We are delighted to welcome Sarah J. Hodder to The Tudor Notebook. Rebecca and I have both had the honour of Sarah editing our books and owe her a debt of gratitude, she is not only a wonderful editor but also a fantastic author. Today, Sarah is answering all of our questions about books - history - and history books….
Tell us a little about your love of books
I’ve always been a reader — I think I was probably born with an Enid Blyton novel next to me on the shelf waiting for me to read it! I remember a like-minded teacher in middle school who asked the class to write about what their dream life would be. As we read them out one by one, my classmates had ambitious dreams about becoming doctors and saving lives, travelling the world, becoming a famous pop star or football player; mine was that I wanted to buy a cottage by the sea with a real fireplace, a cat and some nice food and I would spend all day reading books. At the age of 8, it wasn’t a carefully thought-out answer, it was what I truly wanted. And as we left the class that day, my teacher whispered to me that it was her idea of an idyllic life too! Now, many years later, I still read all the time, and have two cats, but haven’t yet managed to buy the cottage by the sea!
What inspired your interest in history?
I can’t pinpoint an exact moment when I realised that history was going to be a passion of mine, although I do recall it wasn’t when I was at school. I was already fascinated by the Tudors by my mid-teens and I ‘excitedly’ chose history as a GCSE subject, keen to learn all about Henry VIII and those famous six wives and ended up eternally disappointed when we studied the Cuban Missile Crisis and a few other (to me) equally uninteresting periods and never went anywhere near the 1500s. Suffice to say I never continued my history lessons into A-Levels.
But when I was in my early twenties, I bought a few historical fiction books and my interest was truly piqued. The reason a love for history gripped me then, and still remains my passion today is, I think in part because I lost a parent at an early age. It’s also the reason that reading has always been a part of my life; reading for me has been a form of escapism as much as it is about relaxation, acquiring knowledge and all the other benefits being an avid reader brings.
I was just 6 years old when my mum died and I naturally spent an awful lot of my life looking backwards. Without wishing to bring the psychology couch to this too much, I think that when you lose a parent that early on in life, you are immediately thrown into a world where you have to think about life and loss and ‘the bigger picture’, which thankfully many kids during their childhood and adolescence don’t even have to consider. As I grew, I reflected on my earlier years all the time and then, one day, I think the discovery that I could look even further backwards, hundreds of years before I was even born, stirred something in me that has never left. I also think that when you experience death at an early age, the study of history can help with perspective. Generations of men, women and families have come and gone over hundreds and thousands of years and this understanding really helped me come to terms with that childhood trauma. It also means that my passion for history has now expanded in all directions from the Tudors (where I began) and I really do love learning about any era, from the ancient Greeks and Romans, the middle ages, the turbulent years of the Wars of the Roses, the Interregnum, the Georgians and the Regency period right up to the World Wars. History is the story of people.
Can you tell us a bit about your books
Although the cottage by the sea is still out of reach, I have been lucky enough to combine my passions for books and history and have written five books of my own. The main connection between them all is that the protagonists are strong women and that they are all, in a small or large way, connected to Elizabeth Woodville (for those who don’t know, she was the mother of the Princes in the Tower).
My interest in Elizabeth as a historical figure came from my having exhausted the Tudors in my reading, and so I decided to go back an era, which took me, of course, to Elizabeth of York and Henry VII. From there, it was a natural step back again to their parents, where I came across this controversial woman called Elizabeth Woodville / Grey. I say controversial because she has such a split press, in her own lifetime and even today. But she fascinated me and rather than just reading about her, I began to research her.
