A care-giver, seamstress in royal circles, and an unintentional writer.
Please, introduce yourself. Tell us about your personal life, family, education.
My name is Ann Parker and I live in Hertfordshire, England with my husband, Terry and our black and white cat, Jazz. My two beautiful daughters have given us eight wonderful grandchildren, so life is never quiet. My husband has Parkinson’s Disease so I stopped working a few years ago to be his carer, so this has given me a chance to start writing. Before that I was a dressmaker working from home. I started making my girls’ dresses when they were about five and it grew from there. Before long I was making and altering clothes for famous sports people, the Queen’s accountant and a Lord and Lady. Not bad when you think the only training I’d had in needlecraft was in primary school.
What do you like doing in your spare time?
I love watching television, I hate to say. And it’s not usually anything educational. Comedies and murder mysteries are the best. Nothing gory though. I put on Twitter once – ‘If you enjoyed the TV programmes Medium and Ghosts, you’ll love The Deadly Detective Agency.’ I loved Psych and at the moment I’m enjoying the reruns of The Closer. I wish I could say I love jogging, hiking or sports, but as I spend time looking after Terry, we’ll blame him hehe.
If you are a writer, are you an avid reader?
I’ve always been an avid and fast reader. Mainly murder mysteries. I read my first Agatha Christie when I was about eight and Conan Doyle at ten. I still reread these again from time to time as I have both complete sets under my bed in bags! My favorites at the moment are Ann Cleeves and M.C Beaton. I always read when I get in bed at night, as it’s a great way of unwinding and forgetting any problems.
What inspired you to write your first book?
My first book was a collection of children’s short stories, entitled Magic & Memories. This was only because friends and family encouraged me to write down the stories that I made up for my grandchildren. As I’m getting on a bit, well quite a lot I suppose, I thought this would be something tangible to leave and also to say, see, I did have a brain. Little did I know that two years later I would have had various poems published in magazines like Spillwords, be in the anthology Hidden in Childhood, and sold a play called The Bravest Badger to Drama Notebook, that school children can perform.
After all the murder mysteries I’ve read, I thought I’d have a go at that too and decided to make Abigail Summers, a bossy, brilliant dressmaker, the sleuth. And although I had never read a paranormal mystery myself, The Deadly Detective Agency appeared in my head.
How do you decide on the title of a book?
Once the story started taking shape, I realized the title had to incorporate the ghosts and the psychic medium and her police constable husband. I’ve written in the actual book how Abigail Summers and her friends came up with the title after they solved her murder. It was actually Hayley Moon who decided that was the one. I love how for the front cover the artist had the idea of making the word DEADLY in a bigger font. Now I want every book in the series to be ‘The Deadly….’. The next one is The Deadly Pub Quiz, then Regatta, Spa Hotel, Gymkhana and probably before long The Deadly Old Folk’s Home.
Have you developed a specific writing style and why?
I write old school style with a pen and paper to start with – about three times and then I type it on my laptop and then change it again. Many ideas come at night when I wake up, so I’ve got very good at writing in the dark on a spiral pad. As for the style of the book, I go by what I like. Sometimes I’m tired at bedtime so I like short chapters and a lot of breaks where I can stop. I don’t write a great amount of descriptions of physical things. That could be because I don’t enjoy reading it that much, or it may be that I’m not that good at it. I’m definitely better with dialogue. In all my books I include humor. It’s got me through life!
When you see new authors struggling, what single piece of advice could you give them on a moment’s notice?
I had many rejections for Magic & Memories and in the end I self-published. Don’t let anyone put you down for that. It’s just as important. It just means on that day to that person they weren’t interested. Life’s too short to wait around and I never regretted it. Magic & Memories led to a lot of successes – I have done book readings at schools and bookshops, a YouTube channel and ultimately, because of a presence online I think it led to The Deadly Detective Agency and coming soon, The Deadly Pub Quiz being picked up by Next Chapter Publishing. How amazing is that!! I would suggest however that you start earlier than I did at 67 years. You’ll look a lot better in the headshots!!
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