As Hannah Pearls' debut novel appears on bookshop shelves, she talks to us of writing - and reading - with M.E. ...
Evie's Little Black Book
I’ve always loved books. One of my first memories of school was finding a small gap between pieces of furniture where I could sit and read. Even now, when I’m reading something that I love, I carry the book from room to room with me, just in case I can carve out thirty seconds to sneak a quick page or two.
I got ill in 2014 and suddenly books became even more important to me. I had labrynthitis which didn’t resolve fully and the nausea and dizziness were horrible, but by reading I could escape to cafes in castles and cake shops by the sea and just for a few minutes I could forget how hard life had become.
I’m not sure that I would ever have become a writer without my Kindle. I re-read lots of books that I already loved. Then I bought some more. And when that became expensive I read lots of free books. Sometimes I discovered amazing authors and quickly devoured their entire back catalogues. Sometimes I read things by people who were like me, writing for the sheer love of it. It gave me the confidence to start trying to get my own work published.
By the winter of 2017 I had been ill for over three years and finally had a diagnosis of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. M.E. This means that my energy is severely limited, but it also affects all bodily systems in many weird ways. I get dizzy if I don’t eat regularly. Also if I don’t sleep well, or am hormonal or near loud noises. This last one is pretty unavoidable when you have small children so I spend a lot of time walking as though I’m on a swaying ship. I can’t concentrate for very long, which is not helpful when I would love to spend all day typing merrily away on my laptop. My sleep isn’t refreshing, and I never know how I will feel from one day to the next, except that it will be varying degrees of not-very-well. Writing continued to be a wonderful distraction, and I had begun trying to see if I could get my stories published as I had an ever-increasing number of them on my laptop. I submitted my novels to a number of publishers. I had an ever-increasing number of rejections, and then, finally, in 2017, I had a yes. In fact, in the space of a few days, I had two!
I heard back from Choc Lit, that they wanted to publish three of my stories and at almost exactly the same time, I heard from Simon and Schuster that I had won the short story competition which they had run in conjunction with Heat Magazine.
Writing continues to be my silver lining, allowing me to have amazing adventures even when I’m not well enough to go out. I’m very grateful to my lovely publishers for the opportunities they have given me, and I’m very grateful to the readers for supporting my work. Nothing makes an author’s day like waking up to find a new review on Amazon or getting a tweet to say that my stories have meant something to someone. I’ve learnt a lot about writing since then, for me it mostly revolves around how much tea and cake and sci fi I need to power it. You can keep up to date with my news and tweets about writing whilst wobbling at @HannahPearl_1.
Hannah's debut novel, Evie's Little Black Book, is published by Ruby Fiction, an imprint of multi award winning women's fiction publisher, Choc Lit, and is available from all good bookshops and online stores from 3 September. It comes with the strapline 'Is hunting down every man you've kissed the answer to finding Mr Right?'
Hannah also has two eBook releases, It’s My Birthday and Burn and a new release in October, Daisy’s Little Christmas Gift Shop. Further information can be found at www.rubyfiction.com