When I look back over the past 18 months, it seems
incredible to me that my first novel, It Would Be Wrong to Steal my Sister’s
Boyfriend (Wouldn’t It?) took just 12 weeks to write. The process of
getting Gemma from glimmer of an idea to finished novel has been
somewhat different!
When I first pitched the idea to my agent at LAW, then the
lovely Peta Nightingale, the concept was around a blogger who wrote posts
describing a life far more glamorous and interesting than the one she was
actually living. Peta liked the idea, but she said, “Of course, you must make
her a vlogger, not a blogger, because this is 2016, LDO.”
Now I hadn’t been living under a rock, so I knew that
vloggers – YouTubers – were a Thing. But that was pretty much all I knew. My
education into the world of vlogging had to start pretty much from scratch, and
that meant watching Zoella videos. A lot of Zoella videos. It got so my
partner would come downstairs and find me gazing vacantly at my screen and say,
“You’re watching that Zoella again, aren’t you?”
The more I watched, the more I realised that first, Peta was
right and second, my initial idea was going to have to change somewhat.
YouTubers live their entire lives in the public eye, and it would be immensely
difficult for Gemma, if she were one of them, to pull off a double life. So I
had to go back to the drawing board and rethink things.
The other thing I wrestled with, watching make-up tutorial
after make-up tutorial, was what motivates their creators. Money? Certainly,
the likes of Zoella have built hugely successful businesses from humble
beginnings and made a fortune in the process. But (like authors!) only a lucky
few achieve anything like this degree of success. So I had to give Gemma a motive
other than money or fame… Enter Jack and Olivia.
My next challenge was to give Gemma a cause to care about.
Many YouTubers do this, embracing politics, mental health, HIV education and so
on, and using the audiences they have built up to spread the word about
something that matters to them. This was something I’d decided on quite early
in the process, and I was greatly looking forward to writing it. Unfortunately,
Life intervened at this point.
My partner and I moved house. The place we bought thinking
it would need minor cosmetic work turned out to need major structural work, and
I spent the next few months mired in architects’ drawings, helical screws and
builder’s crack stitching kits (yes, really). By the time I returned to Gemma, the world had moved on to the
point where my wonderful plot point was no longer relevant, and I had to bin
and rewrite about 20,000 words. Gutting doesn’t even cover it.
So, what with one thing and another, the process of writing
this novel was anything but smooth. At 110,000 words, it’s longer than my
previous novels, too. Nonetheless, I’m really excited to have released it at
last. Even though writing it was tough, there were still many of those moments
every author longs for, when the words flow easily, the characters take on a
life of their own, and before you know it you’ve spent hours immersed in their
world and the cat is complaining that she’s about to lapse into a hypoglycaemic
coma (or is that just Purrs?).
Thanks to Rachel for hosting this post and being part
of the Gemma Grey release tour, and thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the
novel – please get in touch and let me know what you think.
Thank you so much Sophie for sharing your story behind your new book. I look forward to reading it at some point in the future, The Truth About Gemma Grey sounds great.
Genre: Chick lit/romantic comedy
Release Date: 19 June 2017
Life isn’t working out quite as Gemma had planned. Her breakthrough job
turns out to involve writing clickbait articles about cats. Her boyfriend Jack
is off travelling the world with his glamorous BFF and her mum’s social life
puts Gemma’s own to shame.
Then, after a late-night online rant, Gemma’s YouTube channel goes viral
and everything changes.
Suddenly, she’s living the dream – only it’s not turning out entirely as
she imagined.
Gemma realises she’ll have to choose between fame, real love and being
true to herself – because she can’t have it all. Or can she?
BUY LINKS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sophie
Ranald is the youngest of five sisters. She was born in Zimbabwe and lived in
South Africa until an acute case of itchy feet brought her to London in her
mid-20s. As an editor for a customer publishing agency, Sophie developed her fiction-writing
skills describing holidays to places she'd never visited. In 2011, she decided
to disregard all the good advice given to aspiring novelists and attempt to
write full-time. After one false start, It Would Be Wrong to Steal My Sister's
Boyfriend (Wouldn't It?) seemed to write itself. Her second, third and fourth
novels followed, and a fifth is due for release in Spring 2017. Sophie also
writes for magazines and online about food, fashion and running. She lives in
south-east London with her amazing partner Hopi and Purrs, their adorable
little cat.
