D R Bailey

I don’t think I could really pick one. I had many happy times with my parents in Africa, but I suppose the Christmases were best. We had a cottage by the lake and used to go for maybe a couple of weeks. That was fun, just swimming and stuff every day. I realise I led a privileged life and I’m grateful for that. I think one of my enduring memories is reading. I would take a hunk of salami from the fridge, a tomato, and retire to my room to read probably Enid Blyton or later Gerald Durrell, those were happy times.

I think being widely read is good for literacy, for the understanding of culture, for history, and many other things. It breeds a wide imagination and sets you up for a life of reading. That can only be a good thing. I learned the importance of books which meant I also read to all my children. Only one of them has really continued as a reader and also a very successful author in her own right. However, they all had a grounding and that’s important. As a future writer, I suppose I absorbed many styles and ways of writing from all the reading I did in my youth and formative years.

My parents and siblings really. They were massive fans of Georgette Heyer in particular. I well remember the day my father gave me “My Family and Other Animals” to read. It’s by Gerald Durrell and it is hilarious. I could relate to it and of course, I avidly read every book he had ever written. By then, a bit older, I was ready for Georgette Heyer. I loved them, so funny and clever. One of my sister’s had a huge library of Science Fiction, she gave me “I Robot” to read. I raided her entire library until I had pretty much read them all. Once I was even older, and I’d run out of Heyer’s and others then I moved on to Jane Austen, it’s a natural progression, and other classics which I had missed out on. I read widely other authors, crime and so on. It was the staple of my London commute for years. I once had a vast collection of paperbacks, but alas no more. They take up too much space and I was never going to read many of them again. I just kept the ones I liked best. Now of course I have my own collection of my books, my daughter’s and my sister’s.

You might be surprised to learn that it’s Northanger Abbey. For some reason, this struck me as incredibly romantic, and I’m an incurable romantic at heart. There is something about it that just resonated for me in lots of ways. I love her other books too.

I don’t really know. I was possibly encouraged by my sister who was, at the time, a very fast typist. I was able to dictate the story and she typed it up for me. It was perhaps also the fact that my father and sisters would make up endless stories for me which I loved, and maybe this is what sparked my imagination to write myself.

It depends upon how well I know the topic. However, generally, a lot so that I’m up to date on the latest information on it and find things to include or reference. I don’t like to write something that might not be factual or true, so I do ensure I’ve got it all straight. After all, nobody wants to be challenged on their article by an ‘expert’.

For me, I’d say good characters. I’m very character-focused in my writing and I like characters you can relate to, love or hate, root for and identify with. So that would be the first thing. I’m fond of dialogue so prefer books with a good balance of that in it and good believable dialogue too. I love to write real interplays which you could believe would happen in life. The plot is obviously important and where it takes you, whether it’s obvious or not doesn’t matter if the story catches you and carries you with it. I like to start my novels with a bang or at least something to hook the reader in right away and then try to ensure the story keeps them there for the whole book. At the same time, I would say there are no rules. A good book, no matter how it’s written will keep your attention and, in the end, that’s the most important thing.

A scene came to my head. The first scene, and I just wrote it. The book stemmed from that and all the characters in it. At the time I was in the middle of my doctorate and so the fiction was an antidote to the academic writing. It was something which I had total control of, so I think it was therapeutic and cathartic. During that time my wife was also diagnosed with breast cancer, and times were stressful. I took refuge in fiction writing. She has been through some tough surgeries and times but is a survivor to this day and a great supporter of my work.

The third one which is about to be published this month, December 2020. It did not flow as easily in writing as the others, but I got there in the end. The first two were done very quickly by comparison. That’s just how it goes with writing, sometimes it’s all systems go and other times all systems stop.

I can’t really say. It’s probably a mixture of actresses I’ve seen or admired. The fictional actress D’Arcy Brown is quite self-absorbed and there are a few actresses one could say that about. More than a specific person I wanted to depict the world of celebrity and how different it is from the ‘real’ world that most of us know. Almost surreal in a way, and how that affected the other main characters in the book. I think some of the mores of normal society went by the board in writing this which was a reflection of that world where different rules apply. Hopefully, people find it entertaining.

I read all of them and, of course, wish I had many more. I rejoice in the good ones and let the bad ones, or not so good ones go. After all, you cannot please everyone, and everyone will not like your work. I feel grateful to have some really diehard fans nevertheless and it’s their opinions which I love to hear the most, whether good or bad. In the end, I write the books I would like to read. I actually quite like reading my own books too, I think you should enjoy your own work, that’s part of the fulfilment.

Persevere, that’s what a writer needs. Keep going and keep writing and keep publishing. When I grew up it was harder, there was no Amazon, no Indie, all of that, we were so publisher dependent. The whole thing took forever from submission onwards. Writers today who did not experience that era perhaps can’t relate to the relief to have the shackles lifted off. We can publish and be damned. So, there are no barriers to getting it done.

I dream of being successful I guess, like most. I would love to have DI Gallway or Bernadette Mackenna on screen as a series. I’m not close to that at all, as far as I know. I want to just write as many books as I can. So far, I’ve done seven, so I’m doing OK.

I’ve been writing during quarantine, three Mackenna books done, so any plot ideas sit in notes at the moment.

Most probably about a year. It’s been good, particularly now I have featured books. I am probably not using it to the full, as yet, but hopefully there is a lot of potential in being part of All Author.