Image Credits:-
Many thanks to Debz Hobbs-Wyatt for supplying book cover and author pics. Some images from a Bridge House Publishing event supplied by Paula Readman and me. Screenshots were also taken by me, Allison Symes.
It is a joy to welcome Debz Hobbs-Wyatt to Chandler’s Ford Today. I’ve known Debz for some time thanks to our mutual connections with Bridge House Publishing.
I’ve been on one side of the fence here, having had several stories in various BHP anthologies over the years. Debz has been on the other side of the fence with BHP founder, Gill James, and the two continue to work closely together. Indeed, I’m looking forward to meeting up again with Debz and Gill at the Bridge House Publishing Celebration Event in December.
Away from that, Debz is a publisher, freelance editor and author. Her strapline is Changing The World One Word At A Time. For more details on her work here, do check out her website
Debz has a long and distinguished career including being shortlisted in the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2013. Her debut novel, While No One Was Watching, was published by Parthian Books, and she too has had many stories in the Bridge House Publishing anthologies over the years.
She also regularly writes about writing on her blog which you can find at Writerly Debz.
Her second novel, If Crows Could Talk, came out on 5th October 2024 (Walela Books).
To start, do check out the blurb below.
BLURB
Meet George Tucker and April Jefferson
Born 50 years apart… Their destinies are tied, they must meet, yet they do not know of each other’s existence… a story that unites a young white teenager with an African-American man running from the dark times of Jim Crow. Can April help George unlock his darkest secret?
Book Trailer for If Crows Could Talk: https://youtu.be/ig_Wj1zW3Po?si=Dd0nOqKvpOMjxfgy
Many congratulations, Debz, on the publication of If Crows Could Talk. I find the buzz of being published never goes away! Am sure you find that too. Now it’s question time!
1. Tell us something about your writing journey, Debz, because you’ve achieved a great deal so far. Had you always intended to write novels or was this something which came out of your long experience in short form writing? What would you say were the advantages to short and long form writing? Do you have a preference? Also, well done on being represented by an agent? Many authors find trying to get an agent is so difficult. What would you recommend authors look for in agents? What can authors do to improve their chances of being represented?
Thank you so much for having me here. It’s a real honour to discuss my work. So yes, it has been some journey and not one to be taken lightly. Anyone who has achieved success as a writer, will know how hard we have to work. It is a journey of continual learning.
It was my dream to write from a child, attempting my first novel at the tender age of nine, and it was serialised in school assembly, and sent to publishers. Of course, it never got picked up, but the dream was awakened.
I won my first short story competition aged ten. But I always focussed on the dream of being a best-selling novelist, though at sixteen when I had the idea for the first adult novel, I had not lived enough to do it justice. It was a dream I tucked away, and writing was a hobby I revisited for fun many times over the years.
My first degrees were in science. I worked in Medical Diagnostics doing a lot of medical writing. It’s generic, emoting is not an option! Everything has to be supported with references and it is nowhere near as fun as fiction.
Eventually the desire grew too big and having attempted a novel and starting to have success with short stories, I eventually took a leap of faith. I left a decent job and plunged into an uncertain future. Who knew what would happen? The passion just became too strong. By then I had my MA in Creative Writing, had taken editing courses, and started to work from home as an editor.
I always dreamed of being a novelist but I learned short story writing was the way to develop. I implore all budding writers to practice and grow through short stories before you attempt a novel. Don’t run before you can walk. I started with Bridge House and have now had close to thirty short stories published in collections by many publishers here and in the US.
I have won a few competitions including the inaugural Bath Short Story Award and have been nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize. What I learned about succinctness and brevity from writing short stories I used when I went back to writing novels and they were so much better for it. Just because you have more room with novels, it doesn’t mean you can waffle or have too many subplots. Every word still has to count.
Not only is writing short stories a great way to learn and hone your writing skills, the rewards come faster. Also, it allowed me to experiment with form. My Pushcart-nominated story The Theory of Circles, for example, is told in blog posts, tweets and Facebook posts with some connecting narrative, and it goes backwards the way you would scroll down such pages.
What I learned was some devices worked well with short stories but would be too hard to sustain in an effective way in a longer form. So, I had fun and a lot of success but the dream of being a novelist was still there. In fact, I developed a number of short stories into novels. Sometimes they feel too big to be confined to a small space.
If you work hard to make the shape of your short story solid, and perfectly formed, then this can serve as a blueprint for adaptation. My first novel to be picked up, While No One Was Watching, came from a short story and was in fact the fourth novel I’d written.
So, the lesson is you have to keep learning, patience is a virtue for a writer. There is no shortcut. Even with professional guidance, one critique can’t make you a best-selling author. You have to take the time to grow the way an acorn does before it becomes the oak.
I still write short stories though most of my time now is spent working on my novels. The thrill never leaves. I had not written a new short story for a while but wrote a Halloween one just recently, submitted it to an anthology in the US and it was accepted. I did the dance! I will always write short stories and who knows which ones might also be adapted into future novels.
