Martina Cole joins the Smooth Book Club
Martina Cole joins Lynn Parsons (pictured) on the Smooth Radio Book Club this Saturday from 12.30pm to chat about her new book ‘The Life’. She reveals she has a new feature film in the pipeline, her love of Harry Potter and admits that if a character starts to annoy her she just kills them off!
When asked what does she thinks of JK Rowling and Fifty Shades of Grey: “Can you imagine me doing Fifty Shades of Dagenham, I really liked Fifty Shades of Grey but I don’t know if I’m getting past it or not, but my idea of a romantic evening is not getting hung up and electrocuted, I really thought it’s was a great book and its given a great injection into the book trade which it desperately needed. I would love to write a Harry Potter children’s books I can’t really see me writing a child’s book, but I am doing a feature film, with Black Lake productions. It’s a dark children’s film called Mrs Peppercorns Magical Reading Room. I do love Harry Potter”
When asked how do you decide on your characters she said: “Sometimes I get a character and build the book around it, other times I get the story line and build the characters around the story line. When I wrote Broken years ago, there were all reports in the press of women who had dumped their children and I was so shocked at some of the stuff I read. All the events in Broken are true, a woman did throw her child in the back of a dust cart, a woman did get her 2 year old out of bed and left her in the woods in the middle of the night and over 6 months I thought when did women become like this. With Joanie I created Susan Dawson in my mind.
So where does she go to write these amazing novels: “The last 15 years I’ve spent in Northern Cyprus, I have a place out there and I have two book shops there. My dream is to run bookshops. I’ve written the last 8 books out there. I can close my eyes and be anywhere.
How long does it take her to write each masterpiece? “I write one a year. I didn’t have a book out one year as my son had a car crash. It takes a year really from start to finish. I do a 1st draft, 2nd draft and the 3rd one is the final one, so I re-write it 3 times”.
When asked where she gets her ideas for her not so nice characters? “I think it’s like any writer, I think I must have a dark half and I tap into mine when I’m writing. Sometimes I shock myself but you get so into what you are doing and the story flows. I have to be honest when a character gets on my nerves I kill them off!
The book club can be heard on Smooth Radio at 12.30 tomorrow or online via listen live at www.smoothradio.co.uk