TWO NORTH EAST AUTHORS SPREADING CHRISTMAS CHEER

 North East authors Kim Adams and Kay Wilson are talking about their funny and heart-warming novels based in the region, at a Christmas celebration in Whitley Bay Library Wednesday, 11 December at 2pm

 Both author’s books have received five star reviews on Amazon and been described as ‘hilarious’.

 Kim's a writer based in the Tyne Valley, but thanks to Ancestry she now knows she has strong connections to the Whitley Bay area! She writes romantic comedies set in what she calls ‘our glorious North East’ and, try as she might to set her work elsewhere, she finds all the inspiration she needs right here on the doorstep.

 She was a finalist in last year's Comedy Women in Print Prize and found herself in a comedy anthology alongside some notable comedians, and has since gone on to have three books published under her own imprint 'Shy Bairns Publishing'. It was named such because from the very beginning Kim's mantra has been that Shy Bairns Get Nowt, and this is especially true in publishing!

 Kay Wilson’s debut novel The Stand-Up Mam is about what happens when the perfect wife and mother learns to do comedy. She begins to discover what really makes her happy and it isn’t the being number four in the home pecking order. Finding her comedy feet isn’t easy until she begins to speak the truth about her life, with both funny and dramatic results.

 Tickets for the event which also includes refreshments and quizzes are free but need to be booked here.

 Andrea Whitaker-Lindsley is one of the funniest and most uncompromising women I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. We got to know each other through learning about, and doing, stand-up comedy and have been friends ever since those baptisms of fire on the North East circuit.

I’m featuring her on my blog on inspirational women as she has the most positive, effective and kind approaches to leadership I’ve ever come across.

She was born in Sunderland on a social housing estate but her mam made her dad sell his car so they could move to a better area to access a good school.

Her parents didn’t have great childhood experiences and they wanted Andrea and her sister Katrina to get the best education. As a result of her parent’s desire to help their learning, Andrea could read Enid Blyton stories on her own, by the time she was six.

She grew to love Grimms Fairy Tales and took delight in the gruesome nature of them. When she was a teenager Andrea was already reading Stephen King (and getting nightmares as a result!)

She said: “I loved a ‘who done it’ although I never liked the real life crime books that some people enjoy.”

At school she remembers doing science A levels and the boys being taken away for a talk about STEM careers and girls not being included. This could have changed her career path but as she didn’t want to go to university, she decided to join the civil service. After a period in Sunderland, due to personal circumstances she transferred to Wales and the Merthyr Tydfil office. 

She became a union shop steward and this was her first experience of leadership, despite only being in her 20s. There was a major strike for an 8% pay deal and the whole union branch was out on strike. Andrea gave a speech to all the staff and let them know how proud she was of them for what they were doing. There was even solid support from the claimants for the staff’s cause. As a result of everyone’s efforts the strike was successful.

She said: “I think my skill is recognising people’s strengths and encouraging them to believe in themselves. That is what I did in Merthyr. People had assumed the staff would cave in and they just grew stronger.”

Following the birth of her son Cai she decided to move back to Wearside to be near her family.

After time in the Department of Work and Pensions  home visiting team Andrea was appointed to lead a remote team.  This group was where she honed her leadership skills by listening to issues, asking what they wanted to do to tackle them and putting the solutions into action.

She said: “The result showed a host of simple things that could make my staff perform better. For example, people were travelling way too far from their homes so it made caring responsibilities difficult. We let them book appointments around their lives and also developed a portfolio of projects with which they could be involved, to develop. 

“There were opportunities to learn about management and shadow some of my own meetings. The results were great and they were awarded the best-performing team in the country  The productivity improved and I evidenced some of the tremendous thank you notes they had received for their work, which had previously gone under the radar, rather than being celebrated.”

Andrea moved to the HMRC with a promotion and volunteered to be part of a team appointed by the Cabinet Office to deliver their flagship Future Leaders Academy. The people benefitting from the project were from all parts of the civil service including DVSA, DEFRA and Forestry Commission.  

I had some people on the course who didn’t want to talk and were terrified of doing presentations and by the end of their year ended up confidently delivering presentations to hundreds of people.”