I now have a lovely agent, Camilla Shestopal from Shesto Literary. She has been an amazing champion for my work. Agents reject 95–99% of manuscripts submitted to them, but you can’t get to bigger presses without one. The competition is fierce.
I feel very grateful to have an agent but it doesn’t mean your work will sell overnight. It is still hard. Often publishers have an idea of what they plan to publish for the next year or two and they might love your work (and I have been the queen of spectacularly good rejections) but the timing is wrong. It is not about the quality of the work at this stage; many factors come into play.
Maybe the same novel might be right later on, maybe it depends on who read it that day. It turns from the art of the writing, and I am a literary writer who cares very much about crafting great stories, to the process of what will sell. An agent wears two hats and bridges the gap between art and sales.
So, my biggest advice is always write for joy. For you… because it’s not an easy business. It isn’t easy to impress an agent, but all I can say is do your research, choose the agent who you feel would be a champion for your work and make it as good as it can before you submit it. Don’t think editing will fix things, that an agent will see through issues.
Editing should be about elevating your work not fixing it when it gets to this stage of submission. If it needs fixing, it will not be selected, especially when the odds are already stacked against you! So have a professional appraisal if you can before you submit.
2. Can you share with us what inspired you to write If Crows Could Talk? I know you have already had launch events for the book. Can you let us know what these were, whether you have any further events coming up, and why you chose the events you did? Please share three top tips for book launches you have found useful.
If Crows Could Talk started life as a short story called Colourblind in 2004. It was actually part of my first serious attempt at an adult novel which had short stories woven into its architecture, all reflections of a future USA, and with a crow leitmotif running through it. It was based on a group of Crow Indians. You could not write something about American history without Jim Crow and somehow all the stories I had read or films I had watched about this impacted me greatly.
The story was too big for that novel which I now see as my ‘practice novel’ and after rejections with the first novel I decided to adapt Colourblind into a novel in 2006. Though I had my first professional critique for this, by none other than Gill James herself (it’s how we met!) and the rejections were a lot better, I knew I was not a good enough writer then to do it justice. It was a big story and I was writing outside my country and my culture. I had yet to really develop my voice and I didn’t know enough to tackle the subject as well as it needed.
So, a lesson here for writers is to know when to let it rest. I set it to one side even though a lot of ‘magical’ things happened with that novel which made me truly believe one day it would be published. I learned my craft. And in 2020, while recovering from breast cancer surgery, several competition wins and a novel under my belt and a great agent, I knew it was finally time.
Now I knew what kind of writer I was and so I started again from scratch. In essence it is the same story but at the same time a lot changed. It was a pleasure to write and it seemed to pour out of me. I wrote it in seven months and then of course I had to do further edits. I polish a lot as I go so my first drafts are pretty polished anyway. This time I knew I had something so much better. It did the rounds with big publishers and the reaction was amazing though it didn’t quite fit with their current projections.
So, it was truly wonderful when Gill told me she was launching Walela Books, a literary imprint of Bridge House with books that fall through the cracks. These are literary novels that are rejected not because of the quality, but because the industry has other ideas that year of what they think the public wants (and yes it does work that way!). I had to submit via my agent of course, but I was thrilled when Gill commissioned it as Walela’s inaugural novel, made extra special given she was one of the few people who saw it years before!
The book was launched at a special event on Canvey Island on October 4th, in the same lovely church where I’d launched my first novel and got married! Gill came down from Manchester to interview me and my agent said a few words to introduce me. We had over sixty people there. I did some short readings, and I signed books!
A launch is important, and a chance to finally show people what you’ve been doing! These can take different formats and I have attended a few over the years, but I think a relaxed ‘in conversation with’ always works well. Give them some refreshments too, don’t charge for the event and that way people are happy to buy the book!
Because it is a small press, I now pretty much have events every weekend locally selling and signing books. With Christmas not far off these include bookshops and Christmas markets! If you are published by one of the big presses and they fast-track you so they PAY (yes they pay) for your book to be front of house and on the tables in big bookshops people will see your book.
If you’re not fast-tracked or you’re with an independent (though still traditionally published) you have to somehow let people know your book exists. Even if I sell six copies per event that’s six people I don’t know reading the book and who knows who they will tell and who might then order it. In the new year I plan a night away every month in different cities across the UK to do signings and in the US in February. It’s part of being a writer!
3. Do you find it is a theme which draws you to writing novels/stories or is it a case a character just grabs you and you have to follow their story through? Do you outline? If so, how have you found this has helped you in putting any length of story together? Also, which themes grab you the most so you know you will have to write about them at some point?
I only write for joy, for my own passion and what I want to write. I am a literary writer and have to write what I believe in. I want to create a world people become completely immersed in. You know those books you can’t put down.
