I believe in angels; something good in everything I see.

Oh, it’s been a weird couple of weeks! I honestly don’t know where to start with this blog entry. I suppose I’ll go back to where I left off with my last entry, which was shortly after the funeral of an actor friend of mine, and the start of life as a single woman again. Now, I hate to use the phrase “emotional rollercoaster”. I mean, I literally hate it. It reminds me of the X Factor and what a life changing journey they’ve been on and how it’s all about the experience that they’ve had. So, no, I definitely won’t be saying that the last six weeks have been an emotional rollercoaster. Instead, I’ll say that they’ve been “all kinds of crazy.”

So, it started with me noticing my phone ringing whilst I was on a call to a customer at work. The person ringing me had withheld their number, and seeing as how I’ve been receiving a lot of prank calls recently, I just thought nothing of it. It was only when they gave up, and approximately thirty seconds later when they rang back again, that I thought it could potentially be quite important. I don’t know why, but I always get really panicky whenever I answer a call from an unknown or a withheld number. There’s no real reason for this, by the way. I’m not about to confess to being on witness protection or anything and therefore, scared of my own shadow. I just don’t like the thought of someone sitting there, thinking “ah, I know. I’ll ring Emily Chriscoli but just to spice things up, I’ll not let her know that it’s me”. It’s odd behaviour to say the least.

I ran outside, answered my phone and it was someone from the Amazon call centre. Well, I assume it was a call centre. It might just have been an office actually. Anyway, her name was Leslie and she was very lovely. She was letting me know that my book, Vee for Victory, has been published.

I’m just going to back up here a minute. I’m aware that I haven’t mentioned  anything about a book so far in this blog, so firstly, I’ll tell you a little about that. As you know, I’m a writer. Plays, scripts, blogs, books, anything I can get my hands on. I’m also an avid reader. Seeing as how I spend the majority of my time cruising round the country via public transportation, it’s only fitting that I dedicate most of my commute to reading. (With the rest of it dedicated to listening to my ipod and battling with myself to not fall asleep.) Anyway, I had written most of the book in the space of about three months. It’s the first in a trilogy and the main character in the book is a woman called Caitlin, or Cait if you know her well enough. Which I do.

I won’t go into huge amounts of detail here as I don’t intend on ruining the story for anyone who hasn’t read it yet, but all I will tell you is this book was written after I read the Fifty Shades of Grey books. Now, don’t get me wrong, those books have done incredibly well and E L James has a lot to be proud of, but I personally felt that I just couldn’t buy into the storyline. At all. A twenty something year old woman, who is a virgin, not for religious reasons but purely because no one will go anywhere near her, yet the first person she quite literally stumbles across is not only perfection in the human form, but is also a multi billionaire? Who just so happens to fall miraculously in love with her? It all sounded a little far fetched to me (Factor in how incredibly American the books are. You know what I mean: “I had my first swim meet after eating Tater Tots in Chuckie Cheese”.  Sorry, you did what now?) 

I wanted to read about something real. Something with characters that I could relate to. A scenario that was much more likely to happen. A steamy relationship with just as much passion and intimacy as the Fifty Shades trilogy, but with believable dialogue and likeable people, which was set in good old fashioned England.

I was on holiday in Alcudia when I read the Fifty Shades trilogy, and like I said, I was unimpressed. To be perfectly honest, I think the main reason I bought and read every single book was because there was an extraordinary hype surrounding the trilogy. Suddenly, people who had never read so much as a bus ticket before in their lives were snapping up these books. I remember at one point Waterstones in Warrington had completely sold out. Naturally, when you go abroad, you take a few books with you for amusement when lounging around the pool, so it was then that I decided to splash out and buy them. As I said, it was disappointing, albeit slightly predictable that the reality didn’t live up to the expectations. It was then that I turned to my boyfriend (at the time) and announced, rather naively maybe, that I was going to write a better series of books. So far, I have written the first book and most of the second, which is due to be published in January 2014.