One of the projects she supported, the attendees on the skill-building course created  a video about careers in the civil service for young carers. It was so impactful it was accepted and posted on The Civil Service Jobs website. The impact of being part of the academy on their careers has been tremendous with one person jumping three grades and five out of the original eight people also having two promotions each.

Andrea said: “My guidelines for being an effective leader are to be empathetic and build capabilities. People’s confidence grew over the course. Andrea was involved with the academy for over five years, supporting numerous civil servants to advance their leadership and project management skills, and in her final year she developed and supported facilitators to be able to coach the new batch of academy attendees.  Andrea feels being part of the Future Leaders Academies as one of the highlights of her career in the civil service. 

“My approach to leading my people is to give credit to those who have been excellent, but I will always shoulder the blame for anything that doesn’t go to plan.  I also like to take my people with me, leading strongly from the middle of my team!  

Andrea also introduced an initiative to introduce a leadership and coaching culture nationally, she developed her own event and delivered it up and down the country. 

She said: “My interest now is how to tackle negative behaviours people may have and how to change them. I appreciate you can’t always love who you work with but you must keep a professional relationship.”

In her current role Andrea practises her leadership skills and her team outperform their targets every day.

She said: “You must practise leadership all the time. There’s a new generation of people with very different backgrounds to what I had, with different expectations, language and skills. But fundamentally you must inspire people to be the best they can be. And make work fun!”

Sitting alongside her successful Government career is her comedy track record. She began by writing poems for hen parties and personal poems to make people laugh. Then in 2010 she performed stand up in a South Shields  comedy competition and came second.

One of the highlights of her career was being MC for Tiffany Stephenson and Sara Pascoe, getting great reviews.

Andrea’s comedy life stalled when she married her husband David, as she explained, it was hard to write comedy once she was so happy!

Reading is still a big part of Andrea’s life and she loved Janet Evanovich’s novels and Irish comedian Caimh McDonnell’s stories about Bunny McGarry based in Dublin.

The Stand-Up Mam has funny stories do you have one to share?

I’ve always been clumsy and once when I was home in Wales I heard my lift outside and was running out of the door (without my very long laces fully fastened on my boots) I slammed the door shut and my foot shot up in the air tipping me completely upside down - I had ridiculously managed to get my laces trapped high up in the door frame. I had everything on show and couldn’t even reach for my keys. Not my finest hour, I had to be rescued by my friend!!

“I would describe myself as extremely capable and incapable at the same time.”

Photo ©️Saowalak Jan-Ardisorn

Vienna-based American author Alessandra Ranelli hit the bookselling headlines with a bang this week with two major publishing deals for her debut novel Murder at the Hotel Orient. In the UK it will be published by Baskerville (Hachette) and in the US by Scout Press (Simon & Schuster). The book will be the lead title of 2026 for both imprints.

I’ve been totally captivated by the marketing she’s masterminded for her book, a murder mystery, which is old-world Hollywood style mixed with modern-day sophisticated intrigue. Here is the pitch from her press release:

“Taking place in modern day Vienna, the book delivers all the thrills of a Golden Age locked room mystery, with a setting inspired by the real ‘love hotel’ in the city where cameras are banned, aliases are required, and every anonymous guest has something to hide. Ranelli’s debut stars Sterling Lockwood, the sultry and unforgettably charming concierge at the Hotel Orient, as she tries to solve the double murder of her ex-girlfriend and the tech CEO building a Viennese surveillance state –a man despised by the clientele. Everyone’s a suspect, especially Sterling. To clear her name, she’ll have to break the Orient’s sacred code of secrecy to find the guests, all while protecting her own secrets. If only she knew their real names.”

Here’s how she determinedly built the road to her success.

Despite living in Austria for the past seven years, Alessandra’s roots are across the Atlantic in Massachusetts, U.S.A. Her parents were big readers, and she worked her way through her father’s collection of leather-bound classics from the Franklin Library. This selection gave her the Sherlock Holmes stories, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Arabian Nights tales, to name a few.

