Monday 30 July 2012

I would like to welcome, a very special guest on my blog, author Victoria Connelly


I’ve always wanted to be a writer.  I started my first novel when I was fourteen and used to pass it under the table for my friends to read during Maths lessons.  It once got confiscated and the teacher, Mr Rowan, started to read it which was highly embarrassing but, luckily, it didn’t put me off writing.

When I was trying to get published, I kept hearing this phrase ‘USP’.  Your book has got to have a USP agents would tell me – a ‘Unique Selling Point’.  I’d written a romantic comedy which got me a lot of attention but it didn’t have that ‘USP’.


It was shortly after this that I came up with the idea for Flights of Angels - a story about a young widow called Claudie who has her own group of tiny guardian angels to take care of her.  Angels, I thought - that was my USP!  I was so excited about this because I truly believed I’d found the secret of success and, when I sent that novel out into the world, I waited with baited breath.

And then the rejections came and I felt so silly for having dared to be too different.  In fact, the rejections got to me so much that I stopped writing the novel until a dear friend read the beginning and told me that I had to finish it because it was the best thing she’d ever read.

So, I finished the book and I’m so glad I did because Flights of Angels was my first novel to get published although, bizarrely, not in the UK.  The publisher was in Germany.  I believe it’s rather unusual to have your first novel accepted by a foreign country but Germany did an amazing job and it was even turned into a film and my husband and I got to fly out to Berlin and were invited to be extras – an experience I’ll never ever forget.  And I wish you could see those little guardian angels on film – they were adorable!

Then came two more magical romantic comedies.  Unmasking Elena Montella about a woman who is given a magical Venetian mask which helps her choose which of her three (yes – three!) fiancés is the right one for her.  And Three Graces about a young woman who marries a duke and goes to live in his ancestral home only to find it’s haunted by a rather opinionated eighteenth-century ghost.


I had so much fun writing these books but they were never published in the UK even though they’d done so well in Germany.  So I’ve decided to make them available on Kindle where you can buy them individually or as a trilogy called It’s Magic.

I love rom coms with a touch of magic and have been influenced by films like Blithe Spirit, The Ghost and Mrs Muir and Truly Madly Deeply and I hope my own magical rom coms can give readers some of the happiness that these films have given me.


To buy Flights of Angels click here

To buy It's Magic click here

http://www.victoriaconnelly.com
Twitter - @VictoriaDarcy

10 comments:

  1. What a great success story - and I love how Germany was the first to pick up on Victoria's Flights of Angels. Just goes to prove where there's a will you'll find a way - and talent will always succeed, sooner or later.

    Julia

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  2. Well done you for keeping going! Funnily, enough, one of my books was published in Denmark - and it is much longer than the English version. Clearly I have more to say in Swedish! I shall look out for your books.

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  3. Such an inspiring story, and a reminder to us all to Never Give Up! I love stories with a little sprinkle of magic, and I'm off to add these to my Kindle Collection.

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  4. Thanks so much, ladies.

    Julia - I couldn't believe that Germany was my first publisher!

    Carol - I have yet to have the pleasure of being published in Danish. How extraordinary that your books get longer!

    Jane - Thank you! I hope you enjoy the books.

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  5. Hi Victoria - I loved reading about your publishing journey so far - and I do remember how exciting it was when your first book was being made into a film - how fab that must be!

    Kindle readers (like me) are now in for a magical treat!

    Janice xx

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  6. Thanks, Janice - I'm so delighted that Kindle has enabled me to make these books available in English - the language I wrote them in! So many friends kept moaning on at me that they couldn't be expected to learn German in order to read them!

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  7. Hi all, Blithe Spirit and The Ghost and Mrs Muir are two of my favourite films too. My father is a medium and I grew up around mediums and I have to say I think a few of them copied Margaret Rutherford performance in this film! I am really looking forward to reading Victoria's books. They sound brilliant don't they. I always read the book first before I watch the film What do you like to do the same as me or watch the film first then read the book?

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  8. I'm a read the book THEN watch the film kind of girl too, Nikki. I don't think I could do it the other way around as, once I've watched a film, I feel I've been told that story and don't really feel I need to read it. But a lot has to be said for wonderful adaptations of the classics such as 'Pride and Prejudice' which attract lots of new readers to the works of Jane Austen. So many readers have said that my Austen Addicts Trilogy made them want to read Austen which I take as a very great compliment : )

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  9. I love the classics. I agree Victoria there really are some really good adaptations. I have a soft spot for the film The Water Babies. Maybe it is to do with that I am from Yorkshire. Come to think of it Wuthering Heights which again dare I say Yorkshire!

    I can see how reading your books Austen Addicts Trilogy would draw people to read Jane Austen and that is a wonderful thing.

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  10. Soft spot for the "Water Babies" too. http://www.stellabooks.com/articles/featuredbooks/water_babies.php some beautifully illustrated editions.

    Film and books are such different mediums, film obviously more visual, books are cerebral, open more to individual interpretation. It's so rare for a director to be able to get it just right. Nearly always read the book first - sometimes disappointed watching the film. (exceptions Bedknobs & Broomsticks, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Admirable Mr Crichton(sp?) The latest Narnia "Voyage of the Dawn Treader".)
    Julia

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