Women’s fiction author Lindsey’s Kelk has made her name with her I Heart romance series featuring the adventures of Angela, a British magazine editor who moves to New York – but she’s just as happy writing stand alone rom coms.  The most recent of those – One In A Million - is described as “Bridget Jones meets My Fair Lady for the social media set” – and has been warmly endorsed by stars like Marian Keyes.

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

How a cynic found herself writing Rom ComsWhy she's co-hosting two podcasts - on wrestling - and makeupHow a Yorkshire lass ended up in LACareer building tips from a career in publishingThe fiction queen who's acted as role model and mentorWhy Christmas is a precious destination

Where to find Lindsey Kelk: 

Website:  https://lindseykelk.com/

Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/lindseykelk/

 Twitter: @Lindseykelk

Facebook: @LindseyKelk

What

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

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

Lindsey Kelk Rom Com best seller

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

Lindsey: Hello there Jenny, it's wonderful to be here.

Jenny: Beginning at the beginning – was there a “Once Upon a Time” moment when you decided you wanted to write fiction?  And if so what was the catalyst for it?

Lindsey:   You know I don't think there was, I don't know if it's very common, although I know among some of my writer friends it is, but I ever since I've been very very young I've always wanted to write. My Mum taught me to read when I was very young, so I was reading from before I got to school, and so when I got to school my teachers didn't have to teach me to read so they said to me 'Why don't you write yourself a story?' so I've been writing stories since I was tiny, it's always something I've always done.

As far as doing it professionally, that's something I did assume I would never be I would be able to do, because of the way teachers, mentors and others and others crush any thoughts about writing for a living, so it was only when I was an editorial assistant at Harper Collins, in the children's team, working with film and licensed tie in books - because that was the only job in I could get in publishing.

I'd thought 'well if I can't make books myself, at least I can be close to the books that are being made. And I was sat there after a couple of years thinking 'Well all these books ARE getting published,' so if I am not at least trying I shouldn't feel good about myself, I should at least be trying. It wasn't really a "light bulb" moment, it was more a question of 'well my boss turned down Twilight,' or some book that we thought was going to do really incredibly did very badly, so why not try? Once I saw the inside of publishing and saw you never could really tell what would do well, then it seemed like I should at least try.

Jenny: Did your boss really turn down Twilight?

Lindsey: Yeah. . . . Well it was the publisher in the fiction department.. But a lot of people did, she turned down a lot of books, and she signed lots that did really well. That's how it is in publishing. People outside tend to think that if a book sells really well everyone wanted it, but that's often just not the case. We were working with John Green after he'd done Looking for Alaska and his second book An Abundance of Katherines just didn't do that well,