| Sarah Ball |
 Sarah Ball was born in Loughborough in 1973 (a town famous for producing athletes and big bells!). She left school with a weird notion that she wanted to write and sat about writing poetry until necessity and concerned family made her get a job. She worked for a time as an assistant manager and chef at a local vegetarian café and during this time, met and married her husband David. She now lives in Cambridge with David and her two children, Ellie and Sam. Nine Months is her first novel. Written In The Stars  A look at friendship and romance. Gemma re-discovers a 'time capsule' she and her friends made when they were 14, and is astonished to see that her friend Miranda's predictions for their futures have proved uncannily accurate. However that turns to alarm when her boyfriend proposes, since Miranda had warned her not to marry the first man who asked her. What should she do? Nine Months  Holly’s boyfriend Tom leaves her for a year travelling abroad with more than a passionate memory of their last night together. Holly is having a baby and Tom is uncontactable. Readers' Comments: The blurb sounds banal but actually this is really a sweet, very enjoyable tale with likeable characters. An easy, gentle read. 8/10  click here to buy Nine Months  Marry Me (review by author Shari Low) Abby has visualised the wedding day since she first fell in love with Nathan at school. Now that day has come everything is perfect. Everything, that is, except for the bride. For the girl walking up the aisle isn't Abby, it's her friend Rebecca. Now Abby has to accept it's time to move on and build a new life, one that doesn't include Nathan, or maybe it does... Reader's review: This is a storming follow up to Sarah's debut Nine Months. It focuses on a group of twenty-somethings as they attempt to make sense of their lives, loves and friendships. Ball cleverly plots the novel against a backdrop of eighties music which will have you digging through your old record collections late in the night. If you now have a gaping void following the demise of Cold Feet, pick up this book, and your withdrawal symptoms will be gone by chapter two. click here to buy Marry Me Sarah's Diary March 2003 Sarah updates Chicklit on how her new novel is progressing…. Word count for novel-in-progress: 21,737 (Aaarghhh! At this rate it'll take me forty years and will be a mad old lady, lamenting to my sceptical grandchildren that I once had a book in Safeway). Number of times have gone book spotting this month: about 4 (very restrained) although I've discovered that Cambridge Waterstones has a computer that'll tell you the number of copies in stock of any book, in any of their shops in the country, so of course I've taken to entering in my book titles. Shall no doubt be barred from there any day now… I've decided that it's almost impossible to get anything done these days - I'm supposed to be handing in a finished manuscript for my third novel at the end of the summer and during the whole of March I managed, maybe, 2000 words! It's not that I don't want to write - I'm itching to sit down and get on with it, there's just so little time. We've just bought an old house that I'm determined to decorate immediately in case my visitors think that it was me that chose the weird, mushroom coloured paintwork and crazy carpets, and I also have a two year old son who can't go to the local playgroup until he's toilet-trained, and has now, to my horror, taken to stripping from the waist down and doing it pigeon-style whilst he's going along. For these reasons, I have about ten minutes a day to cram in some writing before I fall comatose on the sofa. With the third book taking longer than the first two to write, I had a panic recently that anyone who had heard of me will have forgotten by the time the third one comes out, and so I spent several late nights coming up with short stories and articles to submit. It's been a while since I've sent anything out unsolicited and I'd forgotten how agonising it is! But I have got the launch of 'Marry Me', my second novel, to look forward to, which is due out in, ooh, roughly thirty-eight hours and eleven minutes. I'm not going to have a proper launch party, but have got friends coming over to celebrate with me and I can't think of a better excuse to drink champagne in the middle of the day. I haven't seen it in a bookshop yet, and that is one of the biggest highlights, so I'm off book-spotting at the weekend. During the time when I've been too excited to sleep and too tired to write, I've also read some great books; Dorothy Koomson is a new writer who's debut novel 'The Cupid Effect' was launched this month, and Sophie Kinsella's latest novel 'Can You Keep a Secret' was also released (see reviews for both). There's been a wave of great books out this year and more to come, I wish I had time to read them all, but I won't succumb. Instead I'll spend the whole of April concentrating on my third book, so that I can wow you with my word count next month. There will be no reading, surfing the web or checking Amazon rankings when the kids are in bed. I won't even watch EastEnders or look at the pictures of celebrities washing their car in Heat magazine. It'll just me and my computer, going forth into the night. Starting tonight. I'm not even going to think about what time the children will be bouncing off my head tomorrow. Shall instead just check my website statistics, to get me in a working mood of course, and oooh look, someone from Lithuania has just logged on… and what's that under my Jaffa Cakes? The latest Emlyn Rees and Josie Lloyd collaboration? Surely a peek at the front page won't hurt… Chicklit talks to Sarah Ball... So, where do you get your ideas? Tricky. I'm not sure where they come from but I usually seem to get them in the bath! I like floating in bubbles, letting my imagination go mad. How did you go about finding an agent/publisher? I bought the Writers Handbook, picked ten agents then sent off the usual three chapters and synopsis which were duly returned weeks later. Only one had a personal comment, it said 'bright and lively but I fear we're full in this area right now'. That's what kept me from taking up pottery instead and I picked out four more agents. One asked for the whole manuscript, kept it for 6 months (!) then turned me down, suggesting I call a freelance editor she knows for advice. The editor called me a few days later saying she thought there was nothing wrong with it. She asked if she could pass it on to the publisher she was working for at the time. I said 'YES!' in a high pitched voice of hysteria and Piatkus called a couple of days later to say they wanted it. And so the deal was done without an agent. Since I've started writing my third book I decided I would need an agent's help and have since signed with a brilliant one my editor recommended. Do you have a writing routine? Sadly not - if I try hard I can get an hour or two in the day when my daughter's at school and my son's asleep, but then the phone rings and it all goes to pot! I'm hoping to treat it like a proper job when both children are at school. Any advice on going for the long haul and completing a novel when it feels like it's never going to end? When you start writing a book with an idea in your head you can very easily become daunted by the sheer volume of words you need to write. I think you need to take it a little at a time. I try and think in terms of a chapter at a time, almost as though it's a mini story. Every time I begin a chapter I make a list of things I want included and that helps focus my mind without getting bogged down. Reviews Recently we have been reviewing and changing our review process. It is now our policy to offer a review package of: * Independent review of book * Book cover * Author interview or biography * Photo of author * Links through to author's site and/or publisher's site. We now charge £75 for this service. If you'd like to know more please visit here Other authors: Cecilia Aherne / Harlan Coben / Jane Green / Sophie Kinsella / Jodi Picoult |
| Posted: 31/03/2005 21:46:06 Last Updated: 09/10/2007 12:19:33 |
Chick Lit > Chick Lit Authors :: Sarah Ball