Absolutely thrilled to be a part of the blog tour for a book that seems to be running up the book charts just now! Thank you to Helen from Bloodhound Books for inviting me on the tour, my first one for you guys, exciting!
Author of 34 Days, Anita Waller, has written a guest post for me to share with you all today. Enjoy!
Guest Post by Anita Waller.
I can remember being around eight years old and going to the Headmaster’s office daily to read a list of twenty words to him, then going back in the afternoon and spelling them. Mr. Ellis is my hero. He instilled in me a love of the English language; Mrs. Heyworth, my class teacher, compounded it by ‘compositions’. My composition was never a short story, it always had chapters. I am also gifted with a photographic memory, which I suppose was the main thing that saw me never misspell in my daily spelling lessons with Mr. Ellis!
From being that age, I never stopped writing; I began novel writing in my thirties by taking what I thought of as the easy option and writing for Mills and Boon. Soppy love stories? Dead easy. I now have six novels sitting on a shelf, all hard copy because I wrote on an Amstrad 8256, that I will never use, because writing for Mills and Boon is anything but ‘dead easy’. It was only when murder crept into my mind that I began to change.
In 1995 I wrote a novel called Beautiful. I never saw it as belonging to any specific genre, it was just a novel. I sent it to a couple of publishers who gave me excellent feedback while saying it wasn’t for them, and then I sent it to a publisher called Ringpull Press. They accepted it immediately, and we were within a day of meeting to sign the contract when they went into liquidation. They returned my manuscript; I bundled it up and stuck it in the attic. I stopped sending anything to publishers, decided they were all rubbish, and began to teach creative writing instead.
In 2014, at the ripe old age of 68, I decided Beautiful had to be typed into my computer at the very least. I am not a copy typist and had to look at every word; it took me eighteen months. I finished on the Saturday morning. The previous day I had seen a publisher called Bloodhound Books were looking for submissions. I did no homework on them, had no idea what they published, but sent them the first twenty pages, as requested, on that Saturday morning. By Wednesday we had signed the contract. Six weeks later it was published.
I am now 70 years old, my third book is due for launch any day, and I followed my dream. It took a long time and I wish I could personally thank Mr. Ellis and Mrs. Heyworth but I can’t, they are long gone. My best advice to any aspiring writer? Never, ever give up. The dream will keep you going. That’s what dreams are for.
Thank you Anita for the kick up the backside; listen to her folks, NEVER give up on your dreams. Lovely Anita is proof that you shouldn’t!
Blurb.
How much can your life change in just 34 days?
Anna and Ray have been married for thirty-five years. They are parents and grandparents and appear to be a normal couple. But behind closed doors something isn’t right.
On the day of their wedding anniversary Anna makes a decision that changes everything and throws her family into turmoil. Anna will discover that she is not the only one who has suffered and by leaving Ray she sparks a series of events so awful that it might just end in murder…
34 Days by Anita Waller, published by Bloodhound Books, is available to buy now from Amazon UK
The Writing Garnet 
What an amazing post, I so want to read this book now I’ve heard about Anita’s journey
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