This year marks the 20th anniversary of Maureen Lee being published. Over the last two decades she has written bestseller after bestseller set around Liverpool and the World Wars and has acquired a legion of fans. She has sold almost 1.5 million copies and her books are borrowed from the library almost 300,000 times a year. She has a Romantic Novelist Association award and her new book The Seven Streets of Liverpool comes out this week. In her guest post she tells us how it all began.
Maureen Lee on becoming a bestselling author.
As a teenager in Liverpool I attended the Liverpool Playhouse regularly and desperately wanted to be an actor. I joined a dramatic society, but soon realised I didn’t have the voice. Although I have since grown old, my voice hasn’t grown old with me. I had a few acting parts, usually a non-speaking part or with just a couple of lines. I recall in a pantomime my sole contribution was, "My Lord and Lady, your carriage awaits."
I was married and in my twenties when I read a book of short stories by an illustrious American author and felt inspired to write such stories myself. I shall not reveal the name of this author as people would consider it the height of conceit for me mention him in the same paragraph as myself.
Anyway, or anyroad as we say in Liverpool, the illustrious author’s stories were intensely miserable, as were mine, usually ending in someone’s death. The first I had published was called Perhaps I Should be Dead...
As an author, I lead two entirely different lives. I step out of my office – a shed in our Colchester garden – to find the sun is shining yet I have spent the past few hours describing a snow covered Christmas in Liverpool. I love it.
I approached an agent who advised me to cheer up a bit. She suggested I aim my work at women’s magazines, saying, "Women prefer to see the world through rose-coloured spectacles." So, I wrote happy stories from then on.
Time passed. I had three sons and as they grew older I decided I didn’t want to be just a short story writer; I wanted to be something bigger. In 1990, our youngest son had left for university when I started to write full time.
I rented an office and went daily from nine until four. Over the next few years, I wrote two thrillers, an episode of Cheers, more short stories, a few articles, not a word of which were published. I sometimes wonder how long I would have persisted without any success at all.
I started to write a saga beginning in Bootle, where I was born, which I intended to carry on through the war to the present day. Three chapters in, my agent submitted it to several publishers, but it was turned down. I was in the middle of another novel when, a year later, one of the publishers who had read my saga, asked if they could see it again and I was commissioned to finish it. I was to become their "Liverpool" author. It was a wonderful feeling, if somewhat daunting.
As an author, I lead two entirely different lives. I step out of my office – a shed in our Colchester garden – to find the sun is shining yet I have spent the past few hours describing a snow covered Christmas in Liverpool. I love it.
Oh, and my voice is still much too young, though it’s a while now since anyone telephoned and asked to speak to my mother!
