M.J. Dermott - Author Life

M.J. Dermott, author of Time Passages, published her debut novel in January 2018. We wanted to catch up with her and find out how life had been treating her since the release.

Did you always dream of becoming an author?

I’ve dreamed of becoming an author since the age of ten or eleven, when I received a 'Highly Commended' certificate for a story that I entered into ‘The Telegraph Children’s Writing Competition’. I was so proud of that certificate – its inspiration has stayed with me throughout my adult life. My story was entitled, The Adventures of Harold the Herald, based on my mother’s old Triumph Herald whose passenger door used to fly open if you drove around a corner too fast. Harold ended up as a teapot, having had one too many crashes.

I didn’t especially want to write for children until I had my own children. I discovered such wonderfully written stories of adventure and imagination with which I could see my children being totally inspired. These were the books that I was looking for when I was an older child, but there was only Enid Blyton or Little Women to read and reread, maybe with a bit of Swallows and Amazons.

What was your first job?

My very first paid job was as a Saturday girl in a chemist shop, while I was still at school. I loved that job – meeting so many different people, helping the older customers with the new decimalised currency, bottling up the potions and counting out the tablets. When I left school, I went straight into nurse training at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, where I stayed as a Staff Nurse for a year and then I couldn’t help myself – I just had to go travelling abroad in search of adventure. I often worked as a nurse, but at other times I was working in a glass factory, or in the apple orchard, cotton fields, kitchens, or chicken-picking in the middle of the night.

How did you come about writing your book? Was that your intention or did you start writing for fun?

Initially, I wrote for fun, often keeping a diary of my travels and experiences, occasionally turning them into short stories or poems. I started writing my book after being inspired by sitting in the Cathedral each Christmas Eve with my family. It was like an annual pilgrimage for me. As soon as the lights were dimmed and the choir started singing from out of the darkness, that was it. My imagination would go AWOL and plots and characters would just flood my brain. However, I had to wait until I’d retired from my stressful day job in health visiting before I could seriously get down to writing the novel.

What was your life like before you became an author?

Life was extremely busy, with family commitments and bringing up two children. I worked as a health visitor on the community for twenty-six years before retiring, my husband and I working around my children’s hours. Health visiting was a wonderfully fulfilling career, but could be extremely intense and stressful. It left me with very little time to think about my writing.

Did you face any struggles before becoming an author? If so, how did you overcome them?

Having time to dream was a real luxury. That’s why I valued my Christmas Eve dreaming time so highly. While I was working, I had a month off following an operation – I wrote half the book during that month. To write the rest, I took early retirement.

One of my biggest hurdles was finding a publisher who would even consider my work, as the majority of publishers would not accept unsolicited manuscripts. It seems that today, it is the agent whom you have to convince, rather than the publisher, which is often down to already having contact with an agent. It becomes a chicken and egg scenario. My answer was to sign with Pegasus Publishers.

Now that you are a published author, how has your life changed, if at all?

My life is still very busy, especially with the promotion of the book. I have had to embrace social media in all its forms – that has been painful, but necessary. I’ve built my own website – it took me ages but I’m very proud of myself. I’ve had to be inventive and resourceful with approaching various contacts, which has put me in contact with so many new people who I never knew existed before. I’m thoroughly enjoying myself, surrounded by books and words and reading. And occasionally, I get to work on the sequel to Time Passages.

Can you please describe a typical day in your life now?

That’s a hard one. I don’t have a routine or a typical day because extras keep happening. There are certain tasks that I have to fit in during the week. These include feeding and walking the dog four times a day, checking and responding to emails, Facebook and Twitter notifications each day, updating my website as required, working on my Goodreads profile by reviewing lots of books that have influenced my writing, reading for a couple of hours each day, following up warm leads and initiating cold contacts for promoting the book (often this has been a great excuse to contact friends who I’ve not seen for ages, or family members – all of which takes a lot of very enjoyable time). I try to fit in regular exercise because I get bored sitting still all the time, and it is my thinking time for writing. This often involves going for a long swim (usually I swim a mile each session) followed by a bit of thinking time in the jacuzzi, or going for a run, or an all-day hike, or cycle, or climbing down at the climbing wall. I have a problem with sitting still. When I write, I tend to do it in blocks of a week at a time, when I do nothing else except lock myself away, immerse myself in my characters and write from morning until well into the night. At these times, my husband takes the dog out and plans our next adventure in the hills.

What is your most memorable moment of your life as an author?

Receiving the first hard copies of my debut book, Time Passages. I couldn’t believe it before that happened.

How would you best sum up your experience with Pegasus Publishers?

Pegasus Publishers has provided an efficient and friendly service. They have allowed me to produce the book that I wanted to produce while answering my many questions and making very valuable suggestions themselves.