“Some of the language was above my reading level so I read abridged versions, but I loved them all. I enjoyed Arabian Nights so much my mother decorated my bedroom in a matching theme! I adored the mystery, the conversational style, the magic and of course, the princesses.”

The start of her career was creative but not based in the literary world. At University she studied pastry arts and hospitality management. She worked as a pastry chef in the Washington D.C. area and in New York City before moving abroad, first to the Netherlands.

At this time, she was also doing storytelling and poetry performances, and worked up until she was paid for her readings. When her husband’s job moved to Vienna she joined him but had to cope with the marriage breaking down. After this, Alessandra had hoped to do a Masters in Dietetics and began studying chemistry while working as a pastry chef, applying for a prestigious dietetics program in the U.S.

Two and half years ago, her whole life was then turned on its head. In a few weeks her ex-husband was diagnosed with cancer, her boyfriend dumped her, she thought she’d been rejected from the Master’s course, and she was fired from her job.

After her last day at the job, she had a wild night that would later inspire her first novel.

“Whenever I have a terrible day, I always insist that one day it will be the start of a story I tell my grandchildren about triumph over disaster.”

She said: “I walked out with my head high, wearing a dress that demanded trouble!”

“I went alone to the iconic art deco Loos Bar in Vienna. Luckily, I’m very extrovert, so I met a host of weird and wonderful people. One was a flamboyant theatre director who ‘Invited me to the Hotel Orient’ - a polite code for asking me for a rendezvous. I’d heard whispers about the place. It had an historical reputation for hosting lovers from high society. They say the Kaiser took his mistresses there.

“I set hard boundaries with the man, and told him I wouldn’t sleep with him, but I was dying to see the hotel. We checked into room 5, and soaked our feet in the tub while the director told me stories of his life, and legends about the Hotel Orient. It was like stepping into an alternate reality. And there was a mild risk I might get murdered, which added to the inspiration for a mystery! He went to lay down in the bed, under the covers, when I saw he had removed his underwear and folded it beside him, I ran, with my shoes in my hands.”

On her way out, Alessandra talked to the receptionist while she put her shoes on, and the storyline began to take shape.

“I went home as the sun was rising, slept four hours, and woke up with a champagne headache and the idea for the book.”

She decided to make the concierge the main character and write a locked-room mystery novel. The idea felt different to any book she’d come across as it was old-fashioned but with modern twists and she sensed that her excitement was something readers would share.

She said: “I wasn’t sure how much to tell my dad, given the racy subject matter, but I called him and said, ‘Don’t get mad, I’m fine, but there’s this famous love hotel in Vienna and the other night, I went there… with a stranger.’ He groaned like he was thinking, ‘Where did I go wrong raising her?” Then I pitched him the idea: modern mystery, old-fashioned setting. I was considering writing the book instead of looking for new work right away. My mother died when I was 19, and I still had some money from her life-insurance to support me. But I wanted his blessing. Now, my dad is an Italian-American accountant, very tough-love and practical. I’ll never forget what he said. ‘Save your receipts! They’re going to be a tax deduction.’ That was a great vote of confidence.

She started writing the book, but then heard she’d been accepted onto that prestigious master’s course from the waiting list. She had to decide. “My gut said write the book.”

So Alessandra did take a year off work. There were some great successes from this point including winning the Blue Pencil Agency Pitch Prize for the first page and synopsis, which led to a meeting with an agent. This was followed by having an essay published about her relationship with her ex-husband, in the Modern Love section of the New York Times.

With the first draft finished, she tested the waters with her first queries to agents and got a lot of rejections as well as a bit of advice. She credits a kind rejection from the editor of Hard Case Crime with driving her to keep going. Her next step was to make connections, so she went to Harrogate for the Theakston’s Crime Writing Festival, which was a major investment.

“It was worth it.”

Alessandra had success in the Dragon’s Pen pitching competition which opened doors. She also met some fantastic authors and agents.

“Harrogate was life-changing. I won’t say too much for now, but I’ve been fortunate with my deals, and I’m working on a way to give that opportunity to other crime writers.”

