Dee Weaver Interview

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WriteWords talks to Dee Weaver about The Winter House, newly self published on Kindle

What have you written and what are you writing now?

I have four finished novels but The Winter House is the only one I've published. It’s a paranormal romance about a derelict house haunted by the spirit of a young girl who was murdered there in the 19th century. I'm currently writing (very sporadically, admittedly) about a man who is trying to solve a 300-year old miscarriage of justice.

Do you have a day job?

Not now. I have worked all my life, in a variety of jobs, but I retired two years ago. Since then I have had difficulty finding time to write!

How did you first start writing?

In the early eighties I was in a rut and looking for a fresh start. A neighbour told me she was going to make her fortune by writing novels. I thought, if she can do it, I can too. I wrote a novel, in longhand, and typed it up on a portable typewriter. I sent it to a publisher who returned it months later, along with a two-page rejection letter, saying they really liked it, but it didn’t quite hit the spot. They suggested ways to improve it and offered to read it again after a rewrite.
By that time I had moved to Lancaster and found a wonderful job… so I stuffed the manuscript in a cupboard and forgot about it. I can't begin to say how often I've regretted that decision over the past few years! If only I’d known then how rare it was for a publisher to show that level of interest. Hindsight is not a wonderful thing. Sometimes hindsight sucks.
Why it took me until 2001 to try again, I’ll never know. And I still can’t recall what started me off then. All I know is that, almost overnight, I became obsessed with writing, and that obsession has never completely left me.

Who are your favourite writers/influences and why?

Philippa Gregory, Elizabeth Chadwick, Sharon Kay Penman and CJ Sansom for their ability to tell a good story and bring history to life at the same time.

Why did you opt to self-publish your book on Kindle?

The Winter House has attracted a lot of interest from publishers. I had an agent, but we parted company when too many publishers were telling him there was no market for paranormal in the UK. A small indie publisher took it on, we signed a contract and then, six weeks before publication date, they asked me to cut 20,000 words because the book wouldn’t fit into their binding machine. So that fell through (and I don’t normally put it so politely!). Then I signed up with another agent. She was, and still is, hugely supportive and enthusiastic about The Winter House. We came within a gnat’s whisker of signing with a mainstream publisher but, after getting me to change the plot, change the characters and do a complete rewrite, they decided not to go ahead with it.
I was pretty much wrung dry by this stage, so I pushed the whole thing under a metaphorical bed and got on with my life. Then, last winter, I spotted a small indie publisher in the US who were looking for paranormal romance. I sent them the manuscript and, eventually, they offered to take it on and publish it as an ebook. Everything was going swimmingly until I saw the contract, and some of the clauses were so ambiguous I couldn’t accept it, so we parted amicably.
In the process I had discovered that I could publish the book myself on Kindle, so I started to investigate. At first glance the process looks daunting, but there is a comprehensive step-by-step guide as well as a forum where you can compare notes with others in the same situation. There is no upfront cost, an ISBN isn’t essential, although it’s worth paying for a proofread and a professionally designed cover – the most common criticism of self-publishing is the perceived (and sometimes, I'm afraid, actual) lack of professionalism.

A longer version of this interview is available to WriteWords Full and Community Members.
Click here to learn more about becoming a member.

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