During the late 1990s and early 2000s I wrote several plays. I was a regular member of the Anna Scher Theatre at that time and Anna, the most wonderful, supportive teacher and friend, always encouraged us to write and put on plays during the weekly sessions, the best of which were then performed in the Festival of Plays at the end of each term. I discovered I loved writing plays; I found them easy because I've always felt I can write convincing dialogue, whereas I struggle more with descriptive prose.
For most of my adult life my relationship with food has been an unhealthy one. I am an emotional eater; food has been my drug of choice. So in 2005 I decided to write a play about a compulsive over-eater and so What's Eating Me was born. The play follows morbidly obese Eileen Holloway as she goes on a life-changing reality TV series, Barbara's Beautiful Bodies and how she deals with the aftermath of celebrity once the cameras stop rolling. I performed the play on the London and Edinburgh Fringes and was over-joyed at how well received it was.
Once the play was over, the usual feelings of post-show-anti-climax came, but it was more than that. I didn't want to let go of Eileen. And so, after a long time of indecision, of humming and haaing over whether I should perform it again as a play or take it on tour, I decided to turn the play into a novel and a year later it was written. Then came the big question.......What do I do with it now? It seemed to me I was faced with two options - either send it out to publishers and wait for their (probably) rejection letters or self-publish. One of the problems I had with sending it to publishers is that they are quite specific about the types of book they will accept. Back then, it was 2008/9, everyone seemed to be publishing chick-lit. Or romance. Or adventure. Or thrillers. Or sci-fi. Or erotica. My little book didn't fall into any one of those categories.
