Book: How to Make a Friend
Genre: Psychological Suspense
Publisher: Transworld
Publication date(s): Hardback: January 29th 2015; paperback: October 8th 2015
About: Fleur Smithwick was born in 1964. The second of four incompatible children, she spent the sixties squabbling with her siblings, the seventies in misery and the early eighties making up for lost time, hence leaving University with a third class degree. Fleur married at twenty-four and had two children in quick succession. She started writing out of a love of books, boredom, guilt at underachievement despite an expensive education, and a naïve assumption that it would be easy. Many rejections and eight years later she gave up and went to work as a school secretary. In 2006 Fleur started writing again for exactly the same reasons she started in the first place. It was a long and tortuous learning curve but she finally found an agent at the age of 48 and a publisher at 49. Her debut novel How to Make a Friend was published four days before her fiftieth birthday.
Website: www.fleursmithwick.com
Facebook page: www.facebook/fleur.smithwick
Twitter handle: @FleurSmithwick
Location: Richmond, London
Writer Superpowers (specialist subjects):
The long slog to publication. That fine line between determined persistence and self-delusion.
Writing Psychological Suspense.
Entering Short Story Competitions
Bullying
Reinventing yourself
Property obsession & doing up wrecks
