From Bookwork to Author by Nancy Cleaver

It is a great pleasure to introduce you to author Nancy Cleaver today. I find it inspiring to learn about how authors come to their craft and Nancy shares just this journey with us today. Thank you for your time, Nancy.

It's great to be on your blog today, Val. Thanks for having me. I hope I can inspire your readers because for as long as I can remember, I’ve always been nose deep in a book… my favourites when I was little were “Black Beauty” and “The Secret Garden”, and I spent many hours rereading the books, then making up my own stories of what happened to the characters next.

 My love of fantasy began as I turned 10, and my Mum picked up a copy to Tamora Pierce’s “The Magic In The Weaving”. That first quartet, about found family, discovering yourself after disaster and growing into magical powers tied to ordinary day things like weaving and gardening inspired me, and for the next few years I avidly built my collection to include all her books.

As I grew older, I shared a whole range of genres with my Nana. She introduced me to the “Call the Midwife” books, whilst I introduced her to Anne Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles”. My Nana and Mum both joked I should write, and I always shrugged them off and said “you have to have an idea to write, and I don’t have an idea.”

 Then, on Christmas Eve 2022, my Nana passed after a short illness. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t escape into a book. I tried everything - old favourites and new recommendations. Anytime I picked something up, I ended up just staring at the page. Re-reading the same sentence umpteen times without taking it in. Haunted by memories of laughing about a particular plot with Nana, or grieving that I wouldn’t be able to share a particularly engaging plot with her again.

At the time (and still now!) I was working as a freelance editor for indie authors as my side hustle. When my authors told me I should write, I gave the same answer I’d always given my Mum and Nana … “you have to have an idea to write.” Editing was the only thing keeping my foot in the literary door, the only time I was able to push through my grief and sink into a book.

 And then, one particularly horrid afternoon, amidst a sea of “death-min” and family politics, I picked up my phone and opened a blank document on googledocs. And I began to write. An idea formed in my head, quickly growing from a single novel to a trilogy. Fueled by all the emotions swirling around my brain, I let myself express my pain, my grief and even my joy in the only way I could safely express the chaotic pandemonium swirling through my brain and robbing me of my voice.

Reading back “The Hidden Queen” now, I can still remember each and every event that I captured tapping away in stolen moments on my iphone. The bad … and the good. The people I am lucky enough to have holding me up and cheering me on. The authors and family members who believed in me and begged me for the next chapters. And the late Grandad who always used to find me “a little bit of something” for a fun day out.

I published “The Hidden Queen” last year, with book 2 due out any day now. Writing wasn’t something I planned… I never envisioned having anything close to an idea worthy of being turned into anything other than a mid-afternoon dream. But one day, a bookworm became an author. My kids ask me what’s happening in my book as I’m writing and now I have a different answer … I tell them “I’ve got absolutely no idea, the characters have taken the reins. But I love what they’re doing!”

The Author

Nancy Cleaver is the pen name for a Yorkshire Mum of two gorgeous boys who are learning to cook, clean and appreciate the hidden jobs! When she’s not at her 9-5 or leading Youth & Family ministry at her local Church, and the dinner’s done and the laundry is clean, you’ll find her curled up with a cuppa and a good book… or being pestered by her bookworm eldest for spoilers on her latest novel.

Her books vary from clean to spicy, fantasy to real world … there’s something for all tastes … when she get the time to put the pen to paper!