Margaret James
The Wedding Diary is a romantic comedy about a woman who enters a competition to win a fabulous dream wedding. Cat Aston hears she’s won first prize a couple of weeks after her fiancé disappears on a self-finding mission. So what does she do? Goes to meet the fearsome PR supremo who organised the competition and tries to fib her way through the meeting, crossing her fingers and hoping her fiancé will turn up again.
Then Cat meets Adam Lawley, who is nursing a badly broken heart and has sworn on his beloved vintage Volvo never to fall in love again.
Maybe he’d like to marry someone, after all?
How much does teaching influence your own work?
My students teach me far more than I teach them. When I was new to writing fiction myself, I made all the classic mistakes – using the opening chapters to set up the situation rather than get the hero and heroine acting and reacting, losing the hero or heroine half way through the story, forgetting to tie up loose ends, killing people off then realising I needed them after all. If I’m not careful, I still do all these things. But teaching other people to write fiction and reading their work reminds me that I should practice what I preach.
What advice do you give to all your students?
Read other people’s books, especially those in your own chosen genre. Then you will absorb good practice, learn what works and doesn’t work, see how the stories are constructed and also notice how novels are presented on the page.
You are an active member of the Romantic Novelist’s Association so what does that involve?
These days, it involves having a lot of fun, seeing and chatting to other writers at parties, lunches and the annual conference, and talking to industry professionals who can help me in my own career. I was on the RNA committee for six years where my job was organising the RNA’s New Writers’ Scheme. This is a brilliant way for yet-to-be-published novelists to get their work read by published writers and also put in front of publishers and literary agents. But anyone who wants to join the RNA as a New Writer has to be quick. The scramble for NWS places begins each year in January and, thanks to its proven success in getting new writers published, the scheme is hugely over-subscribed.
Please tell us about your contribution to the Loves Me, Loves Me Not anthology.
My story The Service of My Lady is about a modern-day knight in shining armour – a delivery van driver who rescues a victim of domestic violence and takes her to a place of safety. He knows she’ll never fall for him and that his courage will need to be its own reward, but he rescues her anyway. What a hero!
When did your interest in archaeology begin?
I’ve always loved digging up the past. When I was little, I lived in a house which had been built on the site of a railway goods yard, and I found all kinds of treasures – clay pipes, coins, buttons, nails, glass bottles, all fascinating relics of the past. I studied Anglo-Saxon Archaeology as part of my degree course at London University. The last time I did any organised digging was in East London on the site of an old Roman road, turning up zillions of oyster shells and bits of clay flagon – the burger boxes and Coke cans of yesteryear.
Who do you most like to read?
I’m a greedy reader who loves stories. Tell me a good story, dear author, and I’ll read your book, fact or fiction, historical or contemporary, fantasy or grounded firmly in the real world. Some recent great fiction reads include Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, A Theory of Relativity by Jacquelyn Mitchard, The Longest Ride by Nicholas Sparks and The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford. As for non-fiction – I’m working my way through all Eric Newby’s travelogues for the second time. They’re fabulously funny and very informative about places I know I shall never visit – far too many snakes and spiders.
What is your writing process?
I’m a planner. I start with a character and wonder what happened to this person, then I plan his/her life history, before, during and after the novel I’m hoping to write. The novel will be about the big challenge or choice this person had to face or make at some stage, but I need to know what happened before and afterwards, otherwise I couldn’t write the story.
What is next for you?
One of the characters in The Wedding Diary has an interesting story to tell, so at the moment I’m talking to this person and finding out about her life. She’s seriously damaged and she probably ought to end up with sweet, kind, possibly little-bit-boring man. But she meets a man who is even more challenged and damaged and they’re instantly attracted. Oops, he’s married and has children. She’s single and recently bereaved. It’s going to be a bit of a roller coaster ride but hopefully quite funny, too – now and again.