In the sequel of A Woman Undefeated, which I called Dreams Can Come True, Maggie is now a rich lady. Twenty years on, she has inherited all that Miss Rosemary owned, which was evidence of how much her benefactor thought of her ...
I used my time in County Mayo to dig a bit deeper into its history!
Most of the characters from A Woman Undefeated are still there. Jack, is a lot more circumspect in his treatment of Maggie, Alice, his mother, still a bossy boots and Ruthie, Maggie's ex-neighbour, a simple soul, who now has two grown-up daughters and two grown-up sons.
Johnny Dockerty, is still in the background, not ready yet to play a major role in Maggie's life. Hannah, Maggie's stepdaughter, is now a young lady and along with Michael, Maggie's son, is the new generation affected by Maggie's wealth.
"It is important to describe the appearance of each character!"
This means that the reader can get a picture of them in their mind. Did they dress well in the period of that time? Were the ladies pretty, plain, fat or thin? What did the men do for a living, or did they drive around in a carriage, dressed to the nines? A lot of research into the 1860s and beyond had to be done.
I have met and known a lot of people over the years and I have probably based the characters in my books subliminally upon them. There have been the bossy ones, the controlling ones and gentle kind souls who have touched my life so that I remember them. But there have also been people in my life that I'd rather not think about, and perhaps sometimes they surface in my characters also.
This book was more structured than A Woman Undefeated because my first book was based on the story my father had told me and the places that he had taken me to. Dreams Can Come True was born of my wish to create a rags-to-riches story, as my grandfather's property and ownership of a quarry, must have come from somewhere.
So, this time, instead of letting the story flow, I used my time in County Mayo to dig a bit deeper into its history. I planned the beginning to be played out in Neston, where Maggie was living in Miss Rosemary's old house, the main part of my story travelling through the countryside of Ireland and the ending back in Neston where it all began.
You must ensure your research is correct as well. I had mentioned a product in one of my books that hadn't been around in the mid-19th century and one of my readers soon put me right!
I got in touch with the local newspaper when my paperbacks arrived from the self-publishing company and I was lucky enough to have an article written about me. From there I was invited to a Book Club to speak to them about the stories I had written, which helped my self-esteem enormously.
Encouraged by the reaction of the people from the Book Club, my head was full of how I was going to market my cherished paperbacks. Most of the print run was in the warehouse at the publishers, as they had started to advertise them on Amazon and other online sites, but I did have a couple of boxes that had been sent to me.
In my next episode, I will go into the marketing side more thoroughly.
I was born on the Wirral in Merseyside. I've always had a vivid imagination and could talk the hind leg off a donkey since I was two years old. My best selling books A Woman Undefeated and Dreams Can Come True are based on the amazing lives of my Irish ancestors.
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