Finding Your Sparkle by Sam Blake

I started writing in 1999 when my husband went sailing across the Atlantic for eight weeks and I had an idea for a book – it was November and the evenings were long and dark so I started scribbling longhand, typing it in the office in the evenings. I was convinced that book would be a bestseller, it was my baby and I spent months working on it. What I hadn’t realised then, was that being good at creative writing in school didn’t mean that I could write brilliant publishable fiction. As my book was rejected by every agent and publishing house (all over the world), I realised there was a bit more to this writing thing, and that Malcolm Gladwell wasn’t wrong with his theory that it takes 10,000 hours to be really good at something.

So the hard work really began.

Roll forward fifteen years and five finished novels and many more partials, and that best seller arrived in the form of Little Bones. Success in any game is hard won. Along the way I’d set up Inkwell, run LOTS of workshops for writers in order to learn my trade, I’d had two children and founded Writing.ie. Juggling life and writing is hard work – you have to mine time and find writing hours that don’t really exist.

Celebrating successes it very, very important.

Little Bones features Cat Connolly, a 24 year old detective who is given a very special piece of jewellery by her colleague (and she wishes, lover) Dawson O’Rourke – a silver Tiffany dog tag. I had seen one while I was writing and it was perfect for Cat. I’d always promised myself that if Little Bones was published, I’d buy myself that pendant – but it took about three years to write and spent a long time in a drawer before I met my agent Simon Trewin. When he called to say he’d had an offer for three books, I went straight to the Tiffany website – but, disaster, they’d stopped selling Cat’s necklace.

I searched everywhere until I found one on eBay. It was being sold by a teacher living in a remote part of Japan who sold second hand jewellery to fund an English school he runs for people who cannot afford lessons. My necklace paid for a young girl who was caring for her terminally ill mother to learn English. There is so much emotion wrapped up in that necklace, in its significance in the book, and in what it meant to someone so far away.

When In Deep Water was published I spotted an antique typewriter charm on Instagram and it turned out I knew the jeweller, Colin Weldon, through the Inkwell network. He found me a beautiful gold bracelet to go with it, and that was my gift to myself for book two.

When book three, No Turning Back was published I saw an antique art deco style opal ring (again on Instagram, oh help!) Opal is my birthstone and I’d always wanted one – this was a black opal and I’m a crime writer, so…

Keep Your Eyes on Me is my fourth book, and my first standalone - it’s about two wronged but entrepreneurial women and it features a jewellery designer called Lily Power. Lily has been spotted by a luxury jewellery company based in New York and they offer her a dream job - but the night before she leaves, her brother is swindled out of the family business – he’s loses his home, job and his security. When Lily meets Vittoria Devine on the plane she knows she can’t leave Jack and take the job – unless she finds a way to get the shop back. Vittoria, a psychologist, has her own problems - she’s married to a pilot whose latest mistress is pregnant. She’s devastated and is heading to New York to hammer his credit card. When she met Marcus, she was a ballerina – until he caused a car accident that ended her dancing and her chances of having children. Keep Your Eyes on Me is all about revenge…

With such a strong jewellery theme, I wanted to keep up my tradition of buying a special piece. There is a jeweller in Dublin who is an entrepreneur, building her business from scratch just like Vittoria - she’s a jewellery designer, like Lily, and she’s from Wicklow, where I live. All Chupi Sweetman’s pieces carry wonderful messages in their designs and names. Her gold ring We Are Twice as Strong encapsulates so much of what Keep Your Eyes on Me is about – two women who are bound together in a circle of friendship. It looks like a piece of twine you’d tie around your finger to remember something – I don’t want to forget this book or Lily and Vittoria, who equally will never forget each other. It’s also a reminder to be thankful for all the people who have helped in my career along that way, and the gift of success.

The best advice I was ever given was ‘just keep writing’. Writing is rewriting – no book you see on the shelf is the first draft. Perseverance in everything pays off. And for me, allows me to reward myself with a little bit of sparkle.

The No 1 Irish Times bestseller Keep Your Eyes on Me is out in paperback on November 5. The Kindle price is 99p for the month of November