Martina Cole

Facts about Martina Cole 

• was born and brought up in Aveley, Essex
• is the youngest of five children
• comes from a large Irish Catholic family
• her mother, a psychiatric nurse, was from Dublin
• her father, a merchant seaman, was from Cork
• attended a convent school (and hated it!)
• was expelled from school at 15 for reading Harold Robbins's The Carpetbaggers
• got married at 16
• got divorced at 17
• was pregnant at 18 with her first child, Christopher
• was a pea picker for her first job
• often had upto 3 jobs to make ends meet
• would write to entertain herself
• used to write mini books for her neighbour
• never submitted her work to publishers initially as she lacked self confidence
• married in her early twenties
• decided to try writing full-time in her thirties
• gave up her job as a secretary and decided she would "give it a year"
• sent off a manuscript, Dangerous Lady to an agent she picked from the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook
• had been working on the Dangerous Lady manuscript years previously
• submitted the manuscript on a Friday and had "the call" on the Monday!
• sold her first two books, via her agent Darley Anderson, for a then record £150,000
• has worked with agent Darley Anderson for 20 years
• was signed by publishers Hodder Headline, who were a new start-up at the time
• regulary sells in excess of 300,000 hardbacks on initial release of a new title
• had a bestseller hardback in 2005 with The Take
• won the Best Crime Thriller at the British Book Awards with The Take
• has had Dangerous Lady, The Jump, and The Take adapted into television dramas
• has achieved worldwide sales of over 8 million books
• has had 3 paperbacks go straight to top spot on The Sunday Times fiction bestseller list
• has presented on TV with shows such as Martina Cole's Ladykillers
• now lives in Kent to be close to family