Guest Blog Wednesday! Calling all brides2b, because wedding guru Samantha Birch is on da couch!

MrsHCouch

 

Good morning everyone

Are you a bride2b, or do you know someone who is newly engaged?  Then this guest interview should catch your attention, because on MrsH’s couch this morning is the author of the The High-Street Bride’s Guide’, Samantha Birch!

 

Carmel : Hello Samantha and welcome!  Can you tell us about yourself?

Samantha : I’m an author and freelance magazine writer from the little village of Borrowash in Derbyshire. (As picturesque as that sounds, imagine growing up in a place where the highlight is Safeway and your closest friends are a 45-minute bus ride away.) I’m now living in a tiny flat in Letchworth, Hertfordshire (where the highlight is David’s Bookshop, hooray!) with my amazing husband, after our retro-cinema-meets-literature-themed wedding last year.

C: I’m laughing at the Safeway highlight!  But listen, a village with a supermarket is mahoosive as far as I’m concerned.  In the village I live in, there’s not even a corner shop!  We do have a great pub though.  Natch!

Right, lets start off with a very important question 😉 If your life was to be made into a movie, what genre movie would it be and who would play in the starring roles?

S: I’m sure you get this a lot, but definitely a rom-com, hands down. Darren and I both went to different unis in York, but we never met while we there. In fact, my friend wrote a part for me in her play, which I performed in York and Newcastle, but I couldn’t afford to go to the Edinburgh Fringe with the show, so said friend took over my part. Then one day, a few days before the end of the run, she called me and said she needed me to cover the part because she’d injured her leg. I sold my digital camera to pay for the train fare, zipped up to Edinburgh and within an hour of arriving had met the man who would be playing my character’s date: my future husband! If that’s not a meet-cute, I don’t know what is!

Darren could be played by Mark Wahlberg, because he’s the spitting image of the man. Apparently I look like Chloe Moretz, though, so that could be a bit of an odd on-screen pairing… Maybe we’d be better off being played by Jake Johnson, who reminds me a lot of my husband, and Zooey Deschanel, because they have the best on-screen chemistry ever in New Girl, and she’d make me look like I have way better dress sense than I actually do.

C: I love that story!  You have to write that one day Sam, because it is so cute!  Meant to be and all that romantic jazz!

Right, lets check out your celeb lookielikie…..

Here’s Sam and Chloe!  I can see a resemblance……

Image Image

 

C: Right as we are talking celebs, who is the most famous person you have ever met?

S: Actually met and spoken to: Christopher Timothy from All Creatures Great and Small, or Mike Grady, you know who played Barry in Last of the Summer Wine? I was a child actress and I worked with Mike on Bernard’s Watch and Christopher on Doctors. Although if we’re talking authors, Terry Pratchett. I’ve got a signed copy of Going Postal.

Been in the same room with: Clare Danes or Zac Efron. I went to a press junket for their movie Me and Orson Welles, but I was too star-struck to ask any actual questions!

C: I couldn’t resist, take a look at an adorable Samantha playing ‘Sam’ in Bernards Watch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FisNX8FGQiY

Right, I love getting people to pass on wisdom , so best advice ever given to you?

 

S: When I was a kid, my dad told me that all he could ever ask of me was that I do my best, and that as long as I could look back and say that I’d tried my hardest on something, I could be proud of it. So I always try and do the best I possibly can at the important things, especially my writing.

 

C: Your Dad sounds like a very wise man.  Who inspires you?

 

S: Day-to-day, my parents, my friends and my husband. But if we’re talking other writers, Terry Pratchett, Lewis Carroll, Douglas Adams, J. R. R. Tolkien, J. K. Rowling and Sharon Creech.

 

C: And do you have a celebrity crush? We won’t tell your husband honestly!

 

S: Chris Pine. It’s all about the smile. And Jake Johnson. He reminds me of my husband.

chrisjake

 

C: Give me 3 words to describe your best self and 3 words to describe your worst self.

 

S: My best self: funny, caring, excitable.

My worst self: stressed, impatient, worrier.

 

C: You know if I was to describe my best and worst self, I’d probably pick very similar words!

