You could say I’m an overnight success, thanks to Book Republic, but as with all things, that ‘night’ took about 30 years of hard work and persistence. Writing has always been my hobby, but I never saw it as anything else, until I started to sell articles to various horseracing magazines. Within a very short space of time I had become a professional freelance horseracing journalist and that side of things has really taken off for me.

This means that writing fiction is even more of a ‘hobby’, as I have to squeeze it into any spare time I get. Luckily I’m a writing addict, so I write professionally from 9 to 5 and then work on my novels from 6 to, well, anything up to midnight! I have a very patient family! I carefully say ‘work’ rather than write, as I find that at least 80% of that time is spent in either thought or reading back through the work, editing as I go. I might write only four or five lines in the space of an hour. It generally takes me about eight months to complete a novel, although an awful lot of groundwork would have been done in my head in the months before.

I always begin with characters, as they are the essence of the book. Plot is secondary. As a reader, I quickly lose interest in a book if I can’t bond with the characters. I don’t really care what’s going to happen to them, no matter how exciting it might seem. I have always seen writing as much the same as reading – I’m enjoying getting to know the characters and seeing the plot unfold as I write. So writing Chantilly Dawns, my first novel with Book Republic, was a real pleasure.

The characters had arrived in my head a very long time before the plot, but I couldn’t settle down to write the novel immediately. My key starting point is always ‘What if…’ and I had a very successful hero and wondered, what if I took that success away from him? What if he was a jockey, so his whole life revolved around his career? What would it be like for such an insular person to become an outcast in the only world he knows? What if his formative years had left him totally ill-equipped to deal with setbacks? What if I crushed this poor guy as fully as I could, how would he survive and fight back? Using my passion and knowledge of the horseracing industry, it was easy for me to take those questions and fit them into a plot that would tax my unfortunate hero to the full.

The important thing with any book I write is that I know the characters inside out. I know more than is necessary for the story itself – their childhood, their family background, their parents. Maybe that’s why it takes me so long to finally set them to paper. But once they are on paper, they write the book for me. I know my plot and the probable ending before I begin, but the characters don’t always think like me or conform to my rules! Certainly, once they start to talk, their dialogue leads me, rather than me guiding them. The ending is never exactly how I planned it, in any of my novels. That said, it’s important to know the ending before you start, otherwise it’s like walking across a field in the dark with no idea where the gate is. You get lost and walk in circles. Providing you know where the gate actually is, you can cope with necessary detours. It isn’t just an ending, it’s a resolution, so things that have happened to the hero along the way need to be resolved and will affect the final moments of his story, so it will always change as you write.

Because my work is so character-driven I already have them in waiting for the next novel, which I’m looking forward to starting. They are sometimes the bit players from other stories, or someone triggered from a different idea altogether. In this instance, I had a rough idea of plot and characters, but couldn’t get off the ground until I decided to change protagonists. As soon as my ‘hero’ had been relegated to a lesser character, while his colleague was elevated to chief protagonist, I suddenly had a completely new viewpoint and the impetus to start. Hopefully that might turn out to be my second novel with Book Republic, next year!

The following is an extract from Chantilly Dawns by Lissa Oliver, which will be published in February 2011.

Chapter One

Longchamp racecourse, even at eleven in the morning, had a magical quality. The stands were deserted, yet the familiar atmosphere of the race crowds hung in the air. Marcel Dessaint walked through the centre of the silent grandstand, down to the racecourse rails, and gazed out across the course. Behind the winning post, above the yellowing autumnal trees, the Eiffel Tower could be seen, the leafy canopy of the Bois de Boulogne encompassing the course. Marcel’s eyes swept round the circuit of the course, as though following the progress of an imaginary race, and finally came back to rest on the winning post. The grinding misery that had been with him since his entry to the racecourse suddenly became more than he could bear, and he turned abruptly away. The stands were as empty as his heart. He didn’t belong here; not anymore. Pausing to adjust the collar of his expensively tailored coat, as an unusually icy October wind renewed its attack, Marcel wandered to the far end of the parade ring, to the gates that marked the entrance to the racecourse stables. As he gazed longingly through the wrought ironwork, several lads passed him by, carrying rugs and buckets and joking cheerfully to each other. Their cheeriness turned instantly to chilling silence the moment they saw him. Most looked to be about his own age—twenty-six—yet he shared nothing in common with them. They fitted easily into the closed ranks of this racing world and were part of the racecourse, just as Marcel had once been. He had taken his position for granted; in fact, he had never really been aware of it. He was an outcast in the only world he knew. He was distracted from his thoughts by the voice of an English lad, leading a horse across to its stable.

‘Walk on, you old sod!’ The horse stood still and eyed Marcel inquisitively. The lad looked across and waved in instant recognition. ‘Hiya; how’s it going?’ Marcel merely smiled and nodded, his surprise at the friendly gesture tinged with apprehension. ‘Sorry to hear about your news,’ the lad called across cheerfully. ‘Hope it all gets sorted okay.’ He clicked to the horse repeatedly until it grew bored of Marcel, and walked slowly away. Marcel watched him disappear from view—the first person to have wished him well since the fateful enquiry four days earlier. The contact, however brief, drew him momentarily out of himself, conjuring in his mind a comfort zone he hadn’t actively sought. He remembered with pleasure his regular trips to England and the camaraderie of his British counterparts. He decided to forget this ridiculous attempt to lose himself in the day’s racing and to travel, instead, to England. As the stablelad had just demonstrated, there he would be looked upon simply as Marcel Dessaint, not as a crooked jockey. A crooked jockey. He shuddered. Summoning the last reserves of his courage, he turned to face the glass-fronted weighing room, walking under the steps leading down into the parade ring which he had trodden so many times. Within the weighing room a door had been left ajar, and Marcel could see the rows of saddles stacked up on the shelves in the back room. Though they all looked identical, he recognised most of them. He knew each of the stories behind the wear and tear and the cracks and scuffs of the leather. He could smell the aroma of pigskin and oils and hear the murmur of his colleagues’ voices in the jockeys’ room. He didn’t need to look at the empty rooms to be tortured by such memories. ‘Marcel Dessaint?’ He swung round, startled. ‘Would you sign my racecard?’

Two English racegoers faced him, one holding out the programme for the afternoon’s racing. He took it, and the pen proffered, and signed it hesitantly, aware that his hand was shaking. ‘Great rides at Ascot last Saturday,’ remarked one of the pair. ‘I did all three of yours in a treble. We wouldn’t be here today but for that.’ Marcel raised a smile as he handed back the card, the races he’d won somehow forgotten among those he’d lost. ‘Yeah, cheers, mate.’ They leaned over the card and proudly examined the autograph—two foreign racegoers, ignorant of his fall from grace, lost in the reserved enclosure where they had no right to be. They could so easily have been baying for his blood, not his autograph….