An interview with an author: Cressida McLaughlin, Part Two

Welcome back for Part Two of my interview with the bestselling author, Cressida McLaughlin.

Readers, welcome back to WriteWatchWork. If you read my most recent post, you would know that I recently had the opportunity to interview one of my favourite authors, Cressida McLaughlin.

Speaking to Cressida was a moment I'll never forget, but we spoke about so much that I've had to split the interview into two parts. You can read Part One here, and for Part Two, where we talk all about Cressida's books and have a game of Would You Rather, read on.

My interview with Cressida McLaughlin

WriteWatchWork: You recently signed a new multi-book deal with HarperCollins. Could you tell me a bit more about that -- if allowed, of course -- and if you have any ideas for the new books yet?

Cressida: Yes, so I've got a four-book deal with HarperCollins, and two books are going to be standalone romances and two are going to be a series, which is going to be a new series; so not The Cornish Cream Tea series, which is, at the moment, after eight books, coming to an end -- but I might return to it, so never say never.

The book I'm writing at the moment is a standalone romance and then I'm going to be writing the first book in a new series, but actually, I haven't yet decided what that is. There are still discussions with my editor about where it's set, whether it's another Cornwall-set series or I'd love to set a series in Norfolk, which is where I live. And so, I haven't started thinking about that one yet because I'm still working on this new standalone.

So there are going to be two standalones and then two books in a brand-new series. All kind of the same style that I've written from the beginning so contemporary romance; lots of characters, lots of community, and usually some pets because I love putting animals in my books, so the same feel-good factor as before.

WriteWatchWork: Well, I look forward to reading them. And you mentioned including lots of characters there, and across all of your books, there are several protagonists and side characters. Which character resonates with you the most that you've written?

Cressida: Oh my goodness, out of all my books? It's really hard. I try to make all my main characters different, so sometimes, I try and think of characters that are really different to me and that's more of a challenge.

Recently, the one that's resonated with me the most is probably Thea in The Cornish Cream Tea Holiday. She comes down to Cornwall for a solo holiday because her best friend's had to pull out because she's got a job back in Bristol where she lives. Thea is quiet, she's a bit of an introvert and she's very bookish. She finds it difficult to come out of her shell, but she's also got this dream that she wants to fulfil and she finds it quite hard to do that.

I loved writing about her because I think that I've got some of the same characteristics as her. I'm quite introverted; I could easily hide in my house and read books for days on end without doing anything else. And there are some bits in that book, for example, she goes on this clifftop walk in Cornwall that she finds absolutely terrifying, and I wrote that after I'd done the same thing with my husband.

We'd gone on this walk and he was like 'Let's get on the cliffs', and there were bits of the cliff walk that were just like, 'Why are there no barriers?'. I couldn't believe that people strode along this thing with a sheer drop down to the rocks below. So there was quite a lot of me in Thea I think and I definitely resonate with her story quite a bit, whereas characters like Ollie, who's a lot more extroverted, I loved writing her but I think that's because I'm quite different to her.

WriteWatchWork: It's good though to have characters that you do relate to but then others who surprise you and are very different as well.

Cressida: Definitely. I like the challenge of that, and my editor always says there's a little bit of you in every single one of your heroines, which I think is unavoidable because they're coming from you. But it's nice to think, 'How would she react in this situation?', and actually it will be really different from how I'd react, and kind of exploring those moments.

WriteWatchWork: Well, have there been any characters you've disliked writing about or not enjoyed as much, whether it be a protagonist or side character?

Cressida: I think sometimes there are villainous characters, not in a cartoon strip way, I don't think you can put a big bad villain in there because it wouldn't be realistic.

One of the main problems I have is I hate putting my hero and heroine through the ringer. So, when it comes to the conflict element, which you have to have in books, I always find it really difficult to do that. I have to gear myself up and say, 'You're going to make them have a really horrible time, but there's going to be a happy ever after at the end, so don't worry about it.'

I'm trying to get better at that, so there are not necessarily any characters I've disliked writing, but those bits of the book, although they're really interesting and meaty and challenging to write, I always have to push myself further, because otherwise they'll just have a little disagreement on Page 220 and by Page 222, I'll want them back together. So I have to work hard at making them have a bit of the book, which is often referred to as 'The Dark Night of the Soul', where characters hit rock bottom and have to drag their way out and find their own happy ever after.

So, that bit I always find quite hard work, but also it's really good for me to do it.

WriteWatchWork: Earlier you mentioned where the inspiration for The House of Birds and Butterflies came from, going to nature reserves with your husband, but what about your first book? Where did the inspiration for A Christmas Tail come from?

Cressida: I have never owned a dog, I've had a couple of cats in the past, but I've never owned a dog. But I love dogs and near us, where we live in Norwich, just on the edge of Norwich, we've got a really nice park. It's just a big square of grass and me and my husband used to go walking there every morning before breakfast.