What are you reading right now? And is it a paper book or ebook?

 

S: I don’t tend to read when I’m writing – I worry that it filters through onto the page – but I’ve just finished Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett. It’s a paperback – I’m old-fashioned like that.

 

C: What was the first book you ever read?

 

S: I have no idea, but as a kid I remember loving The Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar, everything by Beatrix Potter and the Flower Fairies poetry of Cicely Mary Barker.

 

C: My children love the Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar too!  It’s one of the classics isn’t it If you could rewrite the ending of any book, would you?

 

Ultimately I think it’s the writer’s choice, and it’s usually made with good reason, but I definitely preferred the film ending of Starter for Ten to the book, so I’d rework them to match. Um, spoiler alert? In the book I felt like the way Brian was still writing to Alice while he was away with Rebecca suggested he hadn’t really learnt a lot; there he was with Rebecca, this clever, amazing woman who clearly really cared about him, and he was still obsessing over the impossibly pretty girl who used him and slept with his best friend. I felt like I’d gone through the entire book and then he was acting like he’d hardly grown at all, whereas in the film he genuinely seemed to have an epiphany about the people in his life who were worth his time and effort.

 

C:  That’s really interesting.  I’ve not read the book actually, but have seen and enjoyed the movie.

Time for the Quick fire round, pick one of each of the below –

 

S: Beer or cocktails: Cocktails

Jeans or dress/suit: Jeans

Sun or Snow: Snow

Beach or Pool: Pool

Cats or Dogs: Cats

Theatre or Cinema: Cinema

Pink or Green: Pink

Night in or night out: Night in

Paperback or eBook: Paperback

Lobster or steak: Steak

The Walking Dead or Downton Abbey: Er, The Big Bang Theory?

Football or Rugby: Football

Flying Solo or with a gang: With a gang

 

C: Ok I know this is hard to answer for many, but give it your best shot! What is the best compliment anyone could give you?

 

S: Honestly? Okay, don’t judge… Sometimes I daydream about little quotes from imaginary book reviews, comparing my fiction to writers I admire. Y’ know: “As funny as Pratchett and as epic as Tolkien…” But realistically, if I was ever even mentioned in the same sentence as one of my favourite authors I’d probably spend the rest of the day jumping up and down on the bed!

 

C: I love that you are honest about that.  I do the same, continuously day dream about what might happen in the future.

 

C:  Right, lets get down to business, tell us all about your current book!

S: Well, this book is non-fiction, but I still wanted it to have character. It should feel like you’re getting advice on saving money on your wedding from your best friend with the inside track; she’s totally straight with you, and she tells you all the little secrets that no-one else would.

This is actually my first non-fiction though; I’ve been writing fiction since I was a kid. My mum says I picked up a pen at three years old and I’ve been going since then. When I was little I wrote about fairies and Victorian orphans, then in my teens I wrote a lot of romances,  and more recently I’ve reverted to the fairy-tale stuff – my work in progress is a fantasy.

high

 

C: I wish this book had been around a few years ago when I got married.  I would say that it is an essential buy for all brides2B!

Of the characters you’ve created through your fiction writing, which one is your favourite and why so?

S: I can’t say too much, but I’m proudest of the main character in my work in progress. For one thing, he’s a he – I always thought I couldn’t write from the male perspective – and for another, I think he might actually be funny, whereas growing up my writing struggled on the humour side. I feel like he’s really helped me to develop my style.

C: Samantha, can you give our brides2b any tips?

S: Here’s a tip that I love from The High-Street Bride’s Guide – it really worked for us. We’ve got the most gorgeous wedding photos and they cost a third of what the first photographer we spoke to quoted us.

‘We found our photographer via, well, another photographer – she wasn’t willing to bring down her own price, but the girl who’d been her second was striking out on her own. A couple of emails later we’d gone from the £1,600 never-gonna-happen snapper to her £500 breakout star – and because they’d worked together, their styles were super-similar.

‘My top tip: find the pro whose pics you love, and to begin with, negotiate direct. Photographers get their names out there through mag and blog coