Never give up has been this successful writer's mantra.
Katharine Webb's story is one any writer drowning in rejection slips will take encouragement from. She's proof that hard work and persistence can pay off in the end.
It never entered Webb's head to give up writing, even though she'd produced seven novels in 11 years and none of them had made it into print.
"I kept writing regardless," she tells me from her home in Berkshire, England. "I hadn't left myself many other options. Other people had been building careers, but I started writing straight out of university and didn't bother with any other sort of career. So I had to keep going and just hope."
Webb supported herself with a string of odd jobs, from working as a kiln operator to selling fairy costumes and as a housekeeper for the landed gentry. "I'd been submitting work to agents and publishers during that period and had good feedback and positive comments, but no one was interested in taking me on," she says.
Then another writer tipped her off about a website funded by the UK Arts Council called youwriteon.com and it was there that she posted her most recent work, a historical novel called The Legacy.
"I'm such a Luddite I wasn't aware such websites existed,"she admits. "But I joined that one and, thank heavens, it was the right decision."
On YouWriteOn the peer review system is strictly managed and there's no possibility of cheating by getting friends and family to give your work five stars. Books that make it on to the top-five chart get the chance of being critiqued by someone within the publishing industry. The Legacy, which stormed up the chart, ended up being assessed by London publisher Orion, which liked it so much they called Webb on her mobile and told her they wanted to buy the book. "I was dusting the formal dining room at the time," recalls Webb. "And I must admit I did a few star jumps. Luckily my boss was very relaxed about it. He'd known the whole time that I was writing and trying to get published so was really pleased."
The Legacy went on to be chosen by a TV book club in the UK and was propelled into the bestseller charts. Fortunately, Webb had already completed a first draft of her latest novel, The Unseen (Orion, $36.99), and so avoided the pressure having a best-seller can bring.
One of the things the The Unseen draws on is Webb's own experience of working as a housekeeper. "The last job I had was for a titled family and they were very laid back," she says. "But I used to work in an incredibly strict, formal household, very much the old Upstairs Downstairs tradition. I stuck it out for two years then had to head for the hills. I was lucky to have the option of picking up and leaving. Women in domestic service at the time my book is set didn't have that."
The Unseen is a historical mystery set in the early 1900s about a spirited young maid, Cat Morley, who is disgraced by her involvement in the suffragette movement, and sent to work for a reverend and his wife in a sleepy Berkshire village. The reverend, a highly strung, sensitive type, believes in the existence of elementals - fairy-type beings he is convinced inhabit the nearby water meadows. His naivety results in him falling prey to a manipulative spiritualist and Cat, as she struggles for freedom, finds herself caught up in a clever deception. Years later, a journalist uncovers the story and solves a long-forgotten mystery.
Webb says The Unseen was partly inspired by the Cottingley fairies hoax: five photographs taken by two young cousins in 1917 that seemed to show them with gnomes and fairies.
"So many people believed in them, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle," says Webb. "I was fascinated by the fact all these upright men of letters wanted to believe in fairies and why that might be."
Webb remains riveted by history. She is attracted to the idea that we're still living with the echoes of things that happened long ago. But now she's moving on from the early 1900s to another period when Britain was on the cusp of great change.
"I'm halfway through my third book and it's set partly in the 1930s and partly in the present day," she explains. "It's about a Bohemian artist and his impact on the population of a small village on the Dorset coast."
Writing is a very different experience these days for Webb. She no longer has to smuggle her laptop into work and write in her lunch hour. The success of her books has meant she's able to write full time. "Before The Legacy was published I was getting nervous that I'd still be housekeeping at the age of 50 and writing my 25th novel," she says. "So it's my complete dream come true to do this full time. It's absolutely fantastic."