On her return to Vienna, Alessandra wrote a second draft, using advice from the agents. She queried again, but it still wasn’t right. This time around she got mostly personalised rejections, and a few full requests.

Alessandra then invested in a line-edit for the early chapters, using her money from the New York Times article. But, after sending it to the editor, she had an epiphany and restructured the opening.

She realised she needed to clarify that, despite the golden age glamour, the book was set in 2023, and it had to be spelt out to ground the reader.

She said, “If you’re trying to be mysterious, make sure you’re not being confusing. I was also helped hugely by gaining the trust of the Hotel Orient’s owners, who let me use the rooms as a writing space, and by working as a receptionist at a traditional hotel for the past year.”

In her view the imagery makes the book shine. “To me, showing is often telling plus a sensory detail. The image in your mind is like a basket of fresh fruit, the sentence on the page should be what’s left after you have boiled that down into a jam. It will have a richer flavour, deeper colour, all the sweetness, and strength to last. The line-edit lengthened the opening chapters by about 15%, but every word counted.”

Alessandra found out she’d won a Jericho Writers pitch contest on the day after Valentine’s Day this year and then interest from agent’s began to grow, with three full requests within a week.

She said: “I knew my pitch was great, but there is no cheating the system. The writing has to be there. You must deliver a great book to get signed.”

At that point she had queried nearly 30 agents, and had four full requests. She knew this revision was the best she could offer without more advice.

“I was ready to give up. But that last revision changed everything.

“Instead of the usual cavernous echo of an empty inbox, my notifications went wild. Three queries turned into three full requests within 24 hours. I had saved a list of dream agents for the end, and it was clear now was the time. A friend notified me that Harry Illingworth, of DHH had just opened back up to submissions, so I emailed him and got a full request the same day.

Over the weekend, Alessandra sat down and queried the rest of her top 30 agents, out of a list of 120. This time, she got 26 full manuscript requests, and 10 of those were over the first weekend. Eventually, she earned 10 offers of representation.

After discussions Alessandra signed with Harry Illingworth in the UK as her main agent, and Lisa Gallagher in the US as her sub-agent. To meet their goal of going on submission before the summer publishing lull, Alessandra worked 12 to 15 hour days for six weeks to hone the edits, while still working as a receptionist.

“My agents allowed me to take some creative risks with marketing. Harry trusted me to run wild, and I trusted him to tell me when to dial things back. I had a lot of fun making graphics and trailers. To be clear, writers should not be expected to do this, but for those who enjoy it, why restrain creativity?”

Working with the dynamic agent duo, they went on submission to publishers in June, knowing if the book didn’t sell fast it might suffer in the summer doldrums of publishing.

They had the first offer within 24 hours.

Within a week, she had two pre-empt offers from who she describes as dream editors, Jade Chandler and Alison Callahan. Both were major two-book deals for Murder at the Hotel Orient, and the next stand-alone in the Sterling Lockwood Mysteries.

Her advice for other authors is: “Allow yourself to make mistakes such as querying too early. It’s okay not to know the book isn’t ready. Save your dream agents for last though! Complain in private, celebrate in public, and always cheer for other writers.”

On querying, she said: “Use a separate email for querying, to protect your mental health. Hone your pitch and your query as early as possible, and make sure your book delivers on the promise of the premise.

“Be yourself. I’ve always loved to wear red dresses and bright lipstick. I’m used to being underestimated because I’m flashy and feminine. People would approach me after readings and say, “Wow, you can really write! I wasn’t expecting that!” as if they assumed otherwise based on my appearance.”

The Stand-Up Mam has funny family stories in it. Do you have any to share?

“I’ve got a few, most about my mother. I once saw my her standing naked in the window, in full view of the neighbours, with binoculars over her eyes, and when I asked why she simply said, ‘I was watching the birds!’

“Another time my Dad was working for a company, and they ran some event with corporate branded condoms - my dad thought they were a terrible idea but he brought some home as a joke to show my mother. My parents  left them in a bedroom drawer. One day they were fighting with each other as they had all gone missing and each wondered what the other was up to. Accusations were thrown. Turns out my brother had found them and was playing with them as if they were balloons.’