Interview: shortlisted author Sharon Boyle on writing her twisty YA thriller NINE ROOMS and accepting agent representation with Alice Williams Literary.
Many congratulations on accepting literary agent representation for NINE ROOMS!
Thank you. Being shortlisted has been such a boost and I want to thank the BCNA team, the junior judges and the head judge, Enrichetta Frezzato. I was lucky enough to sign with Alice Williams, of Alice Williams Literary, soon after the results came out. Alice had issued a wishlist request and I thought Nine Rooms matched her ask, so I contacted her with my manuscript, advising that I’d been shortlisted in the Bath Children’s Novel Award, and I was delighted, and surprised, when she responded.
You had other agent interest for Nine Rooms; how did you know Alice was the right agent for you?
Alice emailed me to advise that she’d started the book that night and read it all the next day and loved it – to have that level of enthusiasm was a winner for me.
What was it like to see Nine Rooms featured in The Bookseller Bologna Children’s Book Fair Agents’ Hotlist, as a “Pitch-perfect YA psychological thriller debut”?
It’s off-the-scale exciting but I’m trying not to think about it too much, concentrating instead on writing another book – a speculative mystery thriller. There’s also another book idea rolling around my head collecting plot-thoughts – a pure mystery thriller this time. I’m keeping my mind-space busy but will of course be dipping into Bologna book fair news.
“The pace and the tension in Nine Rooms are built masterfully from the very first pages. Emmy’s voice is so credible and the shock of how she finds herself trapped in a nightmare hit me like a slap in the face, hooking me and keeping me glued all the way to the last page.” – Enrichetta Frezzato, literary agent and Bath Children’s Novel Award Judge
In Nine Rooms, Emmy is trapped in a house with a sinister past while Jade has just escaped a lifetime of captivity. What sparked the idea for the book?
Watching a documentary about triplets who’d been separated at birth but by pure luck met up later in life. Behind their separation was a set of nefarious scientists (oh yes, that old trope) who were using the triplets as a part of a study. My book isn’t about triplets or even twins but there are similarities, and it does include a dodgy organisation.
Nine Rooms shone out for its premise, pace and a series of twists that had our teenage Junior Judges on the edges of their seats. To quote one fifteen-year-old judge: “I just NEEDED to know what would happen…. all those cliffhangers and lore drops really made me want to keep reading! […] I think I wrote “OH MY GOD NO WAY! like 30 times.” Any tips on nailing a great twist and deciding how many to include?
I love a cliffhanger banger, both reading and writing them. I like something wham-bamish at the end of every chapter, if not a cliffhanger then perhaps a question or an unresolved plot point, anything to keep the drama going and the pages turning.
You won a compilation of feedback from the Junior Judges on your full manuscript as part of your prize. Do you have any favourite comments and anything you will be using in your next edits?
Oh my, the Junior Judges were so generous with their praise such as: ‘I am sure one day it will be a classic of its genre!’ and also: ‘The switch between Emmy’s perspective and her doppel Jade was really well-executed and was one of the only stories I’ve read where I am equally eager for both perspectives.’
The Junior Judges’ comments on where I could clarify plot points and word usage were extremely helpful.
Just want to add that having judges who are the same age as my target audience is such a plus point of the Bath Children’s Novel Award.
You started writing seriously at the age of 40. Can you say a bit about why this was an important moment for you?
At the age of eleven, I won a poetry competition at my local library and soon after wrote a script for a historical soap which I found years later. It was awful – in every scene there was a character having a meltdown. I didn’t write much during my twenties or thirties as life and love and work got in the way, but I was always mentally organising stories in my head, knowing that one day I’d get round to writing them. It would be no big shakes, because writing stories must be easy, right? So wrong. Thinking up stories is one thing; writing decent, publishable stories is a completely different matter. After a lot of dithery writing, I decided at the watershed age of forty to get serious with short stories and flash, many of which were published in anthologies and on-line. When I later tried my hand at novels, I discovered it flexed a different writing muscle. Talk about a steep learning curve.
Where and when do you write?
At last I have a room of my own in a converted attic. It’s small but overlooks a field, is filled with books, plants and pictures, and is all mine, mine, mine. It’s wonderful to have this space after years of writing on the dining room table. I work part-time in a hardware store so am very lucky to have free time to write during the week and some evenings.
You’ve been agented before and been through the disappointment of earlier manuscripts not getting picked up. Can you say a little about how you navigated this, and what you learned from the experience along the way?
I was agented for a few years but unfortunately the three books I wrote were not picked up by publishers and my agent and I parted ways. The thought of being unagented again was scary, but in the end the lure of being able to enter competitions and contact other agents won through. I learned that it’s good to trust your instinct on this point and that so many writers go through the same experience.
You also listed in 2020 with a different book and describe yourself as “a complete comp junkie”. Why have competitions been such an important part of your writing journey?
Deadlines! They force me to sit down and get the writing done. Also, I’ve won prizes such as feedback and even a one-to-one with an agent. The feeling of being placed/listed in novel comps allows me to raspberry blow at the nagging thought of not being good enough. Although I didn’t progress to the shortlist stage in the 2020 Bath Children’s Novel Award, it did reassure me that I could write a decent novel beginning. It was just the rest I had to get right!
Lastly do you have any words of advice / encouragement for anyone entering our 2025 awards?
Get your first 5,000 words and synopsis polished till they squeak then ask your writing group/bud to look over them. It also helps if the rest of the book is ready to go, as you never know, you might be longlisted. When I was longlisted in the 2020 BCNA I had only a few days to spruce up the rest of the novel before submitting. But there was no sprucing, just a load of panicked, fevered writing. I learned my lesson and when I was longlisted this time I was prepared – Nine Rooms wasn’t perfect but it was buffed and ready to go.
If you love your novel there’s every chance that the judges will too, so write, enter and cross your fingers! (Or even better, get cracking with your next story).
Interview by Caroline Ambrose
SHARON BOYLE lives in East Lothian, Scotland, where she works in a hardware store, jotting down notes for novels when the boss isn’t looking. She likes banoffee pie, not exercising, and coorying by the fire on rainy Sundays. Her YA thriller NINE ROOMS shortlisted for the Bath Children’s Novel Award 2024, won the Retreat West 2024 First Chapter Competition and she has also listed for the Mslexia Children’s Novel Competition and SCWBI’s Undiscovered Voices. She is represented by Alice Williams at Alice Williams Literary.
