Now I know Martina Cole is not a chick lit author but she has come to my attention as I've been sent her new book, The Business, to review. Whilst I don't think I could read it at the moment, being pregnant my dreams are extremely vivid enough without reading about gangland crime, I will have a go once the baby pops out. I am, however, fascinated by Martina's own story on how she became a full time bestselling writer. So this week, the spotlight is on her.
The more I find out about Martina, the more inspired I get. She was born and raised in Essex in 1959. She has had what many people would call a hard life, her first boyfriend was a bank robber, her parents died when she was young and she became a single mother living in a carpet-less council flat at the age of nineteen. But she doesn't regret any of it.
She began writing her first novel, Dangerous Lady, at the age of twenty but put it in a drawer for a decade. The turning point came when the old lady she was nursing (Martina was an agency nurse by then) told her it wasn't the things she did but the things she didn't do that she'd regret. She immediately bought an electronic typewriter and, over the next six months, redrafted her story. She sent it to an agent and bam, received a phone call from him wanting to sign her up. This was 1992. Since then she has written a book almost every year.
Her books have been described as violent, but she reckons this wouldn't be such an issue if she was a man. She has also been accused of romanticising violence, but she begs to differ. My books show the causes of violence and its after-effects. You've got to talk to male authors about romanticising violence.
So besides not wanting to regret the things she didn't do, what else drives her? Simply that, like many other successful writers, I just write something that I'd want to read.
To read more I got much of my information from this interview in The Times and from Martina's website.
