Lily Graham's dual timeline fiction always finds hope in heartbreak - a result she says of being inspired by people who overcome adversity to pursue their dreams. It's something Lily had to learn to do very early in her own life.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Lily talks about how she got started in writing, and gives listeners a great opportunity to enter a draw for a signed paperback copy of her book The Island Villa. It's a dramatic tale of two sisters living in a time of fear and betrayal in a beautiful old Spanish villa where the walls whisper secrets. Guaranteed, they say, to appeal to fans of Kristin Hannah and Victoria Hislop.

You can enter the draw at Jenny's Facebook author page @JennyWheeler.biz or you can get details in the show notes for this episode on the website thejoysofbingereading.com. That's where you'll find also links to Lily's books and her website. Get your entries in by the end of this month, February 28, (2019) to be in with a chance of winning this fascinating paperback!

Six

things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

Best advice: start now - you'll only get better!Finding the silver lining - a life long questAppreciating the dark side of sweet romanceLily's "worst kept secret"Enter the draw for a signed paperbackA new series and a new name

Where to find Lily Graham: 

Website: https://lilygraham.net/

Facebook: @LilyRoseGrahamAuthor

 Twitter: @lilygrahambooks

What

follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for

word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

Jenny: But now, here’s Lily.  Hello there Lily and welcome to the show.  It’s great to have you with us…

Lily: Thank you so much Jenny. It's so lovely to be here.

Jenny:   I always like as a good story teller to start at the beginning with the “Once Upon a Time” moment and I wondered if for you there was such a moment when it was like an epiphany. You thought you would like to write fiction and your life would not be fulfilled unless you actually managed to do that, and if so was there a catalyst for it?

Lily Graham - Mystery author

Lily:  Not quite. I think it's quite a strange thing. From a very young age I just fell in love with books and I have this line in The Paris Secret where my main character Valerie falls into the arms of books the way some people do with men, and that was the story for me. I was always this reader.

I don't know when it was but I made this secret pact with myself one day that some day I would do this. I remember it quite vividly. I think I was about nine years old and it was the first time I really tried to write something and it was so appalling and I was really, really devastated. You know, you just can't get something right and everything I tried for many, many years after just fell so short of what I wanted it to look like - the books that I'd been reading and the stories that I loved.

But there was quite a thing in me that said 'one day you will write' and then I grew up and I studied journalism which was writing of a kind. I think it was in my 20's that I started writing a novel but it was always this quiet thing you do by yourself.

And then my best friend used to read all my material, quite kindly, one day she told me about the Amazon KDP program and she'd been reading so much of my work and she said, 'look I think you should just do this. Just finish one of these books that you've got going and do it.'