Interview with Christina Cole
Towse
Crime? It's a nice little earner
By Elizabeth Day
Christina Cole has sold over three million books. The "best-selling
writer ... sets her novels in the bleak and violent ganglands of east
London."
How did she get her start?
[...]
"Cole started her first novel, Dangerous Lady, when she was 20, a single
mother living with two-year-old Christopher in a council flat in
Tilbury, Essex.
"She took on several jobs at once to make ends meet, one in the local
pub, which she nicknamed "the Flying Bottle". "Yeah. It was hard. I saw
and heard a lot of things. My son used to call me Min because everyone
else did. Usually in a family, the parents will say, 'Go to Daddy' or
'Go to Mummy'. Because he never heard that, he didn't call me Mum until
he was eight."
"An elderly neighbour was a voracious reader of Mills & Boon books, but
could not afford to keep buying them. Cole offered to write stories for
her in exchange for exercise books and the occasional packet of cigarettes.
"She picked her agent, Darley Anderson, from the Writers' and Artists'
Yearbook purely because she liked his name. "I thought he was a woman. I
called him up and explained what I was writing. He has ever such a posh
voice and he said, 'Women don't write books like that, but I'd be
interested to see it.' " Anderson rapidly procured a £150,000 publishing
deal.
[...]
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Sal
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