an e-book novel which had some very good reviews, but I lacked the marketing expertise to make it a sales success, and the urge to get a novel accepted and published by a ‘real’ publisher had started to rear its head. I had a feeling it was now or never… so that’s when I turned to the experts, the RNA. 

I spent four years in the New Writers Scheme and, despite briefly having an agent who didn’t manage to get me a deal, two of the novels I submitted to the NWS have now found publishing contracts. The first, ‘How to Win Back Your Husband’, is out now as an e-book, with the second to be published by Harper Impulse under my married name of Vivien Brown in the summer, and another contracted for 2018. The original contacts with both my editors were made as a result of short but very successful one-to-one meetings at last year’s conference in Lancaster. No agent. Just me chatting to the right people, and showing them the right manuscript at the right time. What a result!

Vivien Hampshire xx

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Thank you, Vivien, and good luck with your very busy 2017.

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