J.R. McAdam

My earliest memory of writing comes from Primary school, where I would have been around eight years-old. We had been given a homework assignment to write about Native Americans, which I promply forgot as my mind at that point was filled with nothing but Star Wars, which at the time was a new and massive phenomenon. In class, the teacher had me stand up to read my one page on the subject. With my heart pounding and my face getting redder, I looked at my blank page of paper and proceeded to 'read' my piece about the Native Americans, grasping every little bit of info I remembered from class, plus anything I had learned from movies.

By the end, the teacher was impressed until she asked to mark my paper for grammar and discovered it was a blank page. Despite being impressed with the content of my oral delivery, she called in my parents to complain about my being unable to pay attention to rules and my 'daydream world' of comics and sci-fi. I remember my mother, a constant champion of my creative abilities, asking the teacher if she was at all impressed by the fact I recited a paper on the spot with no written matter as reference. The teacher made it clear she was not. This was the beginning of my distrust and disrespect of the education system. Doubts that remained with me until the BBC saw fit to give me a scholarship to gain a Masters in scriptwriting back in 2010.

I began reading proper novels around the age of twelve after discovering Stephen King's 'Nightshift'. I loved his work, and would happily shut myself away in my bedroom to get lost in King's worlds of the macabre, the surreal and the downright spooky. I needed this escape badly, as my parents' marriage was beginning to disintegrate which resulted in constant loud and vitriolic arguments. Locking my room door and getting lost in a good story was a vital component in helping me get through such horrible times. Eventually, they separated when I was seventeen.

I left home at 20, moving into the flat previously occupied by my father before his death. It was a hard decade of financial struggle, low-paying and soul destroying jobs and various personal difficulties. All through this, reading and writing was a constant friend and ally; an oasis from the bleak and very real world I was living in. Music was also a great liberator, so much so that I formed a band with some friends that actually almost took us to a record deal. As life got harder, and my general load got heavier, I drifted from writing stories and found myself engrossed in script writing, with genres ranging from sitcoms to feature films.

After marriage, I drifted from music and writing as I concentrated on working life, hoping to raise my status enough to build some kind of respectable career, but while my wife encouraged my working aspirations, she also insisted I nurture my creative abilities, believing there was too much talent to simply sideline. She is, and always has been, my prime motivator. After the crash of 2008, I lost my job and was adfrift for a few months before learning about the BBC scholarship. My confidence in my writing had diminished somewhat, leaving me doubtful about winning the coveted scholarship, but to my amazement, they liked me and my writing and made me the first person to receive a BBC scholarship in scriptwriting. The wonderful Shed Media also awarded me a grant to help with finances as I studied. I loved every minute of it.

Three weeks after graduation, my mother, Patsy, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. This was the beginning of a painful and and heartbreaking three years as my mother's health slowly declined until her death in 2013. This all left me in a rather despondent place, which led to me losing the creative spark for a couple of years before writing a script called Mary Jane's Gold. It was good work, and got me into the top 3% of BBC Writer's Room submissions, plus meetings with potential investors and producers looking to buy scripts. After this, I immediately began working on a much bigger and ambitious project in the form of a dark and complex thriller. Midway through the second draft, the Covid lockdowns came in to play, which - for various reasons - halted progress on the script. As Covid ended, my faith in scriptwriting was in jeopardy as I wondered if the work involved in writing such a heavyweight piece was justified considering it may never be produced.

Coming forward to 2024, I felt the call of descriptive writing again, and decided to turn my thriller script into a novel. This was the plan until late January, when I was on my way to bed and found myself running the story of a French actress retreating to the Isle of Skye around my head. By the time I brushed my teeth and got into bed, the story was almost fully-formed. I found my enthusiasm for the project quite bizarre, as I had never entertained (or shown much interest in) the romance genre, yet for some reason, this story just wouldn't go away, in fact, it kept growing and developing to the point I began to feel excited about its potential. So, for the next seven months, I dedicated myself to completing the project, constantly invigorated by the way the story developed as a human drama as well as a romance. As completion became a reality, I decided to self-publish for various reasons; if it was published traditionally, the publishers would pressure me to write more romance novels if the book did well, which was a worry as I'm certain The French Star is the only romance novel I have in me. I also wanted to be certain about publication, rather than launch a barrage of begging (query) letters to hundreds of names in the hope one of them would go forward with the book. I also worried about things like editorial interference and the thought of having to do book tours. Public speaking is NOT my strongpoint!

After encountering every possible problem (and making all the mistakes) one can deal with when self-publishing, The French Star finally went on sale on 11/11/24. I felt all the thrill of seeing something you raised and nurtured finally going into the public realm, the sense of achievement caused by completing and publishing a novel, but I also felt a sense of excitement and confidence, as I knew I had a good story on my hands, one that could easily appeal to a wide audience. Last, but certainly not least, was the warm glow of knowing I had written a novel that could take a reader away from whatever turmoil was surrounding them, just like I did as a boy when I would shut myself away in my bedroom, desperate to escape reality.

Anyway, I've rambled long enough. Time to start planning that next novel...