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Setting hearts racing
Step aside Jilly Cooper, there's a new girl on the block putting raciness into racing. Sarah Todd reports.
Emma Martin is refreshingly free of pretensions that she'll win any awards for her first book.
"It's unashamed chick-lit," she says. "Something for us girls to curl up on the sofa and enjoy with a glass of wine or to take on holiday and read by the poolside." This is a genre that usually seems to feature sassy young Londoners or bored mothers in the Home Counties. The difference here is that it has a horse racing theme and is set in North Yorkshire – a place Emma knows all about because she was born here.
This isn't simply a book launch by a first-time author, it's also the start of a new business. Emma is also the publisher, promoter and sales rep all combined. Thanks to her background in sales, she has secures over 1,000 pre-paid sales before the book hits the shelves this week.
"I've read that the average number of sales for a self-published author is 70 copies, so I'm very proud about the 1,000-plus that have already been sold," says Emma. "I've had the printing and so-on to pay for, but it's fair to say that I expect to be in profit within a fortnight of the book going on sale.
"That's not bad, I suppose, when one considers that most businesses take between 12 and 18 months to start breaking even."
She started writing from her home near Easingwold six months after her son Luke, now six, was born.
"When he was five months old I discovered I was pregnant with twins (William and Amara, now four). Quite a shock for somebody who'd always said they never wanted children. It meant that I never went back to my job in sales and – although the children are my number one priority – I needed to do something for me." So, when husband Martin Dobson (Emma is Mrs Dobson, but she wanted to incorporate his Christian name as a thank you for his support) went to bed, she started to put pen to paper.
"I used to write on the dining table, but because our house was open-plan I couldn't get going until poor Martin had gone to bed and the television had been switched off," says Emma, who had been encouraged by her late father to write.
"Sadly, my father died four weeks before the twins were born so he never got to see them. Having the book to work on got me through the tough times. All the emotion surrounding his death and suddenly finding myself with three children under the age of two just seemed to pour out of me into the story. Dad would have been so proud."
Emma's father – farmer and milkman Geoff Hollinrake – preferred family life and his livestock to being out socialising. He bought his daughter a pony and took her to York and Ainsty hunt meets and pony club events. But it was her mother Muriel, now in her 70s and still a regular at York Races, who introduced Emma to the sport of kings.
"Mum's still a real social butterfly," says Emma. "I can remember her first taking me to York Races when I was about 14. I loved the whole atmosphere. The crowd, the pushing towards the finishing line, the champagne corks popping …"
By her own admission Emma was a bit of a "wild child", leaving Easingwold secondary school at the age of 16 with no qualifications.
"I lied about being able to type and got a job as a secretary for an engineering firm in York. I managed not to get the sack, which surprised everybody, and stayed there for about a year. But then, more or less overnight – we decided on the Friday and went on the Sunday – I moved to London with one of the other secretaries.
"Straight away, I got a job temping on the switchboard at the head office of the cosmetics company Este Lauder and life was an absolute ball. It was the boom time of the '80s and we were in the thick of it, falling out of Stringfellow's nightclub nearly every night."
A sales job with Pepsi followed and then she decided to go travelling, spending the summer in Italy and then nearly four years in Greece.
"It was a wonderful carefree time, working in bars by night and spending the days lounging on yachts. But there came a time when I couldn't escape the work ethos my father had drummed into me any longer. I had to come home and pull my socks up."
Emma enrolled at York Technical College and completed an HND in business, going on to do a BSc in equine management at Bishop Burton College.
"I wanted to prove that this person who had left school without a single qualification to their name could apply themselves. After the degree ceremony, I took a job down south as a national sales manager selling corporate training."
She had been to school with Martin and continued to meet him as part of a group of friends whenever she came home. "Nine years ago I attended Martin's brother's wedding as nothing more than a friend. But we've been a couple ever since." Martin started out as a mechanic, but now he has his own garage in Easingwold. "I'll never be an author up there in an ivory tower," says Emma. "I've lived a very real life. Yes, I've had some fun but I've also suffered loss, had the financial pressures of borrowing a lot of money when Martin started the business and, of course, the children."
Her book is an antidote to life's real difficulties in a North Yorkshire market town. Think Dynasty rather than Darrowby (fictional home of the undisputed king of White Rose county authors James Herriot).
Harrogate-born actress Claire King was one of the first to read Emma's manuscript and become a fan. "The characters within the book are very strong," says Claire, best-known for her roles in Emmerdale and Bad Girls. "So much so, I felt as if I recognised them. It is about time our county was depicted in a glamorous light. This novel is a great advert for North Yorkshire."
It opens with the death of the son and heir to an enormous racing stables which sounds not a million miles from Middleham or Malton.
The funeral is the catalyst for change in the lives of two central characters. Julia, a gipsy girl living on an encampment on the outskirts of York, watches the funeral from the pavement and is moved to visit the racecourse where her life is changed forever by a chance meeting with a top jockey called Luca DeMario. In contrast, county socialite Charles Lancaster-Baron – a man obsessed with status, money and material possessions – leaves the same wake feeling even more ruthless.
The racing industry forms the backdrop to this love story. Emma, 36, admits to having met "plenty of Charles Lancaster-Baron-types" over the years. "This book is about people and relationships. Racing is the thread that binds the characters together rather than the main theme."
For all her larger-than-life personality - Emma is rarely seen without a hint of her trademark leopardprint – this is one author whose head isn't in the clouds by keeping control of all aspects of her book.
"When I worked in London there'd always be a bit of teasing about being from Yorkshire," she recalls. "They'd say silly things like 'nowthen lass, where's your whippet?' The glamour in Racy! proves there's more to my beloved county – and me – than that."
Claire King will join Emma Martin for a book signing at Browns
department store in York on December 11 at 6pm. Racy! 17.99 hardback, 8.99 paperback, is available from Amazon. For stockists, visit www.
emma-martin.com
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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