Hello, everyone! Welcome back to blog. Today, I’ve another wonderful author to introduce you to (or perhaps reintroduce you to, if you’re already familiar with Kiley’s work). Kiley is the author of cosy, romantic, getaway fiction, her latest release being ‘Summer at Highland Coral Beach’, which you’ll learn more about within this chat. So grab yourselves a nice, hot drink, relax and enjoy, and feel free to wave in the comments, just so Kiley knows you’re here.
Hello, Kiley. Welcome to The Book Babe! It’s lovely to have you here and I’m so excited to be chatting to you today. Your books look so cosy and inviting, I just want to step right into them. Anyway, let’s get begin…
1.) First of all, Kiley, could you please introduce yourself to my readers?
Hiya! I’m Kiley Dunbar. I’m Scottish, I write romantic fiction and I’m a lecturer at Manchester Writing School. I’ve been married for twenty years (!) and have two kids who keep us busy and we live in Cheshire.
2.) Tell us a little bit about your most recently released book.
In March my third book was released, it’s called Summer at the Highland Coral Beach and it’s about a woman recovering when everything in her life has gone wrong, and I mean everything! It’s a true starting over story, and it’s a little unusual as the main character is turning forty.
3.) What inspired you to write this book?
I was inspired to write Summer at the Highland Coral Beach by a visit to Plockton in the Highlands where I swam in the crystal clear waters of a beautiful, remote beach where there was no sand but white shards of coral. It was other-worldly in its beauty and I knew I had to write a romance set there.
4.) How long did it take you to write Summer at the Highland Coral Beach?
Summer at the Highland Coral Beach was very hard to write because I fell very ill right in the middle of writing it and ended up in hospital. Turned out I had severe pneumonia. I had three weeks off to recover and slept the whole time.
5.) What sorts of themes are prominent in Summer at the Highland Coral Beach?
Summer at the Highland Coral Beach is about mums and some of the many ways women can be mums. Beatrice is mother to a lost baby and the book follows how she copes through her grief. It’s also about hope, attraction, love and renewal.
6.) Do you have a method when it comes to planning your novels, or do you prefer to wing it?
I’m a planner, every detail is thought out before I begin writing (even though it always changes as I write). I even make an old school mood board of cut out pictures to help me ‘feel’ the aesthetic of the story while I’m writing. It takes me about four months to write a first draft.
7.) Have you always wanted to be a writer?
I wanted to write when I was a kid, and hoped to be a journalist. Then I realised that wasn’t the life for me and went into academic writing (I’ve published lots of things about Victorian and Edwardian books and culture under my real name Dr Kirsty Bunting). In 2017 I felt an overwhelming urge to sit down and write the love story I’d been dying to tell for years, so I did, and it became One Summer’s Night, my debut novel in 2019. I was so lucky!
8.) Tell us what a typical writing day looks like for you.
When I’m not lecturing I get the kids to school then sit down at my laptop and write until three, stopping for lunch, then the kids come home from school and there’s not time to write after that. Sometimes I fit in a few hundred words once they’re in bed. But the lockdown has thrown that out the window and I’m trying to grab time whenever I can think clearly, which isn’t often!
9.) How do you come up with the titles for your books?
Sometimes I come up with them, sometimes my editor does, or we discuss ideas together, it depends. One Summer’s Night was written under my working title, Pretty Follies. I think Hera Books made the right decision ditching that!
10.) Who is your biggest supporter?
My husband Nic is always there with a brew. He doesn’t read my books but he listen to me going on about the characters and what they’re up to at the moment.
11.) How would you usually celebrate publication day?
I always start the publication day making a video about the book for readers and then it’s social media all day, and probably writing too.
12.) Is there a particular point when writing a book that you struggle with?
Always the middle. Hitting 30,000 words always brings a long slog to 50,000 when things start flying again. The book can’t drag in the middle, you have to keep the pace up for the reader, propel them to the end.
13.) Do you set daily writing goals for yourself?
I try to write everyday to keep the momentum going. If I find I can’t write, I know that re-reading the draft will help keep me focused for the next day.
14.) What would say is the best thing about being an author?
When readers get in touch and say they’ve been comforted by something I’ve written. That’s really special.
15.) Can you tell us about a book that made you cry?
I remember reading Romeo and Juliet when I was thirteen and sobbing. It took me the entire school summer holidays to get through it because it was all so unfamiliar, but by September, I was a goner, totally in love with Shakespeare, just like Kelsey Anderson in One Summer’s Night.
16.) On the opposite side of that, can you tell us a book that made you laugh?
Helen Russel’s Gone Viking had me laughing out loud on the train.
17.) Who are some of your favourite authors?
I love Alyssa Cole, Ruby Lang and Jenny Colgan, and I can’t get enough Daphne du Maurier.
18.) What’s the best writing advice you ever received?
Mark Desvaux from The Bestseller Experiment Podcast gave me an on-air shout-out when I was going through redundancy in my old uni job and was trying to get signed by a publisher. He said that at moments when everything is up in the air you have the chance to rearrange your life before all the pieces land again, so I should see the upheaval as an opportunity, and he was right. I got signed a couple of months later.
19.) What piece of advice would you pass on to an aspiring author?
Keep writing. Only send the draft off once you’re happy it’s polished, but likewise, don’t tinker with it for years – send it! Aim high. Don’t listen to your detractors. Write for your readers, not for people you know.
20.) What are you working on next? Do you have a release date for it?
I’m writing the sequel to my debut One Summer’s Night. It had the working title ‘One Winter’s Night’ but that might change before it comes out in the autumn. It’s a gorgeous Christmassy trip to Stratford-Upon-Avon.
21.) And lastly, if you could pick any author to sit down and have afternoon tea with, who would you pick and why?
Oh! I’d love to have tea with Jaimie Admans and Marie Landry as they’re both so lovely on Twitter, it would be amazing to meet them both in real life, eat cakes, and talk shop!
Kiley, it’s been bloody lovely chatting to you today. Your books sound so wonderfully warm and cosy, and I’m sure it won’t be long before I’m reading one! I’m especially excited about your Christmas release, because who can resist a Christmassy book cover? Thank you so much for taking the time to be here x
Kiley Dunbar is the author of heart-warming, escapist, romantic fiction set in beautiful places.
You can find Kiley on Twitter.
You can find Kiley Dunbar’s books here.
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