TESS WOODS “If you have big dreams then don’t be afraid to dream big!”
Kelly’s Writerly Q&A September Author Interview is with Tess Woods, an award-winning and international best-selling Western Australian author of contemporary fiction. She writes stories about all kinds of relationships and the bond between women, and I have read all three of her novels and loved them!
It’s been five years since her last book was published but now The Venice Hotel is here and she’s a beauty! I’m beyond thrilled to be interviewing Tess on this special book birthday and hope you enjoy it too!
Kelly: Hi Tess, thanks for taking the time to answer some writerly questions. Congratulations on publishing your 4th novel, The Venice Hotel, what it’s about?
Tess: The Venice Hotel is about four women whose lives interconnect and then unravel over the twelve days of Christmas in – you guessed it – a Venice Hotel. It’s about relationships between mothers and daughters and the way sisterhood works when women are in danger. There’s a dark element to this one that’s missing from my previous novels but there’s also love and pasta and that beautiful Venetian setting.
Kelly: The cover alone is gorgeous! How do you come up with your story ideas?
Tess: Well my first book came to me in my sleep! After that, I’ve mostly been inspired by conversations or things I’ve seen online or on TV. Someone will say something and it will give me a launching point, a single scene and I go from there.
My latest idea, for a novel I’ve just been contracted to write for Penguin Books, called The French Chateau, came from an Instagram reel my twenty-one-year-old daughter sent me. It was for a luxury summer camp in the South of France for women only. My daughter messaged me the link saying, ‘We should totally do this!’
That gave me the idea for that setting for a summer camp for women where things go awry.
Kelly: That reminds me of Twilight and how Stephenie Meyer dreamed of the infamous meadow scene. More on that in Reels. Let’s go back to where it all began, you’re a physiotherapist by day, how did you become a writer?
Tess: I can tell you with my hand on my heart that going to bed the evening before I started writing my first novel, I had no idea that I was about to become a writer. As corny as it sounds, I had a dream and when I woke up that dream would not leave me alone. I was visualising a woman and her story as clearly as if it were happening on a movie screen.
I said to my husband, “Someone’s trying to tell me a story. There’s a woman who’s in trouble and she needs me.”
He thought I’d lost the plot ;
The woman would not leave me alone. After I’d fed my children lunch that day and done the dishes, I grabbed pen and paper and I sat down and started hand-writing what I could see in this strange daydream I was having. The words poured, and I could barely keep up. It was Australia Day long weekend and while my hubby looked after our small children for the rest of that weekend, I wrote. In three days I had the bones of Love at First Flight from start to finish and it sat at just under fifty thousand words.
I was shell-shocked. I had never once in my entire adult life entertained the idea of writing so it came as a complete surprise. But that story wanted to be told and I was the person who needed to tell it.
I also need to add here that I have never had another story drop into my head like that one, and on days when I manage to write over two thousand words, I’m swinging medals around my neck!
Kelly: Three days?! My mind is blown. You didn’t lose the plot, you found it! I read about how you got your first yes and absolutely love it, can you please share how you signed with your agent, Jacinta di Mase?
Tess: It was kind of unconventional! It started out normally enough, there was no such thing as pitching face to face back then, so I sent out twenty-three submission letters via email to literary agents everywhere who accepted contemporary commercial fiction. Over the course of the next year I was roundly rejected twenty-three times! (I’ve kept all my rejection letters, they’re such good fun to read when you land a major book deal.) But even though I sent letters to everyone, I was fully obsessed with one agent in particular, Jacinta di Mase. I hounded her for six months, countless emails telling her she was meant to be my agent, that it was destiny that her and I would work together. I even put her up on a vision board in my bathroom! I wrote on a blue poster, ‘Jacinta di Mase will love my story and become my agent.’ My young kids had a poster in their bathroom that read, ‘Jacinta di Mase will love Mummy’s story and become her agent.’ I made them say it out loud every time they washed they hands. I’m not joking. The reason I desperately wanted Jacinta wasn’t because of her incredible abilities and unmatched pulling power as an agent, I actually didn’t find out about that until years later! No, the reason I was obsessed with her was because when I stalked her online, I found a photo of her and saw that we had the same hairstyle. We were identical hair twins! No other agents had long straight dark hair and a thick fringe just like me. I mean, come on, as if that wasn’t a sign that her and I were meant to be, right? After my six months of begging in emails and praying to the bathroom walls, Jacinta rejected the MS. I was devastated, so devastated that I didn’t persist with trying to sell it anymore. I put the MS away and got on with my life. Two years later, out of the blue, came an email from Jacinta di Mase. In it, she wrote that even though my MS had significant issues and needed a lot of work, for the previous two years, every time she got on a flight she thought of my book and looked around to see who was sitting next to who on the plane. She decided to give my story another go and this time we made it work! Jacinta didn’t find out about all the creepy bathroom wall poster praying that I did in 2011 until 2016 when she attended an author talk I did and I told the story – her expression that night was priceless.
Kelly: I would have loved to see her face at that author talk in 2016, lol! It’s been five years between novels, what advice would you give to writers rushing to get published?
Tess: Breathe. Publishing is a slow, slow process. Make trying to get that publishing deal a part of your life, not your whole life, because you’re a lot more important than words on a page. YOU are what matters and you need to be okay whether you get published or not.
And you know what? Sometimes you get published and even though you got your wish, a part of you will be pining for the life of that writer who wrote for themselves with no external pressure (and no bad reviews!).
So try and enjoy the writing, the process, and the connections you make with other writers. And work hard to get published, if that’s the goal, but have lots of other good things you can hold onto to distract you from all the waiting.
