Post by susanmay on Sept 9, 2008 12:56:56 GMT
Here's an interview with Martina Cole. Its a bit different than the normal interviews but inspiring all the same.
Cole, writer of 11 bestsellers, said women needed to be financially independent to ensure they didn't end up relying on their husbands or the State neither of which, she said, she understood. "I don't really understand pensions so I invest in bricks and mortar and I've never understood men, so I put something aside just for me," she said. "Women have to work harder to achieve in their professions and that won't change for a long time. We need to let go of Prince Charming and get on and do things ourselves."
The platinum blond with razor sharp wit has risen to fame by transporting hard-hitting criminals, prostitutes, violence and a double helping of emotional punch, directly into people’s living rooms. This romantic recipe has made her the most read author in the penal system as well as making her books the most stolen from public libraries across the country. Her eleventh novel, The Graft, has spent six weeks at the top of the bestsellers’ list and she has not lost a moment before taking up the next instalment, after all, in her eyes, she is just beginning.
‘When I was young the only thing that I was interested in were books,’ she says in a husky voice, that has almost fallen from the sounds of her own pages.
‘My life was pretty boring until I started writing. I remember seeing a programme on Jackie Collins when I was a teenager. It showed her walk-in-wardrobe with all her beautiful dresses hanging up.’ Martina pauses, then laughs. ‘That image always stayed with me and it became my dream to have my own name on the covers of books’
Born in 1958, the youngest of five children in a large Irish Catholic family, Martina was brought up in Aveley at Essex. She attended a convent school until she was expelled at the age of 15 and by 17, Martina was pregnant with her first child.
‘As a girl I was never encouraged to do anything or be anything,’ she says. ‘Women of my generation were still expected to get married and have children. Of course, I did all that, except in the wrong order.
‘I was on the pill but no one had told us in those days that it didn’t work if you got ill. I was working in a night-club and when I was too heavily pregnant to wine-waitress I had to work in the kitchen. I worked right up until the last minute and when I started to go into labour right there they sent me to hospital in a taxi. Back then, I thought they were so lovely – now I’d probably sue.
‘As soon as my son was born things changed. I’d always had a thing about money because growing up we had never had any. When he was born, I knew that it was up to me to keep him, emotionally and financially - these days it is more frightening as at 27, he now wants houses not toys!
‘My family’s view was just, you made your bed now lie in it. So, I had to live in a carpetless hostel in Tilbury, surviving on £11.10 social security a week.
‘My son used to have a clock where he would hide all his birthday money or pocket money. The amount of times I robbed that clock…. I used to feel so bad about it. But I just didn’t have enough money to get through.’
Unable to reconcile herself with the frugal incomings, Cole began working two, even three jobs at a time to bring in the extra cash.
‘I learned at an early age to work. I learned to go out there and just do it. I used to write mini books for my neighbour, kind of Mills and Boon style romances. She loved them and would give me a packet of cigarettes in exchange.’
‘I always knew that money was very important. I saw it as insurance. I can’t believe that women still wait for a knight in shining armour to save them. I have learnt never to put my happiness in the hands of another.
‘As soon as I had any money, I saved a third, paid bills with a third and spent a third. I still do that now. I always took money aside, even when I was married, under the heading of ‘housekeeping’. Maybe that’s just sneaky. But I believe you have to have a little something in case something goes wrong, even if you marry the richest person in the world.
‘We have to teach our daughters the power of self-reliance, whether they are in a relationship or out of one. The power of being your own person. If I could have anything, that is what I would want – financial independence for every girl.
‘In fact, I started writing because I became fascinated with the fact that most of the time, women go to prison for men, where as men, usually go away for money. I was sick of women in books who only got places because of their good looks and thanks to men. I wrote what I saw as an anti-book about a woman in a man’s world.’
Cole had written Dangerous Lady when she was 21 but it wasn’t till she was 30 that she plucked up the courage to send it off to a publisher. At the time, she was working in a wine bar where her colleagues laughed when they heard she was trying to become a writer. Her agent, Darley Anderson, thought that it was extraordinary that a women could pen such violent material. He read the work in a day and called her back at the first opportunity.
‘Martina Cole?’, he said, ‘….You are going to be a star’.
‘I though it was a wind-up,’ says Cole, who won a £150,000 publishing deal right away.
Now, 12 years on, Martina divides her time between writing and looking after her young daughter. Free to follow the career of her dreams, Cole has become a news junkie with an insatiable creative curiosity. ‘I work all the way through the night and I keep the news on the TV at the same time. Things stick in my mind and my questions about the crimes I hear about slowly become characters in my head.’
Her diamonds are financed by her pen, her kitchen is stocked with a fridge just for chocolate and her infectious charm makes friends of everyone, from businessmen and women to underworld bosses - Martina Cole may be an Essex-girl at heart but her style and generosity put her in a class of her own.
Cole, writer of 11 bestsellers, said women needed to be financially independent to ensure they didn't end up relying on their husbands or the State neither of which, she said, she understood. "I don't really understand pensions so I invest in bricks and mortar and I've never understood men, so I put something aside just for me," she said. "Women have to work harder to achieve in their professions and that won't change for a long time. We need to let go of Prince Charming and get on and do things ourselves."
The platinum blond with razor sharp wit has risen to fame by transporting hard-hitting criminals, prostitutes, violence and a double helping of emotional punch, directly into people’s living rooms. This romantic recipe has made her the most read author in the penal system as well as making her books the most stolen from public libraries across the country. Her eleventh novel, The Graft, has spent six weeks at the top of the bestsellers’ list and she has not lost a moment before taking up the next instalment, after all, in her eyes, she is just beginning.
‘When I was young the only thing that I was interested in were books,’ she says in a husky voice, that has almost fallen from the sounds of her own pages.
‘My life was pretty boring until I started writing. I remember seeing a programme on Jackie Collins when I was a teenager. It showed her walk-in-wardrobe with all her beautiful dresses hanging up.’ Martina pauses, then laughs. ‘That image always stayed with me and it became my dream to have my own name on the covers of books’
Born in 1958, the youngest of five children in a large Irish Catholic family, Martina was brought up in Aveley at Essex. She attended a convent school until she was expelled at the age of 15 and by 17, Martina was pregnant with her first child.
‘As a girl I was never encouraged to do anything or be anything,’ she says. ‘Women of my generation were still expected to get married and have children. Of course, I did all that, except in the wrong order.
‘I was on the pill but no one had told us in those days that it didn’t work if you got ill. I was working in a night-club and when I was too heavily pregnant to wine-waitress I had to work in the kitchen. I worked right up until the last minute and when I started to go into labour right there they sent me to hospital in a taxi. Back then, I thought they were so lovely – now I’d probably sue.
‘As soon as my son was born things changed. I’d always had a thing about money because growing up we had never had any. When he was born, I knew that it was up to me to keep him, emotionally and financially - these days it is more frightening as at 27, he now wants houses not toys!
‘My family’s view was just, you made your bed now lie in it. So, I had to live in a carpetless hostel in Tilbury, surviving on £11.10 social security a week.
‘My son used to have a clock where he would hide all his birthday money or pocket money. The amount of times I robbed that clock…. I used to feel so bad about it. But I just didn’t have enough money to get through.’
Unable to reconcile herself with the frugal incomings, Cole began working two, even three jobs at a time to bring in the extra cash.
‘I learned at an early age to work. I learned to go out there and just do it. I used to write mini books for my neighbour, kind of Mills and Boon style romances. She loved them and would give me a packet of cigarettes in exchange.’
‘I always knew that money was very important. I saw it as insurance. I can’t believe that women still wait for a knight in shining armour to save them. I have learnt never to put my happiness in the hands of another.
‘As soon as I had any money, I saved a third, paid bills with a third and spent a third. I still do that now. I always took money aside, even when I was married, under the heading of ‘housekeeping’. Maybe that’s just sneaky. But I believe you have to have a little something in case something goes wrong, even if you marry the richest person in the world.
‘We have to teach our daughters the power of self-reliance, whether they are in a relationship or out of one. The power of being your own person. If I could have anything, that is what I would want – financial independence for every girl.
‘In fact, I started writing because I became fascinated with the fact that most of the time, women go to prison for men, where as men, usually go away for money. I was sick of women in books who only got places because of their good looks and thanks to men. I wrote what I saw as an anti-book about a woman in a man’s world.’
Cole had written Dangerous Lady when she was 21 but it wasn’t till she was 30 that she plucked up the courage to send it off to a publisher. At the time, she was working in a wine bar where her colleagues laughed when they heard she was trying to become a writer. Her agent, Darley Anderson, thought that it was extraordinary that a women could pen such violent material. He read the work in a day and called her back at the first opportunity.
‘Martina Cole?’, he said, ‘….You are going to be a star’.
‘I though it was a wind-up,’ says Cole, who won a £150,000 publishing deal right away.
Now, 12 years on, Martina divides her time between writing and looking after her young daughter. Free to follow the career of her dreams, Cole has become a news junkie with an insatiable creative curiosity. ‘I work all the way through the night and I keep the news on the TV at the same time. Things stick in my mind and my questions about the crimes I hear about slowly become characters in my head.’
Her diamonds are financed by her pen, her kitchen is stocked with a fridge just for chocolate and her infectious charm makes friends of everyone, from businessmen and women to underworld bosses - Martina Cole may be an Essex-girl at heart but her style and generosity put her in a class of her own.