The Long Road…
From a frivolous dream to debut thriller, Lisa Nicholas explains the long road to getting her first novel published
As a youngster Lisa Nicholas recalls wanting to emulate the authors that created the magical worlds she so loved.
“The written world was the one I wanted to be in, but more than that I wanted to create one of my own. I started to put pen to paper many times but struggled to find a path beyond around chapter three,” recalls Lisa, who has recently published her first debut thriller, Don’t Forget Me.
“This was different,” she explains. “The germ of the idea first began to form in a dream, although the novel itself veered dramatically from the story I’d dreamt up in my subconscious one night, about endless love and unerring loyalty. As the plot developed in my mind, the love became obsession, loyalty a sinister determination.”
Don’t Forget Me is a psychological thriller and from the outset the reader knows that Megan is dead, Adam has run away and Olivia is out to find him to reclaim what is hers.
“It’s a dark tale, borne out of light,” says Lisa. “All the nice, warm elements of the dream that planted the seed were inverted. The story hops between two periods of time, before and after Megan’s death, and we see the relationship between the three main characters transform. Ultimately Don’t Forget Me is about flawed people, their relationships, and their need to believe in their own version of the truth.”
For Lisa, the first draft didn’t take long to write and for the first time, the chapters flowed easily.
“The following 18 drafts took a little longer! I sought advice from teachers, mentors, friends and family,” she recalls.
“I started to submit to agents at the end of September 2019, having begun writing in December 2018. I started to receive rejections a month later. Despite receiving over 30 rejections, I continued, albeit a tad demoralised.
“Eventually, I gave up on finding an agent and decided to go direct to small independent publishing houses, who accept submissions from unrepresented authors. I didn’t hear anything for some time, the months had flown by in a whirlwind of submissions, rejections, and researching who to submit to next. It was October 2020 when I received an offer from Olympia Publishers.”
But that wasn’t the end of the road for Lisa who then worked with editors at Olympia: “They made suggestions throughout the book, red-penning my finely-tuned 18th draft, and so I went back to the first line in the first chapter, and started to address the comments and make further edits. It was a laborious and repetitive task going back and forth between us, taking months more, but it was worth it. Their fresh eyes helped me to see problems with the writing and the plot I’d somehow missed before, and the process produced a much better piece of work.”
When Lisa and Olympia finally signed off the cover and the publication date was set, it all became very real: “I started to get nervous, as if I’d only just realised this meant that those outside of my closest supporters would read it too and might not be so kind. But it was amazing to see it appear as I searched on Amazon and other booksellers – and I was lucky to get some early positive feedback and good reviews!”
Lisa, who until recently lived in Pendle, has now started working on a second novel, which falls into the same genre.
“I hope to use that experience to enhance my methods. One thing I do know is that patience is a must. Another important lesson, for me, is to remember how subjective literature is. Agents and publishers will reject you, but that doesn’t mean the story isn’t worth pursuing, or that it won’t be perfect for another agent or publisher. Most importantly, hopefully there will be readers who love it as much as you do. There’s no better reward than that.”
Don’t Forget Me is out in paperback, eBook, and available as part of Kindle Unlimited. You can find it online at Amazon and other booksellers or ask for it in your local book shop