Anyway, I digress. To get your book published, you need to get yourself a literary agent. Getting a literary agent is a very similar – and as equally frustrating – a process as it is to get an acting agent. I won’t bore you to tears with the ins and outs of that again, but if you can cast your mind back, it wasn’t exactly a picnic trying to sort that out. Basically, I had to send off several different sections of my book to various different literary agents, including the trusty stamped address envelope, to ensure myself a response. The only problem with this being all the agencies were after different things. One wanted the first three chapters of the book. Another wanted a detailed synopsis, answers to five chosen questions and the first chapter. Another wanted the entire copy. Some wanted it sent in electronically, whereas others preferred a hard copy.

It took me an entire day to get everything sorted, but eventually I had submitted around forty copies of my book to various different literary agencies, and I began to play the inevitable game I find myself in every few months – the waiting game. The rejections began pouring in. Some were so vague, it was perfectly obvious that the agent hadn’t so much as opened the first page of my book. You know the type. “Dear ___Emily___, Thank you for your submission which we read with interest. Unfortunately, we don’t feel that you can offer us anything that we could represent. We wish you good luck with your future endeavours.” Sweet, but unconvincing. I’d rather they were honest. “Sorry, Em, we didn’t have the time to look at your book, but thanks for sending it in and best of luck trying to find some poor bugger to sign you!”

Eventually, I heard back from a nice lady from a very well respected literary agency based in London. She was intrigued by the book, rather than instantly switched off, so she had asked me to send in the further three chapters, which I did. It was with a heavy heart that a week later, my inbox was glowing with an email from her which said that although she really liked the book, she felt it was a little too risky for her to take on. I was gutted, but just really appreciated her honesty. She did, however, suggest that I get in touch with Amazon to try and get it published via their Kindle Direct Publishing scheme. Someone else had mentioned this to me, but as I’m living in the dark ages, I didn’t own a Kindle or know anything about them.

Baring this in mind, I sent the Amazon customer services a quick email asking for further information about how to go about publishing Vee for Victory directly through them, and after a series of emails – mostly from me saying the same thing: “how do I do that? Which bit do I click on? Where do I send this to?” – they said they would get back to me after they do a few checks, such as proof reading the book itself, making sure it was worth publishing, checking on me to ensure that I wasn’t committing copyright fraud etc.

Hence the phone call I received when in work, giving me the go ahead. The following evening was spent sorting out bank details, dedication pages and page breaks. Oh, those bloody page breaks. After each chapter, two page breaks had to be inserted. This doesn’t sound like hard work, but it was tedious to say the least, and realistically took around two hours to complete. By the end of that evening, I was nearly crying with exasperation. Yes, okay, I hold my hands up. I am in fact the world’s biggest cry baby. But even Mike Tyson would be sobbing if he was trying to work out the conversion rate between American dollars (which I get paid in) and the Great British pound, whilst simultaneously inserting bloody line breaks, attempting to learn a script and eating a chicken stir fry.

And that was that. My book was published. It was a very surreal day. My phone was literally warm from the amount of times it had buzzed to life, with people inundating me with text messages, Facebook notifications and phone calls. It almost felt as though it was happening inside a dream, as I had to continue my normal day to day life. I had a driving lesson, then nipped into town to get myself a Greggs meal deal (Tuna Crunch baguette, Ribena Lite and a gingerbread man, if you must know) and to catch the train to MSA. It felt even more surreal when I stepped out of class that evening to a wonderful email from Amazon telling me that I had sold a record amount of books in twenty four hours and that I was currently in the top spot for most downloaded e-books.

I can’t put into words how exciting it was to read that. The only thing I can remotely compare it to, I suppose, is carrying your baby around inside you for nine months and then being passed this tiny little life when you give birth. I understand that is undoubtedly a much more exhilarating experience, but as I have yet to experience that myself, I think selling the most books in twenty four hours on a world wide website at the age of twenty three is not bad going.