Another of my own personal interests has been researching my family tree – for obvious reasons I have always had a desire to know more about my family and my own roots within history. The concept of family and connections has also been my approach to all my books — that every person has parents and siblings, friends and acquaintances that make up the tapestry of their lives. And so although much has been written on Elizabeth Woodville by better authors than myself, I wanted to take the approach of exploring her life in the context of her family and connections. Hence my first book, The Queen’s Sisters, focuses on the lives of her sisters. Although much of their lives are lost to us, you can find them in the shadows of primary sources. And it struck me that they also had equally valid lives in the late 1400s and early 1500s, and would have had their own unique perspective on their famous sister’s life story. My second book was a natural follow up; called The York Princesses, it tells the story of Elizabeth’s daughters. I then followed that up with a book on her daughter-in-law, Cecily Bonville-Grey, who married Elizabeth’s son, Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, and led a fascinating life. My fourth book finally allowed me to write a small biography of Elizabeth herself, alongside her daughter, Elizabeth of York and her granddaughter, Elizabeth Grey (The Woodville Women, Pen and Sword). My final book is the most loosely connected to Elizabeth, but is a story of three amazing women, the sisters of Richard III and Edward IV, who of course were Elizabeth’s sisters-in-law (The Sisters of Richard III, Pen and Sword).
In addition to writing your own books you are also an editor, can you tell us about your role, how you got in to it?
I started working in publishing in my early twenties, working for a niche publisher called Shire Publications, which was my dream job. It taught me all about book production and how the industry worked. I worked my way up to Production Manager, and as a small company that involved me seeing the book through from manuscript to print, and also taught me how to proofread and typeset, as both were a part of my job. Shire was eventually bought out by Osprey Publishing (now part of Bloomsbury I believe) and I stepped away from the industry for a while when I became pregnant with my daughter. That time for me was bittersweet; I was overjoyed to know I could finally have that mother/daughter relationship that I had so yearned for all my life, but the commute just wouldn’t work for me with a small child and I was sad to leave the industry.
Fast forward a few years and it was really through writing several books that put me back in touch with some lovely people in the publishing world, and I was able to obtain work as a proofreader and copyeditor, which I still do today. I am hugely grateful to the publishers I work with today for allowing me the opportunity to get back into an industry I love.
What does a day in the life of an editor look like?
One of the things that came out of Covid, which is frequently discussed in the media as it seems to have split opinion, is that the world is now much more accommodating for people to work from home. When I had my daughter, opportunities to work in publishing and not commute every day to the office were few and far between. Now as a freelance copyeditor and proofreader, I work fully from home and it works perfectly for me and my family. Once everyone is out of the house, I usually answer any emails and then start work for the day, copyediting, proofreading or checking page proofs, depending on what work I have to do that day. The ideal we are told, when setting up a home office, is to have a desk set-up where you are ergonomically placed to work; sadly I am the antithesis of that and am rather a free spirit with my working conditions. I work on a laptop and, although I have made the effort to have an ergonomic laptop tray with soft cushioned edges to protect my wrists, I can otherwise be found reading and editing curled up on the sofa, on my stomach on the floor surrounded by cushions, with my feet up on the bed, at the living room table or occasionally when the weather conditions are good, I may even take up residence in the garden for a few hours. And always with a cup of tea or some lemon or elderflower water to keep me hydrated.
What is the best thing about what you do?
The absolute best thing about my job is the amount of books I get to read every week and all the different subjects that I get to learn about. I love receiving new jobs in from publishers as I excitedly discover whether I’ll be spending a few days in the world of the Brontës, galloping across the Holy Land with the Crusaders, learning how crystals can help our health, or even being the first to read a new fiction book before it hits the shelf. Reading for me has always been an escapism and to be able to do that as part of my job is so lovely. It’s also lovely to work on new texts with the brilliant authors who created them. I am always aware that the text is their ‘book baby’ and so I try to copyedit to fix any errors without losing the voice of the author. It’s a privilege though to share a small part of their book journey as an author.
I also have a really good memory so with all the different subjects I’ve worked on, I’m always picking up facts, so I’m a really good person to have on a quiz team!
What is the worst/hardest thing?
