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Writing Tips Oasis

Writing Tips Oasis - A website dedicated to helping writers to write and publish books.

My Book Deal Moment by Christie Barlow

By Novelicious

This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.

Christie BarlowMy writing career came as somewhat of a surprise! Once hitting my mid-life crisis (but dodging the tattoo and the fast car) after wholly dedicating my life to the care of my children, they asked me what I wanted to do in life while we were discussing their career options. ‘I’ve always wanted to write a book,’ I found myself answering, and so the notion was born. I had no idea what to write about, so after pondering for a couple of weeks, I started plotting a work of fiction based on the one thing I knew the most about: being a mother.

I began to write every afternoon and a year later my book, A Year in the Life of a Playground Mother was finished. I self-published and will always remember the proud moment I showed my children the finished product. I stood in front of them, with a book that had my name on the cover and the message was loud and clear. If I could achieve something by setting my mind to it, then so could they. I would have been happy enough if my demonstration of what hard work and determination could achieve had ended there, but it didn’t. After setting up a Facebook page and a Twitter account, the book circulated extremely quickly and literally became the talk of the town!

What to write about came to me pretty easily, as I was always fascinated with the dynamics around the primary school gates with mothers and playground politics. Of course all my writing was fiction with a huge heaping of one-liners. After self-publishing A Year in the Life of a Playground Mother, I was amazed to see it rocketing up the Amazon charts reaching no 1 in its category and no 11 for Kindle downloads. The reviews were amazing, calling it 'witty' and 'laugh-out-loud funny'. Before I knew it, my wacky village characters were appearing on the page in a sequel, The Misadventures of a Playground Mother.

This is when my life really took a parallel course with reality. One morning after the school run, I came home to find an email from literary agent Madeleine Milburn – I had just finished writing Misadventures, intending to self-publish again, when Ping! I not only had an agent but within a few weeks, I had a publishing deal with the fabulous Bookouture.

I have now written three books to date. My first two books, A Year in the Life of a Playground Mother and The Misadventures of a Playground Mother are funny novels about life at the school gates. My new book Kitty’s Countryside Dream is a feel good romantic comedy about life, love and family.

I am now a full- time author and I am loving every minute of it.

Christie Barlow is the author of Kitty's Countryside Dream, which is out now!

Filed Under: My Book Deal Moment

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