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Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Guest Author: Lisa J Hobman

Today I'd like to welcome Lisa J Hobman...she's stopping by to celebrate her recent debut release and talk about her journey to getting published.  I'm very excited to have her here and I have her novel, Bridge Over the Atlantic, on my TBR list.


First of all I would like to thank Britni for inviting me to be a guest on her blog.  It means such a lot to get support from other wonderful authors.  It’s been very overwhelming and I am so grateful.

My journey into writing started when I was pretty young.  I used to be a singer and was always trying my hand at song lyrics.  My dad writes beautiful poetry and is quite artistic and so I think I must get my creative side from him.  I used to love writing stories at school and when I was a teenager there was a vague attempt at writing a book but goodness knows what happened to that!  It was in the days before laptops so it was all done in lined notebooks!  Gosh I have just made myself sound ancient!

My family and I are from Yorkshire in England.  It’s a beautiful county with some amazing countryside but we had a very hectic life there.  We started holidaying in Scotland quite a number of years ago now and totally fell in love with the place.  The scenery is so varied!  You can literally be driving along a winding, country road through flat, rocky outcrops and suddenly greeted with a majestic, snow-capped mountain!  It truly captured our hearts.  We spent so many holidays there from that point and decided that, one day…in the far distant future…we would relocate; perhaps when we were retired.

The more we thought about things the more we realised that waiting was just not an option.  And anyway, what was the point in waiting?  We figured things out and decided that we should just take the plunge!  It took a few years but in May 2012 we finally relocated!

The idea was that I would start a little craft business and a blog to keep family and friends abreast of what was going on in our new life.  But I got the writing bug!  An idea for a story had been bubbling somewhere in the back of my mind for a while and somehow making the move north opened some kind of floodgate in my brain!  I started to write and couldn’t stop! (In fact I still can’t!)

I wrote for around six months solid.  I turned writing into my full time job!  Once the story was finished and my husband and I had made a final research trip to make sure all the descriptions of places and scenery really held up, it was time to bite the bullet and try to get it published!  This was the scariest part.  It was all new to me and I had no clue what to expect.  Receiving rejections through for something I had put my heart and soul into was a bitter pill to swallow.  But it’s all par for the course.  And as a writer you have to hang on to the fact that rejections are going to happen.  Like it or not!  You have to keep in mind that it’s not personal.

In November I had news that knocked me off my feet!  A company in the USA called 5 Prince Publishing offered me a contract after requesting my full manuscript!  I was totally bowled over.  It was the most exciting feeling ever.  My hard work had paid off and here was a company that wanted to give me a chance.  I have learned so much through working with my wonderful editor, Bernadette.  I am still learning and will continue to do so in order to make my books the best that they can be.  It’s been an amazing process.

Bridge Over the Atlantic is a passion-filled, contemporary romance that tells the story of Mallory, a twenty something, curvy, voluptuous girl with self-esteem issues.  These issues have stopped her from meeting Mr Right and she has just about given up.  That is until one day she take a coffee break out in the bustling streets of Leeds city.  Stiletto’s and pavement cracks do not go well together and Mallory soon discovers this when she lurches right into the arms of a passing stranger…but not just any passing stranger…a gorgeous, masculine passing stranger!

I am often asked if the characters in the book are based on real people.  The answer is no.  I can honestly say that Mallory has elements of me in her.  But to be totally honest, she has elements of almost every woman out there.  I hope this makes her endearing and realistic. 

My second novel has been contracted and I am due to begin edits with my wonderful editor at 5 Prince Publishing very soon!

Bridge Over the Atlantic is available at:
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble
Smashwords
iTunes

You can contact Lisa J Hobman at:

2 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for having me as a guest Britni! Looking forward to you visiting my blog soon!

    ReplyDelete