I’m on the blog tour for The Hope And Anchor by Julia Kite today and am excited to be sharing a guest post from the author with you.
The Hope And Anchor is available to buy in ebook and paperback here.
Before I share the guest post with you, here is a little about the book.
Book Description:
In the depths of winter in West London, Neely Sharpe’s life is turned upside down: not only has her career reached a dead end, but her girlfriend, Angela, has vanished. In desperation, Neely scours the city to try and find out what has happened, travelling from London’s pubs and snowy streets, down to the depths of the sewers. As her hunt continues, networks of friends, family, and old adversaries become entangled and she ends up delving into Angela’s past. Nothing could prepare her for what she will discover about the hidden life of the woman she loves. The Hope & Anchor is an atmospheric debut novel which captures the dreams London holds for its natives and newcomers alike, and investigates what happens when the dreamers finally have to wake up.
Guest Post by Julia Kite:
I became a writer by reading. Having taught myself how to read as a young child by memorising a calendar given to me in a curry house, I started as I meant to go on, and began writing stories very early as well. I was absorbing the work of so many writers that it seemed natural to try it myself. I would get bored in school, and I would simply start coming up with characters and plots. I suppose my teachers never stopped me because at least I was quiet and not disrupting anything. It seemed a very inconspicuous hobby.
Writing was how I made my world more interesting. By creating situations unlike my own, people unlike myself, I could explore far beyond my own experience. I’ve always been wary of fiction that is thinly-veiled autobiography, and I dislike it because it makes it difficult to critique someone’s writing when you know it’s their real life and they’re going to take any negative comments personally. That being said, if something interesting happens to you, then you might as well take advantage of it. When strange or heartbreaking things have happened to me, I have told myself, with varying degrees of success, “Take it on the chin for now, and put it in a book someday.” Not word-for-word, of course, but they can become the seeds to plot points or character features.
Neely, the protagonist of The Hope and Anchor, is a failed academic. That’s my greatest similarity with her: One day, we discovered our brains and effort wouldn’t necessarily get us where we wanted, and it tore apart our entire self-concept. When I began writing this book, I wasn’t in the greatest place in my life – in fact, I was questioning whether I would ever achieve anything I could consider success. Unfortunately, when you’re already feeling rotten, trying to break into literary fiction is probably the worst thing you can do for your mental health other than indulge in some heavy substances. The process of querying agents and being rejected again and again, often with no feedback, can do a number even on somebody whose life is otherwise pretty peachy. It’s one thing to tell an aspiring author to develop a thick skin – far easier said than done when you already feel really to break at the slightest touch!
I credit my writing group with helping me to persevere, and helping me to edit and refineThe Hope and Anchor. If you’re serious about writing, you must have a community of people who can commiserate when necessary, but then push you to get out of your self-pity and hone your craft. Tough love is, after all, still love. As a group, our struggles and our triumphs became collective. These were people I could trust to be honest, but never cruel. I was lucky that this group came about from a group of graduates of the same university I attended, and we had a dedicated space to meet every month, but to be honest, you don’t even need to get together in person to have this kind of support network. Even a virtual community, swapping manuscripts online, can be tremendously useful. After all, if you’re going to be a successful writer, you need to get your work into the hands of strangers who don’t know anything about your or your motivations, because only they can judge whether your work stands on its own merits.
And after all – what’s the worst than can happen to you? Criticism? A bad review? Those are great problems to have, because at least it means your book is being read, being considered. Back when I was a schoolgirl writing those stories in my notebooks, I guarded them fiercely, refusing to let even my closest friends read them. I feared being laughed at, ridiculed, you name it, because my writing meant so much to me, even then. And that’s only natural. But staying in your comfort zone means you miss out on the opportunities for the thrills while you’re guarding against the disappointments.
In order to get anywhere with writing, I had to get over my ego. I had to grow up a bit, really. And I’m glad I did, because in the process, I made Neely a more well-rounded character, too – someone who gets over herself enough to show strength in the face of a tragedy greater than anything she could have imagined. Now that my book is out in the world, being read, being evaluated, I know it’s not going to be everybody’s cup of tea. The first review I got on Goodreads was negative: “Not for me.” But that’s alright. At least someone gave me the gift of spending her time with my book. At least this complete stranger read enough of it to know it wasn’tfor her. I’m grateful to every single person who reads even part of my book, because they make all the time, effort, and rejection worthwhile. They make this book real. They give me what I always wanted: to be an author.
About The Author:
Julia Kite lives in Manhattan, and calls New York City and London home. She is a graduate of Columbia University and the London School of Economics. Obsessed with cities and the people in them, she started her career researching housing and urban regeneration, and she now directs policy and research for a transportation improvement organisation. Before she began working to make New York City’s streets better for cyclists, she was taking long rides along the Grand Union Canal in West London. She is a member of the Columbia Fiction Foundry, an alumna of quiz shows The Chase and Jeopardy, an urban wildlife rehabilitator, a keen amateur baker, and the owner of an opinionated parrot. The Hope and Anchor is her first novel, a work of fiction about a very real place she holds dear.
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Over The Rainbow Blog 
Thanks lovely Jo x
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