Experience of life is vital

Writers need experience of life, according to a longtime subscriber recently published by Simon & Schuster.

Irish writer, Sarah Pat OÍBrien, who has lived in England since her teens, wrote a memoir about the search for her father. Rooms of Dust (Pocket, £7.99), is also a historical and social comment on the slow disintegration of her family in Dublin of the 1940s and 1950s leading to the inevitable ordeal of emigration.

The first publisher approached by Sarah Pat, now living in Ramsgate, Kent, was Townhouse in Dublin who snapped the book up. They took it to their sister company Simon & Schuster, and, although she knew that she had something good, Sarah Pat was taken aback by the speed with which a three-book deal was offered.