Heaven Can Wait - Cally Taylor

(Note to reader: I’ve a SIGNED, copy of ‘Heaven Can Wait’ by Cally Taylor to giveaway and all details can be found at the end of this rather long (but thoroughly interesting) post)

‘What would I do without you, Lucy Brown?’ he said, and kissed me softly. I held his face in my hands and kissed him back. I felt that life just couldn’t get any more perfect. And I was right, it wouldn’t.

By the end of the next day, I’d be dead.

It’s the night before Lucy’s wedding. She’s marrying the man of her dreams; kind, handsome, funny Dan. Everything’s going to plan and she’ll next see Dan as she walks up the aisle, but then Lucy falls from a ladder and breaks her neck. And, as is the way when people die, Lucy wakes to find herself in Limbo (halfway between Heaven and Earth) and with a decision to make. She can go to Heaven and wait for Dan to die or she can attempt to pass a task which will enable her to live as a ghost on Earth. Unable to accept a lifetime’s separation from her soul mate, Lucy decides that she’ll face the task. But, there’s a problem. Becoming a ghost isn’t as straight forward as Lucy had hoped and she finds herself living in the House of Wannabe Ghosts, which is grotty student-style accommodation in North London. Lucy has only three weeks to complete her almost impossible task. Things are ridiculously hard. And then when Lucy discovers that her so-called friend Anna is determined to make a move on the heart-broken, vulnerable Dan, the pressure is truly on…

Supernatural meets geek meets romance and within ‘Heaven Can Wait’ Cally Taylor offers a new voice to romantic fiction. The writing is sharp, fresh, quirky and emotionally rewarding. I have no doubt that Cally Taylor’s original style and voice will have modern readers connecting with the refreshingly current characters. This debut has already been sold to a number of countries and this author, I’m convinced, is ‘one to watch’.

Asking Cally Taylor:

Your journey into publication is inspirational. Can you tell that story again, for those who read this blog and don’t know you? I’ve always written but it wasn’t until 2005, when I came to the end of a one year creative writing evening class in Brighton, that I decided to start writing ‘seriously’ and try and get some short stories published.

One of the first things I did was join an online short story critique group that I’ll call “Kickarse” for the sake of this interview. Kickarse had a fantastic reputation – especially for its members winning or placing in competitions – but its leader had a fearsome reputation for being blunt and outspoken. It took me a long time to get up the guts to join but I eventually did it. I learned a lot about the craft of fiction while I was there and had some success in low level literary competitions and magazines but it wasn’t just my arse that was kicked - it was my ego. Over and over again my stories were slated for being too ‘womag’, too commercial or too lightweight. No matter how hard I tried to improve the feedback was always the same and I started to believe that everything I wrote was crap. It wasn’t long before writing stopped being a joy and became something so soul-destroying I seriously considered giving up writing forever…until I received the phone call that gave me my oomph back.

That phone call was the editor of Woman’s Own magazine telling me that my story “Wish You Were Here” was a runner-up in their short story competition – beating thousands of other entrants. That’s when it hit me – I wasn’t a crap writer, I just wasn’t a literary writer. I was a commercial one. That realisation changed everything.

The day “Wish You Were” was published I sent an email to one of my best friends from school (I’ll call her L). L and I hadn’t seen each other for a few years - contact was a card at Christmas or a brief chat at someone’s wedding - but I really wanted her to read my story because the setting, a bench on the top of the Malvern Hills, was important to us. I thought L would get a kick out of reading a story set on the bench where we’d talked about boys, drunk hot chocolate from the local cafe and scratched out obscene graffiti with a biro, replacing it with something innocuous and silly instead.

Only L never received my email.

Four day after I’d sent it I received a phone call telling me that L had suffered a brain aneurism and died, leaving behind a husband, and two children under the age of three.

Life was short, I realised as L’s dad stood up at her funeral and read out the letter I’d sent him about our magical bench on the Malvern Hills, far too short to keep putting off your dreams ‘until tomorrow’. My dream had always been to write a novel but I’d put it off for years telling myself I had plenty of time. Seven months later, in March 2007, I started writing “Heaven Can Wait”.

I wrote like I was possessed and completed my 100,000 word first draft in three months and three weeks. I was ecstatic that I’d managed it - I’d written a novel! - but I didn’t want to stop there. The novel needed editing, a lot, and I was starting to believe that maybe, just maybe I could get it published.

In September 2007 I bought a copy of the Writers and Artists Yearbook and looked through it, ticking the agents that represented women’s fiction and chicklit. I shortlisted half a dozen and sent off six brown envelopes. Three days later I received my first rejection. It was personalised but still a no. A couple of days after that I received a phone call from Darley Anderson. He said he’d liked what he’d read and could I send him the rest of my novel? Could I? I hardly slept for the next three nights as I read through my novel again and made a few more tweaks before I sent it off. I didn’t hear anything for six more weeks - but did receive a couple of other rejections - then finally, in January 2008, my phone rang. It was Darley. I was on tenterhooks as I answered it, so hopeful that this was the phone call I’d dreamed about - the one where I was offered representation - but by the end of the conversation I was in tears. The novel showed a lot of promise, Darley told me but there was no way he could represent me or show it to any publishers in its current state, I’d have to do a lot more work on it.

I was gutted, and certain there was no way I could turn my novel into the book Darley thought it could be. For a few months I did nothing. I was scared that if I edited my book and sent it back I’d get a definite NO but eventually the fear ebbed away and was replaced with a ‘sod it, if I don’t try I’ll never know’ attitude and I set to work.

At the end of June 2008 I sent off my complete manuscript for the second time. I heard nothing for three months and just had shortlisted a second set of agents to approach when my phone rang. It was Madeleine Buston, Head of Foreign Rights at the Darley Anderson Agency. She told me Darley had given her my revised manuscript to read on the train up to Scotland from London and it had made her laugh and cry. She’d loved it so much in fact, that she’d asked Darley if she could represent me! As she excitedly told me about her plans for my book and the publishers she wanted to approach I just kept waiting for the ‘but’. There had to be one. As the phone call came to an end I couldn’t bear it anymore and said “So..er…are you my agent then?” and she said “Yes!”. The second she rang off I burst into tears.

One month later I had a two book deal with Orion and Maddie had sold my book to Brazil. Since then she’s gone on to sell it to Germany, Spain, Russia, Hungary, Taiwan and China. It truly has been the most astonishing year of my life - definitely stressful in places - but pretty damned magical too.

So, what would be your advice to someone who’d just today received a rejection letter from an agent or publisher? Don’t let it stop you. Honestly. Keep getting it out there - you just need to find that one agent that’s right for you and your book.

I’ve got rejection letters from agents telling me that

- they aren’t a fan of novels written in the first person
- my premise is ‘too strange’
- that UK publishers won’t take a chance on a supernatural romantic-comedy

but look what happened - my strange, first person, supernatural romantic-comedy novel has just been published! You just need an agent that ‘gets you’ and it’s a matter of sending out your novel again and again until you find them. If I’d sent my novel out to forty-nine agents before I sent it to Darley I might have been rejected forty-nine times before signing with his agency. I just got lucky and he was in the first batch of six.

Saying that, if you get personalised rejections and the agents all comment on the same element of your book (the twist doesn’t work, the characters are weak or whatever) you might want to fix that before sending it on to some more.

Is it true that you work full time and write? Do you ever have any spare time? In many ways I have a lot more time than other authors I know because I don’t have any children but I do have a full time job that involves sitting at the computer a lot. Some days I spend a good 12 hours hour a day staring at the screen (eight hours for work, another four for writing) and there isn’t time for much else. When I wrote “Heaven Can Wait” I wrote nearly every night and basically gave up my social life for four months.

When I started writing my second book I thought that was a bit of an unhealthy way to live so gave myself longer to finish the first draft so I could actually go out every now and then! Unfortunately giving myself more of a social life meant no time to take a break before I started editing it (I was given 12 months to write the second book) and I do feel a bit chained to the computer sometimes. On the plus side I watch less trashy TV now although I do have a bit of a binge on TV boxed sets like Prison Break or The Wire on a rare day off!

Writers often find redrafting and self-editing difficult. Can you offer any words of wisdom? It’s definitely a good idea to give yourself a break between writing the first draft and editing/re-drafting so you’re not as close to your novel when you return to it. It also helps to split editing into different stages so you don’t tie yourself up in knots trying to fix everything at once.

I do an initial edit where I read through my novel and fix any immediate issues – like structure problems, filling in missing text or deleting redundant scenes. In theory the story should flow once I’ve finished that edit but I’ll still go through and check:

- the story arc. - the character arcs. - the balance between active and reactive scenes. - the time line, setting, weather etc. - the dialogue, making sure none of the characters have accidently lost their voice or stolen someone else’s. - that the funny bits are funny – if they don’t make me grin I rewrite them. - that the sad bits are sad – if they don’t move me emotionally I rewrite them. - then I’ll go through and tighten up the prose and make sure all my chapter beginnings pull the reader in and my chapter endings compel them to turn the page.

My final edit is reading the whole novel aloud to hear how it sounds (reading a novel aloud is the closest you can get to ‘hearing’ how a reader would read it). I’ve probably missed out loads of other stages but that’s pretty close to my process.

Who do you feel would be your ideal reader? Someone who’s a romantic at heart, laughs when people trip over in the street and cries at the X-Factor! More seriously, anyone who likes a light, romantic, escapist read that’ll make them laugh and cry (hopefully).

What do you plan to write next? I’m currently editing my second novel (initial edit stage) and don’t have much time left until I have to deliver it to my editor on 1^st December. Like “Heaven Can Wait” it’s a supernatural romantic-comedy but this one is about guardian angels rather than ghosts. I’ve already started thinking about novel 3 but I’m trying to push out of my mind until I’ve completed all the edits for this book.

Can you offer any tips for people wanting to be published? Write what you’re compelled to write. In some ways I took a risk writing a supernatural romantic-comedy because there was no market for supernatural romantic-comedy in the UK at the time (even if it was/is very popular in the States) but it was the only book I wanted to write.

What are you currently reading? I’ve got two books on the go at the moment – well, temporarily abandoned while I try and finish novel 2 – “One Day” by David Nicholls and “The Truth about Melody Browne” by Lisa Jewell.

If you weren’t a (fabulous) writer, what would you like to be (when you grow up)? Marcia Brady from the Brady Bunch. No? Okay, I’d like to be a kick-ass FBI agent or a Criminal Psychologist like Cracker. Seriously. Can I be one?

And, finally, (with the skilful smoothness of the finest of interviewers) do you in any way know Simon Cowell? No but one of my friends who knows a cameraman who works on the X-Factor!

You can buy ‘Heaven Can Wait’ here.

And, the lovely Cally has agreed that I can give away a signed copy of ‘Heaven Can Wait’. All you have to do is leave a ‘please pick me’ comment by 3pm (GMT) October 23, then I’ll pop all names in a mug and ask a small child to select a winner. This competition is open to all.

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About the author: Cally Taylor was born in Worcester, spent her childhood guarded by soldiers in Germany (oh okay, her Dad was in the army) and has lived in Brighton for the last eleven years (the longest she’s ever lived in any city). When she was eight Cally was asked what she wanted to be when she grew up. She knew she wanted to be an author but told her teacher she wanted to be Marcia from the Brady Bunch instead. Shortly afterwards Cally received a rejection letter from Penguin Publishers; her book The Evil Weed (complete with illustrations and wool binding) wasn’t quite what they were looking for. Twenty-*cough* years, and several more rejections, later Cally finally became an author, but still doesn’t feel like a proper grown up. In 2006 Cally started blogging about her attempt to get published and regular readers have followed her all the way to the, hopefully, happy ending. Cally also has a website.