PRISCILLA MASTERS

Photograph by Oliver Lyon
Oliver Lyon's email: oliverlyon@hotmail.com

Priscilla Masters The Person  Joanna Piercy Series   Martha Gunn Series   Medical Mysteries
Breaking News  Dates for your Diary  What the Critics say  Buying Priscilla's Books

Priscilla lives in near the Shropshire/Staffs border, works part time as a respiratory nurse in the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and has two grown up sons!

Below is the result of a converation with Priscilla, the author.

How do I write?

"It's a question which is frequently put to me at literary events. And it's more tricky than you'd imagine to answer.
I think about what a book for about a year or two, as well as picturing the characters who will illustrate my point! Then I read around the subject. Often the "reading around" bit is quite obscure. Witchcraft, The Life of Houdini, and a lot of WI books about the villages in the Staffordshire Moorlands for the Joanna books. Plus a lot of cycling! The Martha Gunn books on the other hand, require reading about Shropshire, jurisprudence and Abba! The medical stand-alones mean me dipping my head into the Medical Journals, Pulse, GP, The British Medical Journal and so on. Plus listening very hard to my husband's comments about his work. (He only gets worried if I bring out my notepad!)

The great thing about writing is that any negative experience can be turned into a novel. A bad day at work, our car being stolen, computer hackers. Nothing is wasted.

And now, how? The mechanics.

First of all I would discuss my ideas for a proposed novel with both my publisher, Susie Dunlop, of Allison&Busby, and Juliet Burton, my literary agent. Then, with a dictionary and a Thesaurus by my side, I write straight into the screen, editing bits and pieces, re-writing time after time after time. . . . Asking just one person's valid opinion (usually a professional or someone with expert knowledge in the area) and then sending it to Juliet who corrects glaring errors and then forwards it to my publisher.

The odd thing is that by the time the book actually comes out (roughly a year after I've spent the advance) I'm heavily into the next book so my audience often have to remind me of names, places, events and so on.

So - nothing magical about it except that sometimes ideas flow so fast my fingers can hardly keep up. At other times I clean the house or dig the garden or go to work.

My greatest pleasure is people telling me they've enjoyed reading my books.

Both reading and writing have given me great pleasure over the years so I'm glad to share my stories."