I’m delighted to welcome prolific author Julie Caplin onto my blog today. Julie is going to talk to us about her writing journey and her latest book, Christmas on Fifth Avenue, which was published last month. So grab yourself a cuppa, get cosy and let’s get talking to Julie.

Short bio

Jules Wake aka Julie Caplin is an internationally bestselling author with over 2 million sales including the highly successful Romantic Escape series which has been translated into 24 languages. Her books have topped the bestseller charts in the UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Iceland, Italy, Czech Republic and Slovakia.

After reading English at university, Jules Wake worked in PR where she honed her fiction writing skills on press releases and swanned around Europe taking journalists on gastronomic press trips. These visits inspired the locations of many of her books. She’s now a full-time author and what better job is there than making stuff up! It certainly beats housework.

As an avid romance fan, she’s written in several genres including historical romantic fiction, contemporary women’s romance fiction and romantic comedy. October saw the publication of her twenty eight book, Christmas on Fifth Avenue.

Welcome to my blog, Julie. Can you tell us about your writing journey?

When I sat down to write my first book, I was full of passion and enthusiasm and utterly clueless. I had a story idea that had been bouncing around in my head for a while. Sitting at my desk as the muse struck me I wrote several chapters, polishing, honing and editing them.  After a couple of months I sent my rather brilliant manuscript off to my dad, who as a TV director and scriptwriter, knew a lot about story telling.

Imagine my disappointment when he told me with blunt honesty- it’s crap! It was however, the best thing anyone could have done for me. I’ve always read voraciously and so did have an instinctive understanding of how stories work but  certainly didn’t know how to write a book. I set about teaching myself the skills to improve my writing. I went on a creative writing course, set up a writing circle and joined the Romantic Novelists New Writers Scheme.

One of the most important things I learned was that writers show up every day. You have to write whether you feel like it or not and put the work in. You can’t wait for inspiration to visit, as Thomas Edison said, ‘Success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.’

Getting published, I also discovered, is a marathon not a sprint. You need considerable resilience and determination. For eight years, I wrote and refined five books, sending each one off to the  New Writers Scheme, which offers an anonymous manuscript critique from published authors. After several years in the submission/ rejection trenches, I finally got my very first book accepted by a small independent publisher. However in the meantime I’d written my fifth book and received the most wonderful critique which read, ‘If you don’t get a deal with this book I’ll eat my hat’. Despite having a deal with a small indie publisher, I’d always wanted an agent and this positive critique spurred me on to send out one last raft of submissions, making five approaches to agents.

Blow me! It was like buses! From years of rejection, overnight I received a response from a big name agency asking for the full manuscript on an exclusive. Over the next few weeks I received interest from another two agents.  However the agent, who’d always been my first pick, came back to me out of the blue – she been changing agencies hence the delay.

I signed with her and the rest really has been history. She secured a deal for my book, From Italy with Love with One More Chapter. That was twenty-seven books ago and I’ve been working with my editor, the legendary, Charlotte Ledger and agent, Broo Doherty ever since. What I’ve learned since being first publishing is that it’s a collaborative process and that a good editor and agent are the best team you can ever have.

So pleased that your determination paid off, Julie. And congratulations on your continuing success.

Julie’s Latest Book

Blurb

Evie Green’s Christmas dream turns into a nightmare when a viral video makes her the laughing stock of the internet. But then a 5 star hotel sees a PR opportunity and invites her to New York for a Christmas she’ll remember forever.

Enter Noah Sanderson, a disgraced soccer star seeking anonymity. Forced to fake a festive romance for the cameras, sparks fly – but not the twinkling Christmas kind!

As Fifth Avenue sparkles in all its holiday glory, can The City that Never Sleeps show these two frosted hearts that, maybe, the best love stories are the ones you never see coming.

Buy Link

Amazon: https://mybook.to/ChristmasFifthAve

Contact links
http://www.juleswake.com
https://www.facebook.com/JulieCaplinAuthor/
Instagram @juliecaplinauthor

More of Julie’s Books