The first sign that writing was going to be in my future was when I handed in an epic effort that involved magic and a bus journey; an early Harry Potter if you will. It was 19 sides of A4, I was seven and in year two at school, the fact that it was 19 pages was absolutely crucial to its success; my only other competitor managed a measly 17 and a half pages. Pathetic.
As you can tell, I was quite precocious at school, a bit of a kiss arse and a goody two shoes. Add to that boobs at the age of eight and I was quite the little misfit who loved nothing more than being nose in a book ensconced in a world of my own.
Fast forward eighteen years and I was at a pretty low ebb, super morbidly obese and in serious danger of not making thirty if something didn’t change. Cue Shaw Somers, super doc and all round amazing man who stood behind me all the way to fight the NHS for funding for my lifesaving surgery (don’t even get me started).
I started this blog two months after the surgery as a way of getting things out of my head in a healthy way rather than exorcising them via the fridge. It was never supposed to be anything more than that, a cathartic cleanser, a place to rant. So how did it go from there to writing a book and dreaming of being the next big thing?
Cue Lucy-Anne Holmes, supremo author and small bottomed lovely. Having picked up her first book ’50 Ways to Find a Lover’ in Sainsbury’s to take with me to Cuba I immediately went home and read it in an afternoon, reading out the funniest bits (most of the book) to a captive Computer Geek. Reader, I loved it. Harking back to my kiss arse childhood I decided to email Lucy-Anne, rather embarrassingly calling her ‘Holly’ (nice one arse licker) but she didn’t seem to mind too much and took a punt on me, offering to speak to her lovely agent about me.
Cue a slightly torturous wait, several emails that put the fear of God into me about the prospect of turning my little blog into a book and before I knew it I was halfway through and loving every second. Well, not every second; I’m not too fond of waking in the night in a cold sweat thinking about something I need to tweak or agonising over whether I should really blog about having sex for the first time in 1825 days. Neither am I a fan of writer’s block however I’m such a gobby bird that I always have something to say, whether you like it or not.
So, that’s it in a nutshell *does trapped in a nutshell dance*. If you have any questions about the bits I fastforwarded over then feel free to drop me a line ally@longtallally.com and I’ll do my best to answer them. If you want the abridged version it sort of goes like this:
School, books, GCSE’s, bereavement, university, bit mental, The Priory, several crappy jobs, several crappy houses, several crappy friends, no proper boyfriends (crappy or otherwise), fatty boom batty, surgery, Race for Life (ugh what was I thinking) and then book shizz. All of course interspersed with lots of wonderful friends, a slightly crazy yet fabulous family and this blog.
