Wise Words: Amanda Revell Walton
A big streak of determination and toughness shines through the Sunday Times best-selling author Amanda Revell Walton’s own story.
Writing as Nancy Revell, this Sunderland-born author has created two epic historical fiction series with women at their heart
But avid writing and reading were not part of her early life as, by her own admission, she didn’t really click with books until she was 10. However, when she started there was no Enid Blyton-type of gentle introduction.
Amanda said: “I raided my parent’s bookshelves and the first ones I read were Roots by Alex Hayley, Horace Dobbs’ Follow the Wild Dolphin and Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. These are books are so special to me I still have the original copies.
“What I loved about them was being transported into different worlds. The dolphin story made me feel very calm and Gone with the Wind was a fantastic, epic story which created a film in your own head. Roots appealed to me because of the huge injustices laid bare and it intrigued me.”
After school Amanda studied at Oxford Brookes University where she graduated in English and German, followed by a one-year NCTJ (National Council for Training of Journalists) course in print media. She became interested in feminism and women’s issues during this course, which is seen clearly in her subsequent writing.
Once she was fully qualified and after a spell on regional newspapers, Amanda joined Fleet Street tabloids as a freelance journalist, focusing on hard news and investigations.
She says that one of her proudest moments was working on a six month investigation with The News of the World into the unsolved murder of schoolgirl Lesley Molseed, which led to the police opening up a new investigation with 142 new lines of enquiry which she and her colleagues had unearthed.
During her time on newspapers Amanda didn’t have much time to read but when she did, her author of choice was Jonathan Kellerman.
She said: “I really love the way he writes about the psychology behind a crime. My secret ambition was to create stories like that one day.”
After all of the investigative work and a 20-year career in the media Amanda began to write about personal news and features including a column journalling her own IVF journey and her husband’s cancer diagnosis.
These articles which, although about struggles, were shot through with humour and as a result Amanda was signed by an agent. This, in turn, led to submitting a package pitch to publishers. as t There was great interest in Amanda’s story, but it needed to be a successful IVF journey, with a baby at the end. Publishers chose not to follow up when her treatment was unsuccessful.
Around this time Amanda discovered a lone article on the BBC archives website about the forgotten women of WW2 who worked in the shipyards. Their story inspired an idea for a novel and Amanda wrote the first 230,000 words. Encouraged by her agent this idea was pitched to publishers and she signed a substantial three book deal with Penguin who loved the premise.
The result, The Shipyard Girls, is a sweeping 12-book tale of courage during World War II, told from the point of view of a tight-knit group of female welders based on Wearside. Their stories had never been fully told in history books and Amanda wanted to highlight these brave women and their war effort.
Her desire to do the story full justice including returning to Sunderland for the six years it took to research and write the books. She not only told the story of the women’s personal journeys but each book included six months of real life detail from the war.
She said: “I knew when I moved back it was the right thing to do, as the whole layout of the city and the river were vivid. My family worked in the shipbuilding industry so there was also never any doubt my stories had to be 100 per cent true to the facts!”
Penguin wanted a new book, roughly 100,000 words long, every six months to keep Amanda’s readers hooked and the strategy worked with The Shipyard Girls series selling 600,000 copies and counting.
Amanda is particularly proud of hitting Number 2 in the Sunday Times Best Seller charts and for most of the titles reaching the top 10.
Since the completion of that epic series, she has published two novels in a new historical saga set in County Durham, The Widow’s Choice and A Secret in the Family, with a third one, A Daughter’s Love, due out later this year.
A plan is also hatching for her to write another series based on Lily, a main character from the Shipyard Girls. Lily’s story will be about her London bordello in the middle of Soho, set in the 1950s, an area Amanda knows well from her time living and working in London.
Running alongside this historical fiction Amanda has also written her first crime novel, inspired by her tabloid career and the Lesly Molseed murder case. She has used journalists as the main protagonists instead of the police, who are often the driving force of stories in this genre.
She said: “I wanted to write like my hero Jonathan Kellerman, and create a real page turner with plenty of intrigue and suspense.”
Amanda would love to see more writers from working class backgrounds achieve publishing success. She believes this is can often be due to the lack of literary connections people have and the low financial reward of some publishing deals, meaning supporting themselves would be untenable. A problem, she recognises, is not easily fixed but she does her best to champion these writers where she can.
She said: “My advice for aspiring writers is to try and write 500 words a day. Before you know it, the words mount up to the length of a novel. Also, don’t think you have to start at the beginning, if a key scene near the end is the one that excites you just get stuck into it!
“I urge all writers to enjoy it and let the story surprise you because it will then surprise the reader. And In terms of inspiration, my ideas come to me when I’m doing something like gardening or swimming when you can just let your brain wander.”
Her recommendations from her current reading pile are American crime writer Linwood Barclay and northeast self-published author T c Lake’s YA novel ‘Legends of Vogie Lore’.
*Amanda’s latest book, written under her penname Nancy Revell, ‘A Secret in the Family’ (Penguin) is on sale now in bookshops, supermarkets, Amazon and other online retailers.