For me it’s all about the characters. When we watch shows we love, it isn’t about what happens to the characters as much as it’s about caring deeply for and loving the characters and those are the kinds of things I LOVE to write. Of course, you also need a good plot, they need interesting things to do, but character first.
That said, most of my stories begin with a premise. I have to have something important to say. There’s a reason for telling the story and with this novel it was fuelled by that need to not forget what happened in 1950’s America. George lived in the shadow of the events of Jim Crow, a time of unrest and segregation for African-Americans. But it’s a white troubled teenage girl born fifty years later who holds the key to unlocking George’s deepest secret… only they don’t know of one another’s existence and need to find one another.
Though it deals with a big subject of American civil rights, it’s really about family, about love, loss and the power of secrets to shape our lives. So, for me it’s the message that is vital. Then come the characters. They show me the best way to tell their story and get that message across.
I have to write themes that take something about us as humans and ask what if…? I have to have something that taps right at the heart of all of us.
You have to outline, actually you need more than that. A novel is a big thing and while some writers might well be pantsers who wing it and see, to really write professionally absolutely 100% you need to plan. I have a complex spreadsheet that outlines chapter function and I have a character one since you need to know what a character most wants and why. It drives the action.
You need to know the story arc and be aware of where all your key plot points are from in the inciting incident which for me has to come as early as possible, page one if you can. You need to orchestrate your reveals since writing is not about what you put down, but what you hold back. Technique, understanding storytelling is vital.
There are many ways to tell the same story, you need to find the best one that keeps the reader hooked, compelled and emotionally engaged. I will, however, add that for all the planning and outlining, never disregard the intuitions. By this I mean as you write things will happen, magical things, and you will need to be flexible and receptive to change, so long as it enhances the story.
4. Do share something about how you became involved with Bridge House Publishing, a publisher we both love. What would you say were the strengths of the independent presses like BHP and how can readers find out more about them so they can check their books out? Do also share something about how you discovered Walela Books.
While my ambition is to find the big publisher and be fast-tracked to find the wider audience, we all know it is not easy. For me small independent presses should not be overlooked. I have been connected to Bridge House since I met Gill and was later involved as an editor.
That said I am still paid freelance as an editor and when I learned about Walela I, like any one of you, still had to submit the book, well my agent did. There was no certainty about them taking it on and I knew they was extra strict on this as it’s their first one and Gill wanted to set the right tone.
Smaller presses give you a little more control in terms of paying more attention to your ideas about cover art for example. In this case with a hugely successful professional artist in the family (two – my dad and my brother), I knew my brother was right for the kind of cover I had in mind and after talking to Walela he was commissioned. The decision and the ideas were a team decision on various Zoom calls. But with a big press I would have had far less input.
While it has caused some teething issues with book supply (which it shouldn’t have!) if the system works, the print-on-demand (POD) model used by many small presses is so much more ecologically sound, and since my first Masters degree was in ecology this appeals. The model is great when it works well and avoids overproduction, huge warehousing costs and pulping books in large quantities that don’t sell!
The drawbacks, often caused by miscommunication, are supply times and bookshop discounts since these books are more expensive than mass-market books, though feel and smell the quality of the paper and the look of the covers and you can see the better quality!
What I am passionate about is dispelling the myth that POD books are self-publishing. Waterstones list POD titles as that when in my case it’s a traditionally published novel with a respectable independent publisher. It is not self-published!
Check out Bridge House and Walela as well as their other imprints to see what a rich array of great titles they have.
Also be aware while you have to do a huge amount of work to sell your book, that applies even with big presses unless you are one of the rare authors who gets the fast-track treatment. Also an indie like Walela is more likely to take a chance on a new author, with POD they don’t have to pay for huge print-runs.
If your first novel sells a respectable amount, it doesn’t have to be hundreds or thousands for the them to take on the next book, unlike the huge presses. So I am eternally grateful to Gill and her team for giving this special book of mine a shot, Parthian too with my first novel for that matter.
But this one feels extra special to me as it has taken twenty years from when I wrote it as short story!
Conclusion
Many thanks, Debz, for the first half of a wonderful interview. Next week sees Debz discussing drafts, marketing tips, favourite aspects of storytelling, handling the ups and downs of the writing life and much else with plenty of useful information for writers. Be sure not to miss it! Below do find Debz’s website and blog links.
DEBZ HOBBS-WYATT – WEBSITE AND OTHER LINKS
Debz Hobbs-Wyatt
WRITER/EDITOR/PUBLISHER
Changing the world, one word at a time…
Visiting Local Author Canvey Island Library
Represented by Camilla Shestopal, Shesto-Literary.com
Winner Bath Short Story Award 2013
Shortlisted in Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2013
Debut Novel While No One Was Watching published by Parthian Books
www.debzhobbs-wyatt.co.uk
https://x.com/DebzHobbsWyatt
Writing Blog
Related Posts:-
Read interviews with Chandler’s Ford writer Allison Symes: Part 1 and Part 2.
Read blog posts by Allison Symes published on Chandler’s Ford Today.
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