Ellie Campbell Books

Pam:

Yes, but I also wanted to be a farmer and a jockey and a horse trainer.

Lorraine:

Definitely. I was a compulsive reader from early childhood and eternally lived in a fantasy world with stories running through my head (still do.) But I doubt I’d have had the confidence to pursue it if I hadn’t started working for then literary agent, now best selling novelist, Carol Smith, who encouraged me to begin with short stories.

I’d almost given up writing in favour of horses, oil painting and all the other things that keep me busy when Pam took a creative writing course and started selling short stories. She used to show me them sometimes before she sent them out, then she began writing a novel, I gave my input and from that it developed into our deciding to partner up. We just enjoyed the back and forth of discussing ideas, brainstorming and tinkering with each other’s work. It took away the loneliness of being a writer – knowing at least one person out there cared.

We were lucky enough to find a brilliant new agent, Caroline Hardman, who was at the Marsh Agency back then. She read our first manuscript, offered to take it on but warned us when we arranged to meet that she was only in her twenties and we’d be her first ever clients. We said we were fine with that as long as she didn’t mind our own little secret – that Ellie Campbell was in fact two people. When we wrote “Sisters” she submitted it to Emma Rose at Arrow Books, part of Random House, who’d liked our initial effort and offered us a two book deal.

Incredible! Because of the time difference I got to hear about it first and break the news to Lorraine. There was silence when I told her – two book deal/Random House - I think she thought it was one of my feeble jokes. A few weeks later she flew over and we met all the lovely people at Arrow in their new offices and broke open the champagne, before going to lunch at the Tate Britain with Caroline and our wonderful editor, Emma Rose. That same week we also heard Caroline had sold translation rights in Italy and Germany. So in no time at all it seemed we’d gone from being struggling writers wondering if we were chasing an unattainable dream to announcements in the trade press and being wined and dined by a top London publisher. The only people more surprised than us were our husbands, Ian and Gary.

We e-mail each other the chapters we’ve been working on and the other one adds her own suggested changes so the manuscript is being constantly edited and revised even as we write. We also instant message and call a lot with Skype and talk for hours on the phone. I normally pick up my emails from Lorraine at around 10 a.m. while she is snoring in bed and then at around 3 p.m. in the afternoon, which is early morning in Colorado, we get in touch. I’m familiar now with the time changes so she gets less pre-dawn phone calls than in the early days.

We have a basic idea, then we brainstorm like mad. Before we begin writing we usually have a vague outline, ideas of what will go in each chapter, then we pick a segment to work on and as we go on it all changes, but that’s OK, that’s what we like about it.

You bet. We are sisters, after all. But we both have to be enthusiastic about a story twist or character or it wouldn’t work. Sometimes we’ll bristle as we lose a favourite line or a scene is radically cut but we discuss any major changes and almost always with a bit of perspective we’ll realise the book is much the better for it. Left to our own devices we’d probably ramble on endlessly. As a team we cut down on each other’s excesses and maximise our individual strengths, we hope. It also helps that we live thousands of miles away. There might be a slammed phone or a chilly silence but we’re usually over it by the next day.

No. Although our mother was an incredibly funny, eccentric character and a lot of Peggy’s stories in How To Survive Your Sisters came from her. One of our sisters said she felt that she was every single one of the four sisters in that book, especially in their worst flaws and foibles. But actually like most fiction writers we use an amalgam of characteristics that we find interesting and the character builds up over time, so that by the time we start writing we know them quite well.

In my attic. I go upstairs, close the door and don’t come down till I’m bursting for the loo. I become totally absorbed in the novel we’re working on and am often seen scribbling away at traffic lights with cars beeping behind me or tripping over tree-stumps when walking the dog and trying to scribble on the manuscript at the same time.

In my incredibly messy office in Boulder or at the dining table in my cabin in the mountains. I’m up there at least three or four days a week because that’s where I keep my horses. A lot of my best ideas seem to come while I’m putting up fences or mucking out corrals.

Groom, nanny, office junior, copy typist in typing pool, audio typist, temping around London, secretary, receptionist for book distributor in Sydney, clerk for money lending firm in Newcastle, Australia, temping around Australia, exotic pet shop salesperson in San Francisco, (first day had to hold tarantulas to test my bravery level), more temp work around London, secretary for surveyors, P.A. for CEO YMCA, West End, own wordprocessing business with best friend, Vanessa, clutter clearance and office administrator for computer consultants, care worker in nursing home (lasted two weeks), learning support worker for local college – still there.

Secretary, rights/short story person in literary agency, deputy fiction editor at Woman magazine, assistant to literary agent in Beverly Hills, reader for Penguin, freelance copywriter, ran a market stall in the French Alps selling clothing from Ecuador, manufactured and imported sari shirts from India (disaster!), volunteered in orphanage in Guatemala, crewed, snorkeled and burned toast on charter yacht in Belize and Honduras, house cleaner and house painter on arrival in Boulder, Colorado and still write sales ads for my husband’s real estate company and get roped in by his property management company every August to clean rental apartments. I never realised marrying a successful businessman would involve scrubbing so many toilets!

Too hard to pick favourites, though off the cuff Amy Tan, Fiona Walker, Ann Tyler, Rebecca Wells spring to mind, also Bill Bryson, Raymond Chandler and all those Pam mentions below. Last year I really enjoyed Rupert Everett’s autobiography and Peace Like A River by Lief Enger, described as a novel of ‘travel, travail and transformation.’ But if you look at my bedside table all you’ll see are books on natural horsemanship. I love real life travel and adventure stories, all kinds of fiction from contemporary, literary, mystery, crime, particularly anything uplifting or funny, but I save it for holidays. It’s hard to read without getting influenced or discouraged by other people’s genius.

Sophie Kinsella, Marian Keyes, Helen Fielding, Susan Isaacs, Nick Hornby, Jane Green. We are always recommending authors to each other, but when we’re stuck into our own novel we find it quite difficult to read other writers’ work. I read a lot of autobiographies. This year it was Gordon Ramsay, Jane and Mike Tomlinson’s ‘Luxury of Time’ and ‘You Can’t Take It with You’, Rupert Everett and I’ve just finished ‘When Did You Last See Your Father’ by Blake Morrison. My eldest son bought me Lee Child’s ‘Bad Luck and Trouble’ for my birthday and I’m at present reading Fatal Attraction by Carol Smith. I’m also forever poking through gardening books as I share an allotment with my friend, Sheila who I bore rotten with various plotlines while weeding our vegetables.

Write. Everyone seems to say read, read, read, but really, after you’ve done that, you need to sit down and actually write, however uninspired you might feel. Give time to it every day – even if only five minutes. Keep your project, short story/poem/novel – in mind at all times. Live your parts. It’s like reading in a way, if you put a book down for a few days, you lose the thread and lose interest. I’ve been to numerous writing groups, where everyone just seems to talk about reading. The best ones I’ve been to force you to write, warts and all.

I have to agree with Pam although I’m one of those eternal procrastinators who find it hard to get to my desk and just as hard to stop once I’m launched into it. Pam is a huge motivator because if I miss a day I’ll find ten new versions of the book waiting for me when I check my emails again. But the main thing is if you love it, never give up!