A real page-turner from Vale author

blackmorevaleApril 29, 20220 Comment0

From her early days in advertising, to the years when she ran a flower shop, Sally Page has always been drawn to other people’s stories.
No surprise, then, that her first published novel is about a woman who collects stories – because she doesn’t believe she has one of her own to tell.
The Keeper of Stories is Janice, a cleaner who absorbs the stories of those she meets, including her clients, from the awful Mrs YeahYeahYeah, to the elderly Mrs B, who manages to draw Janice’s own story from her.
Along the way the reader is treated to the stories of all the characters, as the book moves towards its uplifting conclusion.
“It took a year to collect the stories I wanted to use but once I had them, the first draft of the book took three months to write,” says Sally, who lives in Gillingham.
The book was published earlier this spring, both in digital and print, and swiftly became a Top 50 bestseller with more than 2,000 Amazon reviews in six weeks.
No one is more surprised than Sally, who has never seen herself as a writer of tales although her life to date has provided intriguing clues.
After studying history at university she went into the story-obsessed world of advertising, learning floristry at night school before opening her own shop.
“You hear a lot of fascinating human interest stories in florists, they provide a window into people’s lives,” she says. Whilst working there she started photographing the Ted Martin Flowers store in Tisbury, documenting a year in its life, and her book, The Flower Shop, was an instant hit.
She also runs Plooms, an online store selling old-fashioned fountain pens in modern, brilliant colours, which she started after being unable to find a suitable pen for her own use.
Her youngest daughter, Libby Page, has written a number of top-selling books. Libby’s novel, The Lido, has been optioned for the big screen although, says Sally, when she was ready to send her novel out, she didn’t mention their relationship or approach her daughter’s agent.
“I never thought I was a story-teller, if anything I thought I might be a journalistic writer but I started writing fiction in 2016 when I woke up one day with an idea for a whodunnit,” she says. “I decided to try and write it and realised I loved what I was doing.”
This book did manage to interest an agent but didn’t get commissioned by a publisher. Since then, Sally has written five books with “two in pretty good shape” and a third “coming along” but was still astonished to see her book signed up by HarperCollins’s One More Chapter imprint, which publishes digital first, with some printed sales.
“The publishing director Charlotte Ledger told me she couldn’t believe no one else had snapped up The Keeper of Stories,” says Sally.
Sally writes in between running Plooms, from which she furloughed herself during covid-19, and finds she has no set routine or ritual, as some writers do. “I’ve found I don’t always write in my office; you’ll often find me at the dining table or on the sofa, even at cafes,” she says.
She’ll spend the summer prepping her next book and, after having to research Norfolk online during lockdown, hopes to set a novel in Dorset. “It’s much easier to be able to write about places you know well,” she says.
Before then, fans can see her at the Sturminster Newton Literary Festival, where people can book her talk over afternoon tea. She’s also appearing at the Swindon Festival of Literature from May 2-8 on stage with Libby.
“I’m still fairly wary, thinking it might not all last,” she says. “But then I remember that the book’s success has been driven by its readers, which is actually wonderful.”