Tuesday, 21 November 2017
The Second Cup by Sarah Marie Graye
Release Date: October 2017
Genres: Psychological
Today I'd like to welcome Sarah Marie Graye to the blog with an author interview. Lets find out a little about Sarah's book first!
Book Blurb
Book Blurb
Perfect for fans of Maggie
O'Farrell, Elizabeth Strout, Patrick McGrath and Nathan Filer.
Would your life unravel if
someone you knew committed suicide? Theirs did.
Faye's heart still belongs to
her first love, Jack. She knows he might have moved on, but when she decides to
track him down, nothing prepares her for the news that he's taken his own life.
Faye is left wondering how to move forward, and whether or not Ethan will let
her down again.
And when she tells her friends,
the news ripples through their lives too.
Abbie finds herself questioning
her marriage - and wondering if she was right to leave her first love behind.
Poor Olivia is juggling her job and her boyfriend with supporting her friends
and trying to deal with a death of her own. And Jack's death has hit Beth the
hardest - even though she never knew him. Is she about to take her own life
too?
While the four friends take it
in turns to explain what happens after Jack's suicide, third-person flashbacks
are skillfully interwoven to add a real richness and depth to this
heart-wrenching story.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW
Do you write under your real name or is this a pen name you
use?
Real name.
Where are you from?
I’m originally from Manchester,
United Kingdom. I’m a proud Mancunian, but I’m not sure I could live in a city
again - I seem to be sensitive to noise and air pollution. I now live on the
North Kent coast and count myself very lucky to breathe in sea air every day.
List 3 interesting facts about yourself.
1.
I went to the same
primary school as Noel and Liam Gallagher from the 90s indie rock band Oasis.
They are both older than me, so I didn’t know them, but Liam had a reputation
for getting into trouble, even back then!
2.
I only have one kidney
and I’ve also had half of one of my lungs removed (hence the love of clean sea
air). I’m very lucky that the organs I’ve had problems with are the ones you
have two of. You can survive with just one of either of them.
3.
I can hear the
tiniest high-pitched sounds, including dog whistles.
What was the first thing you ever had published?
When I first graduated from
university, I worked as a journalist, so I had a lot of work published. It
didn’t feel like ‘my’ work though, because I wasn’t writing what I wanted to.
My debut novel, The Second Cup, is the first creative piece of work I’ve had
published. I thought I’d have to self-publish, but managed to find an indie
publisher, Creativia, who were willing to take me on. I’m now part of a really
supportive creative family of authors, which is such an awesome place to be.
Do you have a writing routine?
I don’t have any routine at all.
I’m currently writing my second novel and my approach is completely different
from the first one. I’m hoping that this approach will become some kind of routine
for future novels as the main thing I’m trying to achieve is to avoid all the
errors in the process from first time round!
Do you have any writing rituals?
I need to be as comfy as
possible, so I like wearing my PJs and tying my hair up in a bun. When I’m
having a writing night (I don’t write during the day) I don’t allow myself to
sit down at my laptop until 11pm. I find that my creative juices start flowing
before then and by the time I sit down, I’m itching to go - rather than having
that ‘staring at a blank page’ feeling.
Where did the idea for your most recent book come from?
A friend of a friend committed
suicide and it really hit me, even though I didn’t really know them. It made me
think about how we can be affected by things one step removed from our lives. I
decided to develop the idea and look at how a group of friends would be
affected when someone just one of them knows kills themselves - and how nobody
in the group would be completely immune.
Who was the first person you shared your book with?
I wrote my novel as part of an
MA Creative Writing and London South Bank University. It’s a part-time
distance-learning course with scary residentials where you read your work out
to each other, so I shared parts of my writing as I went along. The first
person who read my novel from start to finish was my sister Helen, who was also
my first-stage proofreader.
Do you have a current work in progress?
Yes, I’m 10,000 words into my
second novel. It’s too fragile an idea to talk about in any great detail at the
moment, but it also looks at how mental health issues affect a group of friends.
Knowing that I’ve got Creativia to publish my work means I can focus just on
the writing side at the moment, which is lovely.
Do you have any advice for budding authors?
I would say listen to every
piece of advice anyone offers you, but discard what doesn’t make sense to your
way of writing. There’s no right or wrong way to write, but other people’s tips
can be really helpful - or a hindrance!
ABOUT SARAH MARIE GRAYE
Sarah Marie Graye was born in
Manchester, United Kingdom, in 1975, to English Catholic parents. One of five
daughters, to the outside world Sarah Marie's childhood followed a relatively
typical Manchester upbringing... until aged 9, when she was diagnosed with
depression. It's a diagnosis that has stayed with Sarah Marie over three
decades, and something she believes has coloured every life decision. Now in
her early 40s, and with an MA Creative Writing from London South Bank
University (where she was the vice-chancellor's scholarship holder), Sarah
Marie has published her debut novel - about family, friendships and mental
health.
Amazon author page:
Website:
Creativia page:
Twitter:
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