And the main people we'd meet would be dog walkers and we got to know them. It is sort of like a really nice community, and you could see that these people met up with each other to go dog walking. It was so lovely to see the people walking and how similar they were to their dogs, and so the idea was what if this woman starts dog walking in her beautiful little neighbourhood, but she's more interested in solving all the problems of the owners than she is in walking the dogs.

A Christmas Tail from Cressida's Instagram on the sixth anniversary of its release (Credit: @cressmclaughlin on Instagram)

So I wanted a really nosy character, who had such great intentions to help people, but always kind of got things wrong or got in the way. I just thought that that was such a nice idea for a book, having this little community where they all get involved in things like the Christmas lights; it seemed like such rich territory for romance and with this character, who was hopeless in lots of ways but had a really big heart. So it was mainly from walking around, seeing the dogs and their owners near where I live and thinking about what they would be like and what are they like with their dogs.

WriteWatchWork: Which of your books was the most challenging to write?

Cressida: So I know the answer to this. The Cornish Cream Team Bus, which I would say is the book that has changed my writing career because it was never going to be a series, to begin with. It was just this one book because I wanted to set a book in Cornwall, I wanted it to be on the beach, and I wanted it to involve food. I had all of these ideas and I wrote the whole book, sent it off to my editor and she came back to me and said there are only two things wrong with this:

The relationship between the hero and heroine. And the plot.

Basically, it's the biggest structural edit I've ever had to do. I had to basically rewrite the whole book and it was a huge challenge. It was really stressful at the time because it was my sixth book, but in the past lots of my books have been written in four parts because they came out as eBook parts; so, I'd write each book as a part and have it edited as a part, so I wasn't ever working on a whole book at once.

Whereas this one was the first book I think, or maybe the second book, where I've done that. And then to have this edit where I had a huge amount to do, it was really really stressful, but I was super happy with the finished results and it was really really popular. My editor was like 'This is a really popular book, why don't we do a second one?' And so The Cornish Cream Tea series was born.

So the hardest book to write but the biggest rewards reaped at the end.

WriteWatchWork: What was the easiest book of yours to write?

Cressida: Easiest to write was The Staycation, which was my standalone that I wrote a couple of years ago, and I wrote that in lockdown. I had just sent off, I think, The Cornish Cream Tea Wedding to my editor, who was on holiday for a fortnight, and I had this idea bubbling in my head, which was obviously based on lockdown because it was about a guy who was stuck in a hotel room because he'd been in an accident, he couldn't really get out and about, and his sister sends a travel agent to his room to book him a holiday for when he's better.

But he says he doesn't want that, he wants the travel agent to bring the holidays to him in the hotel room while he's recovered because he's so bored, and so that was the idea and it'd been bubbling away probably since the beginning of lockdown. And then when my editor was away, I just sat down and thought, 'I'll see if I can write the first chapter'.

She didn't know I was writing it, it was just for my own pleasure and in that fortnight, I wrote the whole first draft, so I wrote about 90,000 words in two weeks. I just couldn't stop, I loved it so much. And after, I sent it to my agent and said, 'What do you think about this?' and she sent it to my editor and she was like, 'Let's publish it'.

So that was definitely the easiest and quickest one to write because for some reason the story and everything about it was just there in my head waiting to plop down onto my computer. I wish that was the case for every book, but it's not; it was an anomaly but quite a good one.

WriteWatchWork: In a lot of your books, you have very specific knowledge, for example, wildlife and nature in The House of Birds and Butterflies, and astronomy in The Once in a Blue Moon Guesthouse. What sort of things do you tend to research for a book and how long does the research stage take?

Cressida: It depends really on the book. With The House of Birds and Butterflies, my husband and I go to those bird reserves all the time, so I really wanted to write about it and I had quite a lot of knowledge already. But obviously, especially, there are bits at the beginning of each chapter, which is a little snippet about a particular bird or animal, and I will research those to make sure that the facts I was putting in weren't just random or something I thought was true but wasn't.

Astronomy, again, that's something I'm really interested in, but I didn't know many of the details. So I would say with every book, I do probably a few weeks of research, and most of it is online to be honest; I haven't gone out and done any proper big research trips, although that's something I'd like to do in the future.

For The Cornish Cream Tea Bus, it was making sure it was actually plausible that you could have a café on a bus and if it was alright to have a water tank in there and an oven. I didn't want that to be completely improbable, so I had to research all those bits, and you don't want too much detail in there, no one needs to know about how the water tank is fitted but they want to feel like they're not living in a fantasy world if the book isn't a fantasy book.

So I do probably a few weeks of research just to make sure that I feel confident going into writing the book, and then if I write a scene and there are any gaps, I'll make a note and go back afterwards to fill those in because when I'm in the flow of the story, I don't want to suddenly come out and spend two days researching something.