The hardest thing is also, conversely, the best thing and that’s reading all day. For some reason, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this, reading makes me tired. It’s probably the combination of relaxation and complete concentration. When reading for leisure, it’s the relaxation that gets me and I can’t count the number of times I’ve fallen asleep with a book in my hands. When reading for work though, my concentration has to be at its peak, which is equally tiring. I try and work in short bursts and ensure that every hour or so, I get up and take a break, make a drink, stare out into the distance and give my brain and eyes time to recharge. I know when I’ve missed a break as my attention span wanes or I might feel a headache coming on. So although it’s not an Olympic sport, it is important (as with any screen work) to step away often enough to do the job well.
What piece of advice would you give someone wishing to start writing or break into the publishing world?
The publishing industry is not the easiest to get into because jobs are in demand, but within the industry itself there are so many great roles – production, print and design, copyediting and proofreading, marketing, sales, and a constant supply of great reading material for you to pick and choose from! Many of the bigger publishers are in the bigger towns and cities and many still require you to work a few days in the office to learn the industry, so you may have to be prepared to relocate or travel, which is of course much easier when you are just starting out. The bigger publishers also have a bigger variety of roles, which is great, but don’t discount the smaller publishers as in my experience they offer a more rounded experience of how the publishing industry works as you get to crossover many of the roles and often see the book business as a whole. If you have a passion for books and reading don’t be afraid to show it; the majority of people who choose to work in publishing love books, and in turn we love people who have a passion about books!
If writing is an area you want to get into, the best advice I can give is to just start. Put pen to paper and get the words down onto the page. Get creative first, and write as if you’re writing for yourself, and most importantly, enjoy the process. It’s a sad fact, unfortunately, that many authors will know, that it’s very hard to make a lot of money from being an author, unless you write a bestseller or have royalties coming in from very many titles. So initially at least you will likely be writing and holding down a day job. I think many authors put off writing until that one day they can leave work and ‘become’ an author; in reality many find they can never afford to do that so they never start writing. So if your passion is writing, do it because you’re creative and because it’s a passion and let your ideas flow.
Then once you have something you’re happy with, if you want to become published you can start researching routes to publication and decide which is the best for you. There are so many more opportunities to publish a book nowadays than there has ever been, from traditional publishers routes to self-publishing.
It’s also a good idea to have your text in great condition before you submit it to a publisher, and imperative if you are self-publishing. As a reader, it’s not great when you pick up a book and it’s full of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. If you have a good understanding of language then that might be something you can do yourself. But sometimes people are super-creative and have words and stories spilling out of them, but are aware their skill lies in the creation of a narrative, and not in the language and grammar. So do consider having the book copyedited or proofread at a minimum if that is you. Copyeditors and proofreaders are human too and it’s nigh on impossible to pick up every mistake, but working with a good copyeditor and/or proofreader will often help you tidy up a narrative that you, yourself, are sometimes too close to as its creator. Supplying a really good text to a publisher will also make a better first impression and hopefully capture their attention as they will be concentrating on the narrative rather than any errors.
Where can people find you?
My website is https://underthemedievaloak.wixsite.com/website which has details of the books I have written and also the copyediting and proofreading publishing services I offer. I’m not currently writing any new books; most of my time now is spent doing what I love which is helping others with their own books. It’s always an exciting time to see a new text from an author making its way out into the world into a fully-fledged book, and I love being a small part of their process.
We do hope you have enjoyed Sarah’s responses. For those with an eagle eye, yes the editing picture certainly is my very own Women’s Lives in the Tudor Era. I am very grateful to Sarah for all her help in bringing my books out in to the world and having read all of her books I highly recommend them!
We will have another guest post coming at the end of the month and in July we have another guest from the publishing world!
Thanks so much for sharing this interview! I was hooked from the moment Sarah mentioned the cottage by the sea… But also her point about A Level history choices really resonated (as someone who was also bored to death by the Cuban Missile Crisis for GCSEs!). I’m glad that it worked out; Sarah’s books look fascinating!