Kelly: This is spot on! Thank you for sharing such wonderful advice, I’m doing all of this atm and enjoying the process of reconnecting with myself.
Kelly: After your success with Today Reader’s Choice and Better Reading, what tips do you have for writers with big dreams?
Tess: If you have big dreams then don’t be afraid to dream big!
I do hope my publication story encourages writers who have no traditional credentials. I hadn’t studied writing at university or done any short courses, I hadn’t attended any conferences, I hadn’t written short stories, I hadn’t entered a single competition, I had no social media and not a single contact in the writing industry when I wrote my first manuscript that went on to be a bestseller.
Here are my 5 top tips.
1. Believe.
2. Shut out all the noise about what you “need” to do with building an author profile, building up competition shortlistings etc.
3. JUST WRITE YOUR BOOK, FINISH WRITING YOUR BOOK, GET FEEDBACK AND KEEP REWRITING YOUR BOOK UNTIL IT’S FECKING AMAZING.
4. Do the work in seeking out avenues for your amazing book. Be persistent with that and have a thick skin.
5. Keep believing
Kelly: Thank you for sharing. I often feel less than due to my lack of education but that doesn’t mean I won’t succeed. You are proof of that! You wrote a brilliant article for Louise Allan’s blog on what makes a real writer, what are your top tips for writers struggling to feel like the real deal?
Tess: I probably need to go back and read that article to give myself advice because lately I’ve been plagued by imposter syndrome all over again. I told my publisher just last week that I keep waiting for the world to discover that I don’t actually deserve to be here. So I guess my advice is this – we all suffer with it, join the club. And deep down I think writers that don’t have any self-doubt and feel completely entitled to their success might not be the kind of people you want to catch up with for a coffee, right? Maybe the part that makes us question is the part that keeps us humble and honest. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing?
Kelly: We doubt because we care. Sounds like a good club to me. A year ago you launched a Little Red Street Library, can you tell us about that?
Tess: That little red box is the love of my life! I have so much fun curating it with books of all genres for all ages. I make sure there’s always something for everyone in there. Checking the library to see which new books have been donated or which books have been borrowed is a highlight of my day every day
For my fiftieth birthday, my group of girlfriends (who’ve named themselves my Tier Ones) asked me what I wanted for a present. It was a no-brainer, I’d been dreaming about having a little free library on the limestone wall in my front garden for years. My beautiful friend Emma made it for me and installed it and my life has not been the same since.
I’ve had overwhelming support from so many Australian publishing houses who send me their new releases for kids and grownups every month. I use my Instagram page to promote these new Australian book releases every week and I just love having that avenue to shout about our wonderful Aussie authors. I also love that I’m promoting literacy by tempting my neighbours away from their screens with all the lovely shiny new books in there.
Before we moved to Perth, we lived in a sleepy little town in rural Victoria with a population of 900 where everyone knew everyone. Living in such a busy suburb, I grieved the loss of that small-town community closeness. The little library has given me back a close community, even in the middle of a capital city! I’ve met so many of my beautiful neighbours and made loads of new friends because of it.
The little library has become such a loved part of our suburb, everyone knows it! Kids knock at the front door to ask me if I have any more of their favourite authors’ books, some of my older neighbours who don’t drive have started reading again for the first time in years because they didn’t like borrowing library books online, mums out walking their bubs stop and grab a book for them and books for their little ones, teens riding past on bikes call out to me by name on their way home from school. My neighbours have been so incredibly generous with donating books that I have enough of a catalogue now that I completely swap over all the books once a week to keep it fresh and exciting for anyone walking past each week.
I told my hubby I need to live in this house until the day I die because I could never take the library away from this wonderful community.
Kelly: I love your little red street library, it’s the most adorable thing! What are you currently reading and loving?
Tess: I’ve just finished Margaret Hickey’s new crime novel, The Creeper. There was so much to love about it: Sensational Australian rural landscape setting, edge-of-your-seat plot, a very loveable main character young female cop and honestly just stunning writing. I’m a huge fan!
Last night I started reading debut author Amanda Willimott’s Winter of the Wolf which is historical fiction based on a real werewolf trial. Now this is not my usual fare so I was a bit cautious going into it but OMG it is SO GOOD. I planned to read twenty pages before sleeping and read sixty instead. I can’t wait to get back into bed tonight to read more.
Kelly: They both sound like real page-turners! So, what can we expect from you next?
Tess: I’m so excited about my next book! It’s called The Cairo Bridal Shop and it’s set (surprisingly!) in a bridal shop in Cairo. It’s about three sisters navigating life in modern-day Egypt and the roadblocks faced by women there and it’s also about the six brides who have their dresses made at the shop, each one retelling the story of an Egyptian Pharaoh queen.
I was born into an Egyptian family in Alexandria and was raised in Egypt until I started school when we moved to Australia. I went back to Egypt for an extended visit and toured all around when I was nineteen but have never returned since. So this story is taking me home. I need to stop being excited about it and actually write the thing though.
Kelly: I love the sound of this and how it’s bringing you back to your roots. The bridal shop setting will certainly provide lots of drama! I can’t wait to read it!
Thank you for your time, interviewing you has been a real highlight for me. All your advice is wonderful and gives me hope. You’ve been so kind, generously interacting with me throughout the years I’ve been fangirling and following you.
Thanks for having me Kel, you gorgeous person. I can’t wait to promote your book in my little library one day soon. I’m putting that out in the universe xx
Kelly: Big love
If you’d like to know more about Tess you can follow her on Instagram or Facebook
An extract of The Venice Hotel is available to read here
