Dear Unpublished Me - Keris Stainton

This weeks Unpublished Me post comes to you from the lovely Keris Stainton, author of novels such as One Italian Summer & The Hearts books!! This is an extra special Dear Unpublished Me as it doesn't just have Keris' beautiful letter but also the COVER REVEAL of her newest book. 

This letter is penned to a Keris before she decided to be a writer and the fact I get to share not just this but also all the details about her 2018 release feels very fitting. This post will take you from the start of her publishing journey right up to the present day. 

Dear Me 

You've just realised you should write a book. In fact, you didn't even realise, did you? Your husband suggested it in response to your descriptions of your, um, eccentric work colleagues. But it was, as Oprah would say, an 'Aha! Moment!' 

Of course you should write a book! Didn't you used to write all the time? Didn't you used to take fanfic (before it was called fanfic) requests from your friends? Haven't you been desperately trying to work out what you should do with your life? Well, guess what? This is it. It really is! 

But. It's going to take a while. It'll be seven years before you actually finish a first draft. And it'll be much too short (but it'll have a beginning, middle and end, so you're totally going to count it). And then it'll be another couple of years before you finish one that you think is good enough to send out to an agent. (It'll be Young Adult. You probably don't know what that is right now, but you're gonna love it, I promise.) 

You'll get a lovely agent. And then it'll take another year before a publisher is interested. But a publisher will be interested. And you'll go down to London for a meeting and the people you meet will be lovely and they'll want to buy your book and you'll get the train home grinning and giggling to yourself (and people will stare, but you won't care). And then your publisher will ask you to write a different book instead. I know. But it's fine. It's going to be fine. 

So eventually you'll finish a book, and your publisher will love it, and publish it (but it'll get put back a year - you should probably just accept now that everything in publishing takes much much longer than you expect), and people will like it (not, like, loads of people, but enough). And then you'll write a couple more (you'll get to go to LA to research one of them and it will be the best trip ever). And then you'll move to a different publisher. And then you'll get a different (lovely) agent. And another different publisher. And another. You get the gist. 

It won't be as straightforward as you hope. And I'm sorry to have to tell you that you're not going to be super rich (at least not yet, it could still happen!). But what I can tell you is you're going to have a lot of fun. You're going to make amazing friends. You're going to be on the cover of a magazine (no really). You're going to be on TV (it will be a disaster, but still). You're going to interview Judy Blume! And best of all, you're going to get emails from readers who've read your books over and over and who say they never really loved books at all until they discovered one of yours. 

And you'll never really believe it - one day you'll sit down to write a letter to your unpublished self and you'll end up crying because it's all just so overwhelming - but it's true. Lucky you. 

Love 

Me 

NEW BOOK ALERT

You'll have noticed with all the Dear Unpublished Me posts I have included a book feature but as I mentioned above, today we have something extra special. 

I can exclusively reveal the cover of Keris' next book My Heart Goes Bang is hitting shelves June 28th 2018 and it is absolutely stunning!!!! 

Summary

Gemma, Lou, Issey, Liane and Paige are determined to make the most of this second year at uni. They want to have fun, but they want to focus on work. There's no time for relationships. Except with each other. And even that's not guaranteed. Gemma and Lou have always been close, but there's tension between Issey and Liane, and none of them even knows Paige all that well. 

But when Gemma finds a magazine article with a list of men they should date before they're 21 (someone who's been on TV? Check; someone with tattoos? Check;) they vow to complete the list before finishing university and set about it with a lot more enthusiasm than they do their studies ... but will any of them end up with a full house? And when a secret from their first year comes out, it looks as if some of them might not be completing university, never mind the list ... 

MY HEART GOES BANG is about lectures, essays, hangovers, and flatmates; it's about found families, finding yourself, and falling in love with people you never expected to fall in love with. 

COMING JUNE 28TH 2018

FROM HOT KEY BOOKS