Tell us about your debut novel Spitting Gold!

Spitting Gold is a gothic mystery set in nineteenth-century Paris. Con-artist sisters Charlotte and Sylvie Mothe were formerly leading ‘spirit mediums’ until a personal dispute drove them apart. Now, they must reunite for one last job, faking a poltergeist for a reclusive aristocratic family. The con should be easy, but when the sisters witness inexplicable phenomena in the course of their act, they have to ask if there could be another force at work… Expect lots of plot twists, spooky seances and a strand of sapphic romance.

 

How long did it take you to write the novel?

I started drafting part of what would one day become Spitting Gold as far back as 2015, and was still making final edits in late 2023. I definitely wasn’t working on the project non-stop, but it was always at the back of my mind as I picked it up and put it back down several times over the course of those eight years.

 

Have you always wanted to be a writer?

Yes, it’s been a long-term goal since childhood!

 

Was it the first thing you have written, or are there other half-written drafts of other things in your desk drawer?

No, my brilliant first novel was written at the age of ten over the course of a summer holiday: a dramatic 30,000-word adventure tale about a group of feral cats living in Tout Quarry in Dorset. I’m sure it will be a hit one day!

 

What inspired the novel?

The starting point was a love of 19th century French literature, which I’d discovered off the back of an obsession with the musical Les Miserables. In a short period, I read the original Les Mis as well as Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac and The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, as well as an assortment of non-fiction history books on the era. At this point, I was away for university, the first time in my memory that I’d been apart from my sister for an extended period. This was what gave me the idea to write about two estranged sisters: women with very different interests, opinions and values, who live entirely separate lives but are still connected by their sibling bond. It wasn’t until a little later that I thought to bring my interest in ghost stories into the concept, but that was the final ingredient to consolidate everything into one plot.

  

How did you find an agent?

I picked out some authors that I thought were in a similar market space to Spitting Gold and then checked the acknowledgements in their books or snooped around on The Bookseller to find out which agents represented them. After that, I narrowed down my longlist by checking the different agents’ websites to make sure that they were still actively looking for titles in this area. Then I just went ahead and started submitting!

 

What made you decide to sign with Mushens Entertainment?

Mushens were already my top choice of agency thanks to their strong track record with historical fiction titles. Once I’d met my future agent Rachel Neely and chatted about Spitting Gold, it was clear that her thoughts completely aligned with my vision for the novel, so it really as a no-brainer to accept her offer of representation.

 

Did the process of submitting to editors feel very different to when you were querying agents?

I found it less nerve-wracking the second time around: when I was querying agents I just had to trust that my own ideas about what to do were the right ones, whereas by the time we were submitting to editors, I knew I was in an extremely safe, expert pair of hands with Rachel.

 

How did you deal with the suspense and stress of the submission process? Do you have any advice for other editors about to go on submission?

I tried not to think about it too much and to focus on other things, as I knew it was out of my hands by that point. My advice would be to keep busy… Although perhaps not too busy: I was travelling by train to a family wedding when offers started coming in, and trying to pick up calls as I went in and out of patchy countryside phone signal wasn’t the most stress-free experience!

 

Since signing with your publisher what aspect of the publishing journey have you enjoyed most?

One of my favourite parts was working with my editor to shape Spitting Gold into its final form. It’s a rare privilege to have another person thinking about your writing with that level of intense focus, and with every editorial pass I could feel the novel getting better and better.

 

Was there anything about the publishing process that surprised you? Day to day you work in publishing as a marketeer – does the publication journey feel different on this side of the fence?

The main thing I’ve learned as an author is that a lot of the publishing process is spent waiting patiently as things churn away behind the scenes. Normally when I’m working on a book as a marketer, I’m up to speed with exactly what conversations are taking place, and when, and how they’re going, so it was a big change of pace this time to sit back and let all that work happen without my knowledge. It was quite nice for it not to be my problem for once, though!

 

What are you writing next?

My next book is another work of gothic historical fiction, but this time we’re in 1920s Wiltshire, on a country estate that’s rumoured to be under a terrible curse…