Caroline Smailes was taken by surprise when Richard and Judy made her a writer and when her blog turned into a publishing deal for her emotional first novel. Hannah Davies finds out more. IN Search of Adam is a profoundly affecting book. It deals with the horrors of a damaged childhood caused by a mother’s suicide, a father’s neglect and child abuse. Dark stuff, but it is handled with a deep sensitivity and realism by Newcastle-born author Caroline Smailes. The novel is set in the North-East. Caroline says it is recognisably set in Cullercoats where she grew up, and draws on both her own experience and that of people she has spoken to. “Despite now living in the North-West I think because I’m from here I can write about the North-East better. “I’ve got a stronger sense of place in the North-East, it is familiar and as I wrote it at the time I was growing up I had a wealth of resources to draw on.” Caroline’s parents still live in Cullercoats. Dad Brian Moss, 62, is a retired engineering and maths teacher at South Tyneside College, mum Suzanne, 56, a housewife. Her brother Jonathon Moss, 37, is a headteacher in Leeds and a referee for the FA. Caroline’s literary career began after she had moved to the North-West. She says her family wasn’t particularly literary and she didn’t even like reading when she grew up. “I didn’t read much, I didn’t have an interest in books at all and I didn’t even take English GCSE,” she explains. “It was when I went to college, (Tynemouth Sixth Form College now part of Tyne Metropolitan College) I was taking a geography A-level and I hated the class. “The only other option I had if I swapped class was to take English A-level so I took that.” Which was probably one of the best moves she made. “I thought it was wonderful,” she recalls happily. “I had a fantastic teacher and the people I was mixing with in the class were different to those in my previous school. “Instead of it being not seen as a good thing to read it became really desirable, everyone was talking about all of these books.” Her passion was encouraged by her dad who bought her a magazine subscription which came every fortnight with a leather-bound hardback classic book to collect. Soon Caroline had read the Brontes, Austen and Dickens – and she kept on going. “And once I started reading properly I just didn’t stop,” she declares. Caroline got a place to study English at Liverpool University, where she met her husband Gary, 34, a writer and a researcher on the Horrible Histories series of books. Caroline settled in the North-West, where Gary is from, and they have three children Jacob, nine, Ben seven, and Poppy, four. Motherhood hasn’t been straightforward for Caroline. She suffered badly from post-natal depression after Jacob’s birth, which she draw on for the mother’s suicide in In Search of Adam. A miscarriage in April 2005 devastated her. On both occasions she found writing a great source of solace and comfort and kept notes scribbled down and diary after diary. Since university Caroline had specialised in linguistics, teaching at university level and, a few years after Poppy’s birth embarking on a PhD in linguistics. It was around this time she felt something needed to change. She adds: “I have always wanted to be a writer, I’ve always written. “But after university other things came into play – work, having children. “Writing was always something I did in my spare time but I didn’t take it seriously. Mainly because I didn’t consider myself good enough.” But increasingly Caroline realised writing was what she wanted to do. “I was in my second year of a PhD,” she recalls, “I wasn’t excited by it at all but I’d gone down that academic route.” Rather surprisingly it was the TV chat show personalities Richard and Judy who finally gave Caroline the impetus, in September 2005, to go after what she really wanted. “It was on in the background when one of them made a comment about this women being a ‘nearly’ women,” she laughs. “It was about how she was going to ‘nearly’ do something all the time but never actually did it.” Caroline made up her mind. She wasn’t going to be a “nearly woman,” she had to quit her PhD and sign up to a creative writing MA. She states: “I went online to look and see which MA courses I could do. “I found one which I could do in the evening, which was great because it fitted around childcare and work.” She started on the course two weeks later. The course was everything she wanted it to be and she started work on In Search of Adam there and then. “The course gave me the discipline I needed to write properly. “Previously I had fitted writing around everything else, childcare, housework. With having to write 5,000 words every three weeks I re-prioritised my writing to make sure it was done.” With her newfound dedication Caroline finished her two year MA in one year, handing in a complete novel in the summer of 2006. “I finished the novel in the August and my husband said he’d design me a basic website and a blog where I could publish bits. “I started blogging and three weeks later the publisher phoned me, said they’d seen an the extract of In Search of Adam and asked if they could publish it. “Such great news was completely unexpected.” It took until July this year to finally publish the novel and it has already exceeded both Caroline and her publisher’s expectations. “Oh it’s been marvellous,” Caroline enthuses. “It was released in hard back limited edition and sold out. “It has already had a second printing, which will be the final one and it is going to be out in paper back in February.” The response to the novel has also been overwhelming. Drawing on her own experiences of postnatal depression and miscarriage have brought an honesty and a reality to the novel which has struck chords with a lot of readers. Already a forum has been set up about the novel and other bloggers have featured glowing reviews on their pages. Writing about child abuse is also a fraught area and Caroline has dealt with it without being gratuitous yet still showing the horror of abuse. “I’ve consulted along the way with people who have experienced child abuse,” Caroline explains. “It was essential that I got it right, it meant a lot to me when a care worker said it was one of the most accurate representations she had seen.” Caroline is keen to emphasise, however, that the characters and incidents in the book are fictitious. “People do read it trying to spot themselves or someone who they know but that’s a waste of time. “You take things from experience and you use imagination, you pick and chose and develop bits of hundreds of different people. “But it’s not a ‘real life’ account. “I suffered from post-natal depression but I couldn’t be separated from my baby, I wouldn’t let him out of my sight. “The mother in In Search of Adam kills herself.” Caroline is already finishing her second novel, Black Boxes which is based on a mother and daughter’s stories. The book is written from the voice of the mother, who gives her side of their relationship and then through the daughter’s letters. The reader is then invited to draw their own conclusions. “It is less dark than In Search of Adam,” Caroline says, “there is more hope and redemption in this next book.” In preparation for her third book Caroline has been back to her relatives on Tyneside for information. “I don’t get back as often as I’d like to,” she adds, “but I still come to the North-East three or four times a year. “I was back last weekend to see my grandmother, Helen Dixon, who is 85, in Longbenton.” Caroline came to talk to her grandmother as her third novel will be loosely based on Malta-born Helen’s experiences of falling in love with Caroline’s Grandad George during the Second World War. “She met my grandad George during the war. “My third novel is going to be set partly in Malta and part on Tyneside. “She came from a really well-to-do family in Malta, she fell in love with a solider and gave up everything to follow him here. “So my next novel is going to be a romantic novel – that’s a new one for me.” Now Caroline is a writer, she’s determined to stay one, although, she explains, she knows it will never make her rich. “I’m realistic. I know you have to do other things on the side, so I do freelance editing,” she adds. “And I’ve got to find a publisher for book two. “I know it’s difficult but when I held my first book for the first time I had such a feeling of pride I’d managed it – and I wasn’t a ‘nearly’ writer any more. “That’s the feeling I’ll always hold on to.” In Search of Adam is published by The Friday Project Limited and is available from all major bookshops and www.amazon.co.uk For more information on Caroline visit www.carolinesmailes.co.uk | 
