News & Blog by Sara Foster
Read the latest news and bulletins, essays, features, opinions from our bestselling authors. Find out what's being said, debated, and discussed in the world of books and ideas.
People often ask where I get my ideas from. For me, it begins with a very small seed. With Come Back to Me it was a newspaper report, just a few lines tucked away in the corner of the West Australian. And for Beneath the Shadows it was the character of Grace who evolved first – this daunted but determined woman who faces an internal and external battle to uncover the truth of her husband’s disappearance....
It’s hard to say goodbye to a book you’ve worked on and thought about for years. I’m not sure you ever really do. But nothing beats the satisfaction, the joy, and the exhausted relief, of writing the final page, putting your pen down and deciding that your story is ready for somebody else to read it. At the beginning of any writing project I am fiercely protective of my material. I don’t really...
‘The past is still too close to us. The things we have tried to put behind us would stir again.’ Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca features throughout Beneath the Shadows. The quote above forms the epigraph, and sums up the heart of my story perfectly. And in the novel itself, my main character Grace begins to read the book while she is searching for her husband. As she draws ever nearer to the answers...
Or why bad drafts aren’t always a bad thing When I was writing Beneath the Shadows there were a few scary moments when things went awry. I don’t mean those times when I was determined to get 2000 words down before dinner, but found myself browsing the internet, eating biscuits, or reorganising shelves. They were just irritating. More horrifying were the points where I re-read my draft so far and...
I consider myself very fortunate that I was already familiar with the moors when I began to write Beneath the Shadows. My husband’s family are from the area, and I knew straight away that it was the perfect setting through which to tell my story. The landscape’s endlessly undulating emptiness can seem inspiringly beautiful in some moments and downright hostile in others, and this contrast meant that...
Grace, my central character in Beneath the Shadows, is particularly special to me. She is the first fully fledged character I ever developed, and finally, ten years after she first came to me, I am thrilled to be introducing her to the wider world. My first image of her was back in 2001, as she woke from a hellish dream to find herself caught in a waking nightmare – her husband vanished and a small...
I was recently asked advice on how to become a published writer. Here’s my take on what it takes: Originality In general, the more original your concept, the better. But originality must still be able to be placed within the market. Sometimes what’s original to one person can be just a bit too way out to the next reader, so don’t go too far. Alternatively, you may want to follow a trend – vampires,...
For me, for a long time my writing was my hobby, and as such I would get through everything else first, promising myself writing time later, as some kind of reward. However, it’s far too easy for that time to never arrive. It was only when I dedicated myself to finishing Come Back to Me at the end of 2007 that I really made the strides forward that I needed to then pursue publication. Now I do try...
For the past eighteen months I have been telling family and friends that my book will be published. Before that I was just ‘writing a book’ – an oft-heard phrase. I think many of them have grown so used to hearing about this mythical book that it will actually be quite a surprise when they see it on sale. However, waiting for family and friends’ reactions is in many ways as daunting as waiting for...
It is always interesting to see how writers respond to editorial guidance. Some are completely open to suggestions, others are not, and there’s a third category who seem to be keen for a critique, but then either don’t like the reality, or don’t seem to alter anything much as a result. What many writers appear to get stuck on is the ‘Well, I like it’, or ‘It has to happen because…’ response. A writer...