WriteWatchWork: That's really good because I found with your writing style, whilst you include lots of descriptions and facts, it doesn't detract from the narrative and I can picture things clearly. With The House of Birds and Butterflies, the snippets at the start of each chapter are written in a way that you just take it with the narrative.

Cressida: I'm so pleased. That's what I want because especially I think with crime books, they'll often be so specific about something that people aren't aware of and you do sometimes get big chunks of knowledge about it, which is really informative and the story wouldn't work if you didn't.

I certainly think when people are reading light-hearted romance, they don't want to be taken out of the story with big factual reams of stuff. I have had a couple of people email me and one person who owned a campervan when travelling was like, 'I'd like some more information about how does she empty the sewage and is there a map of the inside of the bus?' And I was like, 'No.' People don't want that in their romcoms, it's not a book about how to set up and run a café on a double-decker bus. It's not a how-to manual, it's a romance.

WriteWatchWork: One thing I am interested in is how you come up with the names for locations, like Porthgolow, and pets and characters as well.

Cressida: It is pretty challenging, and also that is one of the things where I feel like I can’t start writing until I know the names of the people and the places because you can’t really picture them in your head unless they’ve got a name. I think with the two Cornish place names, I looked up Cornish words and what they meant, and found some that sounded nice and had good meanings as well.

I can’t remember what the meanings of Golow or Karadow are now – I think Karadow means kindness, something really nice --- but then I had a look and there are lots of other ports, there’s Port Isaac, all those kinds of things, so it was a hodgepodge of what was already in Cornwall and what word would sound nice on the end.

With the characters, I think especially for the hero and heroine, that does take me quite a while because I want the name to fit with the personality and I think especially with the hero, I have very strong ideas about what names are sexy and what names are not. For example, I would never have a hero called Colin, and I'm sorry to all the Colins in the world, but for me, that's not a sexy name, so I'm not going to use it. I've read a couple of romances, I think they were American, where the hero's been called Colin and I've been like 'Really?'

So it's very important to me that especially the hero and heroine have the right names, and I will spend a lot of time on baby name websites, and sometimes, I'll think about what year were the characters born in and then look at the most popular names in that year.

In The Cornish Cream Tea Bus, she's called Charlie because originally instead of a cream tea bus, I was going to have a crepe bus or a crepe food stall, so I was thinking of Charlie's Crepes. Then I changed the crepe bit but then already in my head she was Charlie, so she kind of stuck. With Lila, I just loved the name Delilah, and I thought it was a beautiful name but also the name of someone who was a bit of a terror. I have to fit the names in with the personalities of the people I'm creating as well.

WriteWatchWork: Which one of your heroes would you say is your favourite?

Cressida: That's really hard --- I love them all. But I do have a real soft spot for Daniel in The Cornish Cream Team Bus, and I think that's because it was the first time I had tried to do a sort of enemies-to-lovers book. The antagonism between Charlie and Daniel at the beginning was so much fun to write, I loved him coming across as a cold, callous character and then unpicking all those layers.

Similarly, with Jack in The House of Birds and Butterflies, he's properly grumpy at the beginning and clashes with Abby a lot. I love writing the lovely heroes like Max and Colm, who are lovely from the start, but it's nice to peel back the layers and see the heroine peel back the layers of the hero and get under their skin and show all their soft sides. So I have a real soft spot for Daniel.

WriteWatchWork: If you could give aspiring authors one piece of advice, what would it be?

Cressida: My piece of advice to aspiring authors is to write a story that you're passionate about. Don't look at the market and think, 'Well these kinds of books are doing really well' or 'This person's a millionaire'. If you want to be a writer, you have to write a story that you love because if you're not passionate about it then chances are you won't write something that readers are passionate about either.

So write a story that you really love and you're really invested in.

My second piece of advice, which is more technical, is to get to the end. Don't be a perfectionist and go back and edit the first chapter 30 million times. Try and get to the end of something because you can always go back and make it better, but you cannot edit a blank page.

WriteWatchWork: I must say, I am guilty of the second one, editing before I've finished the first full draft.

Cressida: I think that is such a big thing because it's such a personal thing to do and when you're just starting out and you've not built any routines or plotting styles or anything, you're just figuring it out. So it's easy to just think 'I'll go back and make them better' and it is scary walking off into this blank world of finishing it.

But I think, just know the first draft is going to be rubbish. It's just going to be rubbish but get it all down and then go back and make it work is what I would say.

I think so many more people would get their books finished if they stopped worrying about the beginning that they've already written and just forced themselves to go through to the end.

And that's a wrap!

I hope you enjoyed reading my interview with Cressida and found it as fascinating as I did.

Until next time...