So, while all this was going on, my pride and joy A Walk in the Park was being performed by New Live Theatre company. Being the crafty devil that I am, I’d worked a continuous three weeks without a day off (except one, which was used for my driving test…that I failed. So, it didn’t exactly feel like a great day off) in order to have each night of my play work-free. Along with my family and friends, I booked tickets to see the show every night in a bid to offer moral support to the cast and crew. I’d just like to take the time now to gush and simper about my amazing cast. The main character, Kate, is so close to my heart that every part of me wanted the actress playing her to be perfect. Thankfully, Kate was played by the marvellous Sarah O’Byrne, who isn’t just drop dead gorgeous, but just so happens to be one of the best actresses I’ve met in a long, long time. The rest of the cast were as equally amazing and along with a talented director and producer, we were on fire.

Of course, the run of the play came to an end and, as I’m sure every actor has experienced at least once in their life time, the inevitable post-show blues arrived. I’d never had this as a writer before, but if anything, it felt more devastating. What spurred my post-show blues on was the sheer amount of people, some of them total strangers, contacting me on Facebook and Twitter to say that they wanted to see A Walk in the Park go further. And, just for you avid blog readers, I’ll divulge a little nugget of information – it will be going further. I won’t say any more until everything is signed, sealed, delivered, but keep your eyes peeled.

It's interesting that as everything was going down the shitter so to speak in my personal life, things were rapidly improving for my career. Thank God. Don't get me wrong, I was more than appreciative of my book being published and I was over the moon that it was doing so well, not to mention how pleased I was with my play, but the fact that all these things were happening when my self esteem was at an all time low was literally life saving. 

Without ever really realising it, I suppose I've always had a lot of confidence in myself, which presumably comes from a  lifetime of being on stage, but after what happened, I was like a different person. Despite numerous pleas from my army of friends and family, I was thinking irrationally and almost in an unhealthy way about myself. (I even announced that I wasn't celebrating Christmas. Now, if you don't know me, you might not realise what a travesty that is. Me and Christmas go together like fish and chips. Like wine and Chinese food. Like Joey and Chandler, for crying out loud.)

I'm not ashamed to say that I really wasn't coping. I can't put into words how much my friends and family rallied round me, from forcing food down my throat to letting me snot all over them whilst filling my wine glass up, and everything in between. They were incredible, telling me that it was going to hurt, and maybe even for a long time, but that I would be okay. They were right. Each day that someone told me they'd bought my book, or reserved tickets for my play, a little bit of my soul came back to me. And for that, I am eternally grateful. You little fitties. 

In a way, I'm so grateful to him for what he did to me. (I don't just mean the obvious, either. Despite what happened towards the end of the relationship, he was always incredibly supportive of me, as was his amazing family, which I'll never forget.
 And I can't forget that throughout writing Vee for Victory, he did put up with a lot of "can we just try this?" and "Let me read this to you", when I didn't have the guts to read it to anyone else.) But ultimately, for making me realise I'd been living a lie for a year of my life, being the trigger to my independence, and eventually, my success.

 However, the thing that really gave me the ultimate "you can do this" boost, and maybe the only thing to pull me out of my little post-show wobble, was the fact that I received my first ever review as a professional writer. Astonishingly, it was a five star review by the brilliant Tracey Lowe for The Good Review. One line that warmed even the cold murky depths of my icy heart was:

“But it is Emily Chriscoli’s script that is the most appealing thing. She has given this talented cast the gift of well-developed characters, believable dialogue and one of the best stories I’ve seen on stage for a while. Chriscoli has a real ear for natural dialogue; the arguments between Jack and Kate were particularly hard to watch as they seemed so real. The pacing was wonderful; Chriscoli knows exactly how to reveal just enough to the audience, while planting seeds for future revelations. Chriscoli wrote this script for her dissertation, and rightly received first-class honours for her efforts.”

As a writer, it’s reading things like that which make you think, ah. That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.