How the Alpha Company Women Series began
I’ve been asked quite a few times, how I came to start writing my books, and I’m never sure whether people want the truth, or whether they want a witty anecdote!
So, here’s the truth!
Boredom!
Honestly! I was sitting in my living room, with my laptop on my knees (because where else would it be?) and there was nothing on TV. My husband was playing a game on his phone, the kids were off doing whatever, and I was contemplating all the other things I could be doing.
Thankfully, I managed to resist the lure of the dirty dishes (imagine if I hadn’t!), and remained deaf to the siren’s call of the vacuum cleaner, and decided instead that I was going to write something.
Half an hour later and my husband finally looked up from his phone, obviously distracted by the noise I was making, tapping away on the keyboard, and said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘I’m writing a story!’ I announced, as thought it should have been obvious to any idiot, daring him to challenge my as yet undiscovered talent. Yeah, take that, husband o’ mine!
As is his normal habit, he rolled his eyes at me, and carried on playing on his phone. (Nothing new there!)
So, I carried on, trying to get Ellen’s story fixed in my head, and typed halfway through the night.
One thing most people don’t know, is that I actually had to rewrite the whole of the first chapter again, because when I finished the book and read it back, it didn’t quite work.
I guess, being new to writing, I hadn’t developed my ‘style’ yet, in those first few chapters, and hadn’t decided whether I was going to be writing in the first person or the third person. In the first chapter I kept jumping between referring to Ellen as ‘she’, and then having her talking about herself as ‘I’. It was all very confused, so it had to be changed.
The amount of satisfaction I got from finishing that first book was huge. I’d actually done it. But I wasn’t stopping there!
No sooner had I finished the first book than I already knew what the second book was going to be about, so I carried on. I think I was afraid that if I stopped, I’d lose interest and take up knitting or something!
Fat chance of that!
I fell in love with writing again, and as I created my new characters, I fell in love with them too.
Writing sex scenes is an interesting part of the process I must say.
While I was writing Invisible, I think I blushed every time I had to type ‘breast’ or ‘nipple’. Ridiculous for a grown woman, right? But, it’s not language we use all the time, so you feel self-conscious even typing it.
It’s fair to say that by book four, I’d lost the ability to blush, (as those of you who’ve read three and four will know!) and was just trying to make sure hands and other body parts, were in the right place doing the right thing! It’s actually harder to write a good sex scene than you might think, and having read some truly awful ones in other books, I do try and make sure that I make them as believable and realistic as possible.
And no, I haven’t tried half of what appears in my books!
I just have a very active imagination, and have occasionally drawn inspiration from scenes I’ve read in other books that were well-written. I know what I like to read in a sex scene, and a lot of it has to do with the emotional connection between characters, so that’s what I try and get across in my stories. (For the hundredth time, my books are not erotica!)
Besides, those first sex scenes were written when I thought nobody would ever read my books. It got a lot harder to write them once I knew my friends and family would be reading them. (Especially my mother! Eep!)
It actually took me less than six months to write the first five books, but that was literally spending every single free minute tapping away, reducing my sleep to maybe four hours a night, and even taking my laptop to America on holiday, where I continued to tap away every free minute and for half the return flight!
Those first few months, when I just concentrated on writing, really were the blissful days before I started publishing my books, when I was writing them just for me and purely for the enjoyment of writing!
I’d only told a couple of people I was writing again, and my BFF nagged me into letting her read Invisible, against my better judgement. I was convinced that as they were ‘just my stories’, they were bound to be rubbish!
When she came back and said she loved it, I thought she’d gone nuts, but when I realised that she’d been laughing in the right places and crying in the right places, I wondered if perhaps she might be on to something.
Anyway, she eventually read the rest, loved all of them, and convinced me to think of publishing them. (Which is my way of saying that if you hated my books, it wasn’t my fault!)
Now, here is my confession – when the books first went up on Amazon, I had no idea how poorly edited they were. You think you’re reading them and spotting mistakes, but honestly, you go word blind. So, if you were one of the small handful of people who got the original versions, I am so sorry! How nobody gave me a one star review for poor punctuation, I have no idea. (I was so excited with what I was writing that I got somewhat trigger happy with my exclamation marks, and had to go back and remove hundreds from each book.)
Thankfully, I got straight back to editing and re-editing them, over and over until they reached a point where I was reasonably happy with them. They’re not perfect, and people still come back to me with an odd bit of missing punctuation or a typo (a big thank you to everyone who has done that), but I correct every single word I find that’s wrong, every time it’s brought to my attention, trying to make it as close to perfect as possible. (Seriously, the Amazon Kindle people must be so sick of my one-word edits!) However, when you consider I’ve published close to 2.5 million words, without the luxury of a professional editor, hopefully I’ll be forgiven if there are one or two typos still out there somewhere.
I started Impossible as soon as the other books were uploaded to Amazon, but because of the edits to the earlier books, it took me nearly three months to write it.
Thankfully, I did a lot of the editing for Impossible as I was going along, so it was in a much better place to start with, when I’d finished it.
Eventually, my trusty laptop died on me (well the fan inside died, which meant it was constantly overheating and shutting down on me) and in September I finally gave in and bought a new one, and although I’m not a fan of Windows 10, I’m getting used to it.
Relentless was mostly written on my shiny new laptop, which, I discovered, had the added bonus of being able to read to me, which was a massive help in the editing process.
I also recruited an expanded band of helpers, including my mum, my BFF, a fabulous work colleague (who read all of the first series on her phone!), and a wonderful lady from America who helped me get all of the Britishisms translated into Americanisms (you know what I mean!) for my American characters. I knew about things like trousers/pants, handbag/purse, boot/trunk etc., but there are so many more. We truly are two nations divided by a common language!
I’m working on the whole social media side of things, but honestly, I’m not a fan of Facebook and Twitter (which I have yet to set up), because, frankly, I don’t understand them or the constant need to publish everything about my life! My books are something I love to talk about, but the rest of it, not so much. Besides, I struggle to find my way around the pages of Facebook, especially on my phone. (Can somebody please tell me why Facebook keeps messaging me telling me I have 65 new notifications (and rising)? I DON’T!)
This lack of comprehension is ridiculous really, seeing as I’ve managed to get my head around formatting and publishing books, not only on Amazon (which is pretty easy) but also Smashwords (which definitely isn’t!)
By the way, if you’re a budding author looking to publish your book, definitely start with Amazon KDP as they’re really straightforward and easy to use, but also check out Smashwords, which isn’t just an e-book seller, but is also a distributer to other outlets, such as Nook, Kobo, Apple etc., and even if you don’t publish with them, the founder, Mark Coker, has written some fabulous guides and blogs on publishing, which you should definitely read. I loved it when I was laboriously trying to follow his reformatting instructions, and I got to step six or seven and the advice was to, ‘Go hug a loved one!’ immediately prior to telling them not to disturb you for the next few hours. Excellent advice that I try to apply to any number of situations.
Anyway, as I was saying, my inability to grasp anything to do with social media must be an emotional thing, rather than a lack of practical ability. After all, I’ve created this webpage with the aid of a ‘how to’ blog and a bit of trial and error.
Not so dumb after all, am I? Well, yeah, famous last words! Hopefully the site hasn’t crashed and you’re not sitting there laughing at me!
Anyway, year one writing the Alpha Company Series was pretty mental, and totally absorbing, and by year two and the Stalwart Security Series I realised that I had to slow down.
As a consequence, I try and produce three books a year which gives me thee months to write and one month to edit each book.
Considering I work full time as well, I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
2018 and 2019 saw some ill health creeping in, and when my back went completely last year I was left in agony for months. It slowed down the writing, and meant I had to make a lot of changes.
2020 brought new health problems, but this time for my mum and mother in law. Sadly my mother in law passed away in March, just as my mother was released from hospital after two months, and then all of a sudden, what had started like an awful year for us as a family turned into a horrible year for the whole world.
I’m still looking around me like I can’t believe this is all really happening!
So, anyway, that’s pretty much the story so far.
I’m always still working on the latest book, and hoping you guys are going to like it as much as the one before.
Hopefully we’ll be out of lockdown before you get to read it!
Best wishes,
Beth Abbott
xx