![]() Nightingale Point had already been widely reviewed in the press and I’d even been on BBC Radio 2 to talk about it with Jo Whiley. My debut launched last summer, just five days after I collected up my boxes of Milk Tray and Best Teacher Mugs on the last day of term. The school day is busy and we already use up so much energy saying ‘well done’ to the kid who managed not to throw a chair at us, that we rarely say it to each other. But overall, no one was really that interested. ![]() Queue rumours about my erotic writing side line and nickname 50 Shades of Goldie. When my colleagues found out the immediate question was, ‘What, books for children?’ to which I mistakenly answered, ‘No, adults.’ ![]() But the reoccurring piece of advice I kept hearing from writers was ‘don’t quit your day job’. This is it, I thought, I’m going to quit teaching, sell millions of books, start drinking whisky and buy a château. I wanted to call her straight away but had to wait, because nothing shits on an early reader more than someone hurrying them up so they can make a call. I snuck a look and saw my agent’s message ‘we have an offer from HarperCollins’. Then, a year later, I was in the middle of a Year 1 reading session when my phone buzzed in my pocket. ![]() After two close calls with major publishers the book failed to sell and I began to write something new. ![]()
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