Want to know about Martina Cole? We present our snapshot of Martina Cole, her background, novels and achievements.
Martina Cole:
- was born and brought up in Aveley, Essex
- is the youngest of five children
- comes from a large Irish Catholic family
- her mother, a psychiatric nurse, was from Dublin
- her father, a merchant seaman, was from Cork
- attended a convent school (and hated it!)
- was expelled from school at 15 for reading Harold Robbins’s The Carpetbaggers
- got married at 16
- got divored at 17
- was pregnant at 18 with her first child, Christophe. Christopher’s father sadly died shortly after the birth
- was a pea picker for her first job
- often had upto 3 jobs to make ends meet
- would write to entertain herself
- used to write mini books for her neighbour
- never submitted her work to publishers initially as she lacked self confidence
- married in her early twenties
- decided to try writing full-time in her thirties
- gave up her job as a secretary and decided she would “give it a year”
- sent off a manuscript, Dangerous Lady to an agent she picked from the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook
- had been working on the Dangerous Lady years previously
- submitted the manuscript on a Friday and had “the call” on the Monday!
- sold her first two books, via her agent Darley Anderson, for a then record of £150,000
- has worked with agent Darley Anderson for 20 years
- publishers, Hodder Headline, were a new start-up when they signed her
- hardbacks regulary sell 300,000 copies
- had a bestseller hardback in 2005 with The Take
- won the Best Crime Thriller at the British Book Awards with The Take
- has had Dangerous Lady, The Jump, and The Take adapted into television dramas
- has achieved worldwide sales of over 3 million books
- has presented on TV with shows such as “Martina Cole’s Ladykillers”
- now lives in Kent to be close to family
Anything to add? Post a comment, below, or start a post in the forum. We would like to hear from other Martina Cole fans out there!
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