Novel credits for accountant

Considering Irish-born Marian Keyes now has two best-selling novels under her belt, it was a bit surprising to discover she had just got home from a hard day at the office where she is an accountant.

The assumption, Marian pointed out, that all writers were dripping with money was way off the mark:

Marian said she was also cautious, not wanting to give up the day job as the venture might not be successful and she would be left high and dry with no income.

Her fears proved to be unfounded. Watermelon was an immediate success when launched last year and it set her on the path to becoming an established writer of lightweight fiction.

Watermelon, said Marian, was a response to her sitting down and writing something that she would love to read, without cliché or sentimentality; a funny, honest book. She wasn't surprised that it was successful because she had great faith in her story of a woman whose husband leaves her when she is giving birth to their first child. The process of actually penning a novel was, however, daunting at the outset because she had only ever written short stories.

Fortunately for Marian, fate intervened when she attempted to be economical with the truth:

Watermelon was written within six months, whereas the London-based writer's last novel, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married was approached from a completely different angle. Marian worked harder on it, rewriting parts of it until she was convinced she had a tighter, tidier end product and she confessed that her first novel had a kind of naïve exuberance to it, so much so that she believes you would know immediately that it was a first book.

Support from family and friends helped her take risks with "Lucy Sullivan..." and she is well aware of the saying that a writer's second book is always hell to do.

Although the book is humorous it does have a serious side. It is in essence the story of a dysfunctional family but Marian confessed that she couldn't write a totally serious story that was all gloom and doom:

"I'm working three days a week now but the thing about it is that everybody thinks if you have a successful book that you're absolutely loaded but you have to sell an awful lot of books to make a living."

"I had no intention of writing a novel - I thought it would take forever. But when I sent my short stories to Poolbeg Press I mentioned in a letter that I have written part of a novel. I said that to impress, but when Kate Cruise O'Brien wrote back and said she wanted to read the novel. I wrote in a blind panic without really thinking about it and that's how it all started."

"I'm afraid of alienating readers by being too serious and the best way to get a message across is not to bore or depress people but to make them laugh; to charm them into getting involved."