My guest today is author Mary-Jane Riley. Mary-Jane is going to talk to us about her writing journey and her new book. So grab yourself a cuppa, get cosy and let’s get chatting to Mary-Jane. 

Bio

Mary-Jane Riley spent many years as a BBC journalist, presenting magazine programmes on BBC Radio in the Eastern Counties. She has interviewed people from all walks of life – from politicians to authors to actors to local people in villages and towns. It was when the author Ruth Rendell told her to “just write” that she began seriously writing fiction.

Mary-Jane has had stories published in women’s magazines and has contributed to podcasts for the Royal Literary Fund in her role as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Cambridge University.

She has taught Prose Fiction at the University of East Anglia, and has delivered writing workshops to young offenders, people with disabilities and charities – including aid workers in Africa.

Mary-Jane is married to a retired BBC TV Reporter and has three grown up children and a Golden Retriever. She lives in the Waveney Valley in rural Suffolk.

Beattie Cavendish and the White Pearl Club is the first in the Beattie Cavendish series, which is set in post- Second World War Europe featuring Beattie Cavendish, a covert operative for GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) and is Mary-Jane’s first historical novel.

Before inventing Beattie Cavendish, Mary-Jane wrote four contemporary thrillers: The Bad Things, After She Fell, Dark Waters and Gone in the Night, all of which were set in East Anglia.

Contact links

Website:          https://www.maryjaneriley.com

Instagram        maryjanerileyauthor

Facebook        maryjanerileyauthor

Welcome to my blog, Mary-Jane. Can you tell my readers about your writing journey?

Hello, and thank you Karen for having me on your blog. My writing journey has been – and will continue to be I’m sure – a story of ups and downs! Like many writers, I wrote stories from childhood, first on my father’s typewriter (how I wish I had kept that 1950s machine), then on my Petite typewriter I was given as a birthday present. I did realise I would have to up my game as Enid Blyton had cornered the market in children’s adventure stories.

But life moves on and I went to university then got a job in radio at the BBC, married, had children and never really thought the writer’s life could be mine – especially as earning a living had to take priority! However, in the course of my job I interviewed several writers about their books and plucked up the courage to ask Ruth Rendell how I could get published. She said those immortal words, ‘Just write!’ I did, and had a little success in writing stories for magazines such as My Weekly and Bella and Best, and absolutely no success in writing for Mills and Boon.

Time for a reset (as the politicians say) and I thought about what sort of writing really interested me, and that was crime. My first novel found me an agent, and my second secured me a publisher in Germany and then a contract with a new digital imprint at Harper Collins at the time digital publishing was taking off. I wrote three more books for Harper. Then my editor left, the pandemic happened, a book was rejected, and a family member became seriously ill. As you can imagine, that last event put things into perspective.

But I did keep writing, slowly, a book both my agent and I were excited about. Alas, no publisher was excited. Meanwhile, I began a post as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow in Cambridge, where I helped students with their essay writing, sorting out opening paragraphs, ending paragraphs and a lot in the middle. I leaned much about volcanoes, old rocks, midwifery in the fifteenth century and all manner of philosophical theories. It was a great couple of years that felt worthwhile and helped me with my writing too.

Around this time I was talking to one of my brothers about our parents and how difficult life must have been for them after the war, settling back into ‘normal’ life in those dreary post war years. I had a conversation with my agent over a bottle or two of Prosecco, and the character Beattie Cavendish was born. A young woman who had survived the war and joined a (fictional) covert department of GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) as a spy. Full of excitement, I went home and began to write.  

My agent sent the book out last November and I tried not to get my hopes up. Time dragged on and after Christmas I got the news I’d been hoping for – a two book deal with Allison and Busby. Beattie Cavendish and the White Pearl Club was to go out into the world.

So there we have it. The second Beattie Cavendish has been written, and I am hoping I will be asked for a third… maybe more. We’ll see. You can take nothing for granted in the publishing business!  

You’ve certainly lived an interesting life, Mary-Jane. Congratulations on your success so far, especially your latest two book deal. I hope lots more deals follow.

Synopsis:

It’s 1948 and the clouds of war still hang over the everyday lives of British people.
          Cambridge graduate, Beattie Cavendish, 25, has no intention of reverting to the expected roles of wife, mother and hostess that might have seemed natural before the war. After all, she had already been tested in the shadowy world of the Secret Operations Executive and the French Resistance. So when she is offered an undercover role within a covert branch of the newly-formed GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), she jumps at it.
          Her first assignment appears straightforward: befriend the son of Ralph Bowen, the Conservative Shadow Foreign Secretary and report any unusual activity or conversations among the Bowen family. But when Beattie finds the Bowens’ housekeeper Sofia Huber murdered, the stakes are raised.
          With the help of Irish private detective Patrick Corrigan, a decorated but embittered war veteran, Beattie works to uncover Sofia’s killer – but both Ralph Bowen and Scotland Yard seem keen to sweep Sofia’s death under the carpet.
          Soon Beattie and Corrigan are caught up in a deadly game of cat and mouse in the world of secret organisations, spies and cold-blooded murder. There is no one to trust, and as Beattie comes closer to uncovering the truth, her life and those whom she holds dear come under threat. She will need all her skills to stay alive.

          A VERY DIRTY BUSINESS is the first in a series that follows Beattie’s undercover work with GCHQ as the Cold War intensifies and stokes fears of a nuclear confrontation with the communist world. As she seeks to uncover ‘sleeper’ spies and delves into unsolved crimes, she enlists the help of Patrick Corrigan. Their partnership is not always easy, but their relationship is at the heart of the series.

Buy link: https://mybook.to/BeattieCavendish1

More of Mary-Jane’s books