“I’d given it a go and it
hadn’t worked out.”
Catherine Cooper reveals why having several novels rejected by publishers didn’t put her off writing.
I wrote my first novel in 2002, finishing (so I thought) just before my first child was born. I was working part time and took the view that if I was ever going to do it, now was the time. I sent it out to a few agents from the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook almost at random, not really expecting much. But then as returned from hospital with our new baby, an agent from Darley Anderson rang and said she and her colleagues loved the book but it was too short – could I make it a bit longer and then they could seriously consider it?
I wrote around 20,000 extra words over the next couple of months in between feeds, when my son was asleep or when my husband could take charge of him. To cut a long story short, she loved the book and took it on, but sadly the publishers didn’t go for it.
So for the time being, I felt I’d given it a go and it hadn’t worked out. My time then was taken up with small babies (my daughter arrived two years later) and my work as a freelance journalist. I didn’t write any fiction for several years.
Fast forward to 2009, when we moved to France and by now the children were 4 and 6 – at school full-time. I realised I missed writing, and when I saw YA author Keris Stainton was offering mentoring in a charity auction, I bid for it. In the end mine wasn’t the winning bid, but she offered to mentor me for the same charity donation as I had offered, and I was delighted to accept. This really kickstarted my writing again.
I hadn’t read any YA for years but found it was a genre I loved reading and also really enjoyed writing – not least because the books are short and I always struggle to hit word count in anything! By now my previous agent had retired but I secured my present agent, Gaia Banks at Sheil Land, with my first YA novel Don’t You Want Me.
As had happened with the previous book, she loved it, but the publishers didn’t. Following this I bashed out a few more (I honestly can’t remember exactly how many – I think three or four) quite quickly – I had refound my writing mojo and, as they were short, I could get the first draft done in a few weeks. Another two or three were submitted and while there was some positive feedback and I even met a couple of publishers, eventually they ‘just didn’t love it quite enough.’
Again I did nothing for a few years fiction-wise, and then for reasons I can’t really remember I decided to try writing a thriller. I am a very keen skier, I read a lot of thrillers and had never read one written in a ski resort. So that’s what I wrote over around a year, off an on. My agent submitted The Chalet at the end of 2019 and it was pre-empted by Phoebe Morgan at Harper Collins four days later. So the two morals of the story are – keep at it, and even though nothing might happen for ages when it does, it can happen very quickly.
I am a freelance journalist living in the South of France with my husband and two teenage children. We moved from London in 2009 so that the children could grow up bilingual and we could all ski more, and to enjoy a more relaxed pace of life. For more about me, visit www.catherinecooperauthor.com
About THE CHALET:
French Alps, 1998
Two young men ski into a blizzard… but only one returns.
20 years later
Four people connected to the missing man find themselves in that same resort. Each has a secret. Two may have blood on their hands. One is a killer-in-waiting.
Someone knows what really happened that day.
And somebody will pay.
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Keep getting rejected? See it as a rite of passage.