Tammy Robinson – Heart-Breaker

Tammy Robinson’s emotional stories are heart-warming and heart-breaking in equal measure and will appeal to readers of Jojo Moyes and Nicholas Sparks. Initially indie published, she’s now signed with an international publishing house and is set for world-wide distribution. Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Tammy talks about the personal tragedy she had to overcome to keep writing and tells how living through her characters helped her overcome tough times. Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: The tough road to emotional balance On just keeping on keeping on On being indie published Why cliches are sometimes right The writers she admires most How she got an international publishing deal Where to find Tammy Robinson: Facebook: @TammyRobinsonAuthor Instagram: @TammyRobinsonAuthor  Twitter: @TammyRobinson76 What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Jenny: But now, here’s Tammy  Hello there Tammy and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us. Tammy: Thank you for having me. I’m looking forward to it. Tammy Robinson, heart break fiction author Jenny: Yes, it’s fun to chat to another Kiwi. In an interview that you did on National Radio last year you spoke of a series of personal tragedies tyou had to overcome. Enough to  fell a team of oxen, in my opinion. I’m amazed that you’ve risen so magnificently over the challenges you had and you’ve published all these books. Can you tell us if there was a catalyst that took you from that position of being emotionally low to the point where you could reach out and start writing A tide of tragedy Tammy: Yes, for sure. I actually I wrote my first book before it all started to happen. My husband and I got married in 2007 and then about three years later or so we thought ‘well it’s time to start a family. We’ll have a baby.’ So we got pregnant and then we lost that baby. And then it just kept happening. We had no problems getting pregnant but staying pregnant was a bit of an issue. My body never let me go naturally. I always had to have hospital intervention to assist with getting my body back to normal. That was quite hard. So I think it was the third one, we actually saw the baby’s heartbeat at about eight and a half or nine weeks we had a scan and we saw the heartbeat and we thought ‘yes, we’ve got at this time.’ And then we went along for the twelve week scan and took my parents. I’ll never forget. She put the sensor on my tummy and then she said ‘I need to get someone else’ and she left the room and straight away we knew something’s wrong. Resilience sorely tested She came back with the other person and they had a look and they said ‘We’re really sorry but the baby passed away at about nine and a half weeks. So you’ll need to go again to hospital to have a medication to bring on labor.’ It hadn’t worked for me in the past but this time a few hours later it started working. I started losing the baby but this time I hemorrhaged and wouldn’t stop bleeding. It was the middle of the night and the nurse couldn’t get hold of a doctor and I was bleeding everywhere and she was getting quite worried and so in the end she went over everyone’s head and gave me the injection to stop the bleeding – which worked. I still had to go and have surgery as well and clear out the uterus and so I handled that. And then I hit a bit of a low point. It was really a time  of soul searching. I was looking for spiritual strength. I’m not a religious person, but that’s when I started to look into a few things and seek something, because I just couldn’t understand why this keep happening to us. A time of soul searching We went to stay at my husband’s parents up in the Coromandel for a couple of days to get away from it, and came back and our house had been completely burgled and trashed. They’d just demolished everything. So again it was like ‘why does this keep happening?’  I’d started a book. Charlie and Pearl, So I carried on with it and while I was writing, not long after that, two of our closest friends were diagnosed with bowel cancer. My husband’s friend died within about six months. And then Kathryn, who had been a huge support for me through all the miscarriages and everything, she was fighting actually for a long time. Actually, I shouldn’t say fighting, because it’s not a battle, but she was doing her best to come through this. And I got pregnant again after about a year. I got pregnant and this one stuck. And just after my daughter Holly was born Kathryn passed away, leaving her eight year old daughter behind. Charlie and Pearl – Tammy Robinson Charlie and Pearl highlight And so that was pretty devastating and in the meantime I had finished my first book, Charlie and Pearl and I had sent it off to  – I think there was two or three New Zealand publishers at the time. So I sent it off. Back in those days it was ‘snail mail submissions.’ You printed off your first three chapters and a letter and you put a stamped self-addressed envelope in with it. And then it got rejected. So it had just been sitting in a drawer and then I got busy with Holly and then in April 2013 my mother passed away. She was only 58 and Holly was only five months old. I was texting her. She was at home. We finished our texting and about  20 or 30 minutes after, my sister got home and found our Mum collapsed. Cliches sometimes are right Well the final coroner’s report they guessed she had like a fatal arrhythmia like your heart just simply stopped. There was no trauma. But they think she just skipped and stopped and so we lost her. And that was pretty much the end of my world at that point. But I had a baby so I had to keep going and it made me think the cliches are right. It made me realize none of us know how long we’ve got. We can go at any point in time. The abruptness of having her here one minute.larger than life and texting me, and then being completely gone the next was hard to take. Completely gone and no chance of a good bye or to tell her all the things that you always think you’ll have time to say. Yes, so that just spurred me on to think – cause she had always been the biggest believer in my writing – so I thought ‘I’m going to do this for her.’ Dusting it off So that’s when I got Charlie and Pearl, I pulled the manuscript out of the drawer and dusted it off . My husband – who’d worked in graphic design – made a cover and I got some close friends to edit it for me and then I uploaded it onto Kindle. I self published my first book.  And then it went from there. I wrote another one very quickly afterwards. That was kind of therapy for me. I got a lot of the emotions from losing my mother into that book, When the Stars Collide. So then I started and I didn’t stop. I wrote six books over the next four years or so and just kept going. Tammy Robinson – When Stars Collide Jenny: So you’ve now published nine books that have been compared to publishing household names like Jojo Moyes and Nicholas Sparks. The books take readers on an emotional journey. They’ve got a romance underlying them but they are strongly laced with loss and tragedy. I was struck by a review from a male reader who said ‘heart breaking and heart warming in equal measure. He went on to say: ‘As long as you don’t mind having your heart squeezed at the pain the characters go through, you’ll love this book.’ So how do your readers do respond? You set up some hard situations, don’t you? ‘Life isn’t fair’ head space Tammy: I do yes, quite unintentionally sometimes. It just seems to work out that way. They’re not traditional romance in that there’s not always a ‘Happy Ever After.’ So as far as I understand it, to classify it as a romance genre there’s a happy ever after ending. And my books don’t always have that. So I think because of what I was going through with the babies and Kathryn and then my Mum and all that, I was in this head space of ‘life isn’t fair.’ You know? It doesn’t always work out? That came through in my writing quite a lot. So I was very realistic with the story lines because sometimes people get sick and they do die. So Yes. It’s definitely what I’ve put in all my writing, is that realism. I’ve tried to give some happy parts as well, as I’ve gone on. And there’s a lot  of love and happiness, and humor in my books as well. But yes, there is usually an underlying darkness or some kind of thing that the character has to go through. The uplift is always there Jenny: Yeah but there is also something uplifting to it, as well, isn’t there? Tammy: Definitely. Yes. I will try and always have an uplift somewhere, some hope – at the end there is always hope. I’ve had some amazing response from readers, too. Like the review that you were talking about. that came from a man named Mark and he’s in America and he reached out to me after he read Charlie and Pearl. He loved it. We’re still in touch now as Facebook friends and Instagram friends and we Message occasionally. He writes as well. I’ve met some wonderful people through writing – reviews  from Spain and all over the world. Big life changes under way Jenny: Yes, it’s fantastic. And while you were doing these books you also were making some huge changes in your life. You went on to have three children and your husband relocated his job and you had big changes there. I wondered if the writing actually helped to keep you sane – if it helped you through the tough stuff? Tammy: You know you are right, it does keep me sane. Writing is definitely my ‘happy place.’ It is. If I can’t write for too long I can get a bit grumpy and a little bit – well let’s say I’m not the best person that I can be or the best Mum I can be. I miss writing. If I can’t write – well it’s my happy place. I always have the stories in my head and the characters in my head. I need that time to sit down and play with them and get it out and do those sorts of things. The way we moved – it all happened very quickly. My husband had been doing an office job for 17 years and he’d always been interested in farming. But it was taking that leap and then we found out his job was potentially going to be outsourced to the Philippines. Settling in on the farm And so this job came up in Otorohanga, a little little town in the Waikato about hour and half away from where we were in a big city. And yes he went for it. We sold our house and we moved here all within about three or four weeks. It was very quick, but it’s been good. Two years we’ve been here now, and settling in. Our oldest Holly is now at school. It was the right time to do it. We were pushed into it, but probably that was what my husband needed. He works on a dairy farm, for some wonderful people down the road. He goes off on his bike in the morning, and the kids wave and then they’re here when he comes back at night. Jenny: Did you grow up on a farm yourself or were you a city girl? Tammy: I grew up in the city. Not a huge city. I’d say more of a town because I don’t really do cities either. Cities drive me nuts, but I wasn’t a country girl. Leaving it to reader imagination Jenny: All of your books are set in New Zealand but you keep the details vague, so I’m not sure if your readers even necessarily know they are in New Zealand. You’ve also mentioned that you deliberately never specify ages or some details of appearance, that kind of thing, because you like your readers to be able to fill in the picture in their own minds. I that how it goes? Tammy: Yes. Absolutely yes. With the first six books that I self-published. Yes. I never specify locations, and I don’t give place names or country names. And again, yes, with the characters I never mentioned ages. I would be very vague about appearance. I might mention  an eye color or hair color. Maybe. But I would never be specific and I don’t know if I did it on purpose from the start but then that’s just the way it went through all my books and I think it did help because people can pick it up in any country and it’s about a beach and they are picturing a beach from their local place. Wide age group appeal Because we all do picture characters differently in our heads, when we’re reading books and I think if I’m vague about the descriptions then people quite happily do their own picturing. It’s quite interesting you know, people compare them to celebrities or something and I think ‘oh, can you give me a break!’ But then when I got the publisher, they wanted me to give the characters ages and more of a description. So I’ve started to do that now. But as I said, I had women of all ages – from early teens right through to 50s and 60s – and men – all reading and loving the books and I think the fact that there was no age mentioned they were timeless. International publishing deal Jenny: Yes. Now you’ve mentioned about the publisher and there’s been a lot of very positive publicity for you because you’ve been taken up by an international publisher and you’re now having your books published in a lot of different countries. You’ve got a two book deal?  The most recent one was Photos Of You which we’ll get onto in a moment, but how did you get noticed in this way and where will you be published? Tammy: Right. Yes. So I think it was 2016 or maybe the end of 2015. I got that fire in me again, to see if I could go a little bit further. I was happy self publishing I wasn’t making a great deal of money or anything like that from it. It was more about the reviews, but I’ve had that dream in my head since I was a little girl to see my books in bookshops, and it’s hard from New Zealand to approach agents overseas. Step One: Find an agent We are at a huge disadvantage being away from it all, but it was an agent called Vicki Marsden who I’d heard about both Greg Fowler who’s an author in Wellington and Michelle Vernal. They both recommended her and she worked for a company that was dual in New Zealand and the US.. So I approached her with a book that I had just finished at the time called The Insignificance of You. She read that and she requested Charlie and Pearl  and Lessons from Ducks. And she read those and she liked them. She liked my writing, she liked the books. She wasn’t taking on anybody at that point because she was off to the UK for their  summer. So she was sitting over there for about four months or so for work, approaching publishers and things. She said she’d keep me in mind, but she didn’t sign me  And in the meantime I kept writing the next one which was Differently Normal.  So I just kept working on that. Lessons From Ducks – Tammy Robinson Nervous waiting When I finished it and sent it to her and not long after that she said she had some interest. She signed me. She loved that book. So she decided to sign me officially and I got onto her books and then not long after that she approached the right publisher which was Piatkus, which is an imprint of Little, Brown in the UK. So yes, they loved it. And then we had a very nervous period of time where it’s going to acquisitions meetings, you know. You’re just waiting. There’s a lot of waiting and positive feedback but still it’s got to get across the line and  you try not to get your hopes up, but you’re also hopeful and then I think it was one morning I woke up to a text from Vicki at 6:00 a.m. saying ‘check your e-mail’ and I opened my email and I had a two book offer. So that was good. A big US deal included And then I’ve gone on to sell in Slovakia and Czech and Poland and it’s coming out in Germany in December and also in the UK obviously, in Australia, New Zealand and then also Photos of You is being picked up by a huge US publisher. So it’s coming out February next year in the US which is quite an improvement. It’s very hard to get into the US market. Jenny: So that is wonderful. So let’s talk a little bit about Photos of You. It’s the story of a young woman who was diagnosed with a terminal illness and whose main bucket list item is that she’d like to have a wedding instead of a funeral. And right at the start of the book she’s planning this wedding without even having any groom in mind, which you know for a start is such a poignant idea –  half funny and half sad. We’ve said you manage to lace dark stories with humor. So tell us where did the idea for that story come from? An unusual ‘bucket list’ dream Tammy: So for Photos of You, because they wanted to sign me for a two book contract, and at that point I had Differently Normal. I had to come up with a second idea pretty quickly, and my agent sent me a link to an online story which was mostly just photos. It was about this beautiful young Japanese woman who was terminally ill and she just wanted to have the big fashion shoot. So it was all her. She did it.  She had her hair and makeup done and she was wearing all these beautiful dresses and it was just a spectacular photo shoot. It just got me thinking. Rather than just shoot a fashion spread, the whole wedding idea came to me. What if that’s what you dreaming of your whole life? This big wedding day and something like that happens. So it came from that. I wrote three or four paragraphs of a blurb idea and they took it. And then of course I had to turn it into a book, which I did. Differently Normal Jenny: So that brings us to a little bit of an aside and that is your writing style. It’s  to just start with an idea and go for it, isn’t it? Tammy: Yes. A character or a scene. Charlie and Pearl came to me as  part of a dream. I remember having a dream and I couldn’t remember the whole dream but I remembered there was a woman that had fallen asleep in a bookshop and a guy had found her and for him it was love at first sight said Charlie and Pearl came from that. The rest of them all come from just a little something that I see or hear or think of. Jenny: And so to Differently Normal.  You have Maddy, a full time carer for her autistic sister Bee, and she’s very committed to her sister and supporting her family. She has no time or thoughts of falling in love but of course life intervenes. And I understand that one was partly sparked off by another friendship that you developed with one of your readers. Friendship across the world Tammy Robinson – Differently Normal Tammy: Yes, for Differently Normal, I had Maddy, that character was in my head first,  she was going to be this strong hugely caring character..  I had read something about young carers which I didn’t know a lot about before that. And it’s heartbreaking the number of people that care for someone and don’t have a lot of time for their own lives. Yes. So I had this character Maddy in my head. So she had a sister and I’ve got a friend in the UK, Lorraine and Kevin Tippany. Lorraine actually contacted me when Charlie and Pearl came out. She loved Charlie and Pearl and she had spent some time in New Zealand as a youngster, so she knew the Kiwi parts of the book.  I think it was five or six years, ago, and we Message one another almost daily still. Morning and night. Yes. She’s become like a sort of a surrogate aunt for me. Not Mum, but an aunt. She’s been there for me through  like my labors and pregnancies and when Mum died and all that sort of thing. Incredible parent carers So her daughter Rachel has just turned 30 and she is autistic and she has cerebral palsy and epilepsy and it’s just incredible. Lorraine and Kevin they’re approaching their 60’s. Rachel is completely dependent on them. They have all these worries about what’s going to happen to her when they eventually go and all that sort of stuff. She can’t do anything for herself. They’re incredible, so selfless. They’ve given their lives to their daughter. But you know not all parents do that.  Everything revolves around her.  So I asked them if it would be okay if I based the character of Bee on Rachel. And they said yes, they were really happy with that. So that’s what happened. Jenny: And I guess you sent her an advance copy of the book. Brutally honest feedback Tammy: She reads all my books as I write them. She is my number one Beta Reader. . She gives me feedback, and she’s brutally honest. If she doesn’t like something, she’ll say so and occasionally we’ll fall out and then I’ll get over it. She’s been a wonderful friend. Jenny: So yes, you can be sure that the parts of the book that apply to that situation are pretty true to life. Tammy: Very much so. So I would have a scene in my head  and I would say to her ‘okay we’re gonna put Bee or Rachel into this situation, what would she say, how would she react? And she would tell me and then I would write the scene. Jenny: Finding an international publisher, has that changed your writing life and what does it mean for you long term, do you think? Adjusting to the new order Tammy: Yes that has changed my writing quite a bit. Before I would just have an idea and I would write the whole book and then I would either self publish it or send it to Vicki. So now, they want to know they’re going to love the whole idea and the whole story before you write it?  I’ve had a year of coming up with ideas and coming up with sample chapters and they love them or they want some changes and it’s all about getting it across the line and getting it through the acquisitions process. It’s hugely frustrating for me, because I’m just used to writing it and to not be able to do that is a little bit hard. It’s hard, but hopefully we’re close now to getting it across and then I’ll be able to just actually write the books which is what I need to do here. Dream jobs and cruises Jenny: You might end up being a hybrid author doing both. I mean with your experience you might still be able to use some of those ideas and go back to them. I know a lot of writers find that’s a very good way to go, to have both things happening if they can. Tammy: And it’s amazing some of the ones that do. The big name ones. I’m in an amazing group of Facebook and some of these huge authors I’ve read all my life and looked up to – some a lot of them are hybrids and they had the same struggles. Jenny: Yes, that’s right. Moving away from discussing the specific books to your wider career. Before you settled on your New Zealand farm you spent quite a few years working overseas in what sound like dream jobs to outsiders like on cruise ships and in the Whitsundays. Tell us about those years and how have they influenced you as a writer. Are there things from those years that appear in your books? High performing and vulnerable Tammy: Oh absolutely yes. When I was 17 or 18 in my final year of high school I got sick as well. I got depression and bulimia and then I had that ongoing for about the next twelve years so a lot of those times when I was overseas and doing all those dream jobs and things I was actually quite ill as well. Jenny: That sounds like a fairly high performing vulnerable person if you could describe it that way. Tammy: Yes and no. At times I was, but there was always a potential for problems. There was a lot of self harming that was hidden, I overdosed on my second cruise ship, I was medically disembarked after an overdose.  But I had always been fascinated with large ships and shipwrecks. Off to Acapulco So yes a job came up with Princess Cruises. I went and had an interview in Auckland and I got a phone call two weeks later saying ‘you’re off to Mexico, you’re off to Acapulco, get on a plane’ and I was I think 20 or 21. Very young. I look back now and I don’t know how my mother ever let me get on a plane to Mexico at that age and the way I was. But she did because she knew it was something that I’d always wanted to do. So you know, I joined the ships and we went to the Caribbean and Alaska and the Mediterranean and all those places. And it was wonderful. And then I was back in New Zealand because my grandmother was ill and I was due to go back on a cruise ship when I read an article about Club Med.  So I applied for that and got the job on Lindeman Island in the Whitsundays.  Cabin fever at Club Med I went over there for about three or four years. Normally what happens is you go to Club Med as a GO ( Gentil Organiseur) and you spend six months in one place and then you get transferred to other resorts around the world. But because I joined as a receptionist but then I was quickly promoted to an HR. assistant and then a HR manager and they localized all the HR. manager jobs, I got stuck on the island. Basically I wasn’t going to be able to transfer anywhere else and after about three and a half years on this island where there’s nothing else but the resort I got a bit of cabin fever. So I ended up coming back home and I was due to go back on another cruise ship when I met my husband. I was   nearly 30 and I thought ‘I’ll see what happens. I’ll stay and see what happens.’ And he proposed after about two months and we bought a house after four, and we’re still together 14 years later. Tammy as reader Jenny: So turning to Tammy as reader you know this is called The Joys of Binge Reading and it’s partly predicated around the idea that people like to discover one author and these days and then read everything in their backlist. Are you a keen reader  if so who do you like to read? Tammy: Yes. No I’ve been reader all my life, since I was a little girl. I was always the girl with her head buried in a book. On family occasions or anything like that. I got told off in class. ‘Get your nose out of the book.’  If I was walking I had my nose in a book.  And it’s quite funny because Holly my daughter is just the same. We’ve just been to a funeral and at the wake she got my husband to go to the car and get a book out so she could sit at a table and read a book and I was looking at her thinking ‘oh it’s just like me’ and it was really sweet. Some favourite books And she loves to write as well. Yes I’m an avid reader of a lot of authors. When I go into a shop I’m not always looking for a particular author. I do get drawn to covers but mostly I go for things are a bit quirky or character driven. One author  I’ve always loved is Terry Pratchett since I was a teenager and quite conveniently his books always came out in November which is my birthday. So I always knew I was going to get his new book for my birthday. I’ve still got all his books  – I’ve got a lot of boxes of books out in the garage since the move. I’ve only got one big shelf inside which is my favorites and the rest are unfortunately go in containers. Best tips At the moment I’m reading The First Time I Saw You which is by Emma Cooper and that’s an amazing one that’s coming out soon. And I’ve got the latest David Nicholls. I love David Nicholls. His new one, Sweet Sorrow is coming out soon –  I’ve got that.  And I just finished The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary. I always love discovering new authors. Jenny: You’ve probably now at the stage when you’re asked to write cover lines for other authors. Tammy: Yes My first time is For The First Time I Saw You. That’s quite exciting. It’s a lot of pressure, but it’s great. You’ve got to get it right because it’s going to be right there on the cover. Jenny: Lovely. Is there one thing you’ve done in your writing career more than any other that you would create it with your success? The secret of Tammy’s success Tammy: I would just say never giving up. I know there are authors who are so dead set on the traditional route they can’t see it any other way. Once I had a Kindle and not a Mum I thought ‘No no I’m going to do this, I can do this myself.’ And I did and that was it. I just didn’t let it stop me. The fact that I couldn’t get that traditional deal and even if I had, even still if I still didn’t have that traditional deal, I would still be churning out books and self publishing for the rest of my life because it’s just what I love doing. I love to write and I have to write. And that’s just the way it is really. So yes it’s good. It’s not giving up and it’s not letting external things take that joy away from me. I channel it daily stuff into my writing. Making time for writing Jenny: How do you make time with the family life? Tammy: Oh yes – well writing it’s impossible now (laughs) The more kids I’ve had. the  harder it is! When we were in Rotorua I could write every weekend when my husband was not at work. Now that he’s farming and he gets one weekend off a fortnight and when it’s calfing he doesn’t get any weekends off, so  it’s snatched moments, really at the moment. Holly’s at school and Willow is going to start school in July. Leo, he’ll be three in August, so potentially he’ll be looking at kindergarten next year and then I might actually get some days to write. I’m looking forward to it, I won’t know myself. I’ve never had days where I can just sit down and write. It’s always had to be like ‘Okay you got an hour, go.’ Future projects But bonus of it is because I’ve had so much time with it in my head, usually if I can if I get a couple of hours like that then I can bang out two three four thousand words, because it’s there. Yes. So at the moment it’s hard, but I know that it’s just a temporary thing. And as time goes on it’s going to get easier. Jenny: Yes. So what are you working on at the moment? What are your projects for say the next twelve months? Tammy: I’ve got two on the go. The first one is called Back To You. And again it’s got that hardship element, but it’s uplifting, it’s very uplifting. It’s about a young woman Zoe, who’s a teacher. She’s got a great life in the city. She meets this wonderful man, Finn. They meet on New Year’s Eve and they have this incredible night in the city walking, getting to know each other. And then they had a few weeks together as well. What’s coming next But then he’s off overseas for five or six months for a fundraising hike to raise funds for a cancer hospice because he lost his sister, years and years and years ago when she was little, and she had cancer. So they have three or four weeks together and then he’s heading off. But they decide they’re going to keep in touch they’re going to Skype and they going to email and pick up when he gets back. But while he’s away she has an accident and it’s a life changing accident and she’s forced to go back to her parent’s house at a coastal settlement four hours away. She struggles to accept that everything’s changed, that she’s lost that life that she had, so she can’t actually bring it herself to tell Finn. She maintains the pretense through emails and things for a few months until he’s due to come back. The story unfolding And then she completely cuts off all contact with him. So it’s all about her learning that just because her life is different, it’s not over. She has to get to that place herself. There’s this wonderful character, a woman who swims in the sea everyday come rain or shine, winter or summer and they’re going to meet. And the older woman is going to help Zoe learn to live again. And so in the meantime Finn’s back and he’s  been trying to find her but he can’t and it’ll be about how she needs to get better before she can find her way back to him, And then the second one is something completely different. Something I’ve never done before, which is a Christmas book. So yes, it’s a really quirky sort of character, a wonderful character, a young widower Noel, and a woman Harriet. It’s going be set in a European winter with snow . .  here in NZ that’s what we always dream of and think about. So I want to write about a winter there. A Christmas story Jenny: So that will be Christmas 2020? Tammy: Yes I guess. . . When books come out play a huge role in this success. I found that with the last two books.  When they need to bring them out is important. To give them their best chance. Jenny: Well that’s interesting. Tammy: Yes. Differently Normal. They brought that out at the end of January in New Zealand and so it was right at the end of summer holidays, right at the end of Christmas. Nobody’s got any money and all the kids are going back to schools they’ve got all the costs of stationery and uniforms. And then Photos of You they brought out right at the start of the holidays and you had  people going on holiday, looking for the beach read and all the Christmas presents and all that and the difference between how they sell was just considerable. Really amazing. Where to find Tammy online Jenny: That’s terrific. So it’s obvious that you do enjoy interacting with your readers because we’ve already heard of two very close relationships that you’ve developed through your books. Do you interact with them online? And how can they find you? Where can they find you? Tammy: Yes, absolutely. I get a lot of messages through Facebook and Instagram. So on Facebook I’m under @TammyRobinsonAuthor and I love getting posted messages and on Instagram. Again I’m @TammyRobinson Author. It’s quite neat. I’m getting a lot of messages and tags from Polish people through Instagram. Yes it’s really neat. And you know with my book Photos Of You, they take all these amazing photos with my book and all these incredibly sort of staged things, so I do get a lot of messages from Instagram and Facebook. Social media contacts I am on Twitter at @Tammy Robinson76 but I don’t really interact a lot because I don’t understand Twitter, excuse me, to be honest. It seems scary so yes, I main ones would be Facebook and Instagram. Jenny: I’m a bit like you, I don’t feel I understand Twitter. Somebody described it to me as like a virtual cocktail party. Maybe that’s why I don’t quite know how to do it because I’ve hardly ever go to a cocktail parties! Anyway Tammy  Wonderful to talk,  Thank you so much for your time and all the very best with your new projects. Tammy: Thank you so much for having me.. If you enjoyed Tammy’s emotional stories you might like Kate Hewitt’s Intensely Emotional Reads. Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with. Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]