Q. When did you begin to write seriously? (con’t.)
I wrote stories all through my teenage years and at the age of 18 I finished my first serious attempt at a novel. I sent it off to Collins Publishers and of course received a rejection letter. The editor who wrote to me took trouble and care to reply to me, saying of my writing: “…we do like it. It has a direct and emphatic narrative style and has an oddly memorable – even idyllic flavour about it. We feel you ought to go on writing, and would like to see anything you write in future – which may not sound very much, but is, I can assure you, a great deal more than we say to 95% of the people who send in their typescripts!”
Those words stayed with me all my life. And there’s an amazing coda to this story, because that very editor, a writer named Philip Ziegler, recently wrote the definitive biography of Lawrence Olivier which was published by Quercus, the publisher of my own books. My editor at Quercus was able to arrange a meeting for me with him, and 42 years later I came face to face with the person whose words of encouragement all those years ago, gave me the incentive to stick with my writing and keep trying.
Q. How long after that were you published? Continue reading “Part 2 of my Interview with Peter May, best selling Author”
Raymond Benson, Lee Goldberg, Charles Bukowski and dozens more. My goal is to inspire other writers to write more, tell their stories, try writing a play, or maybe some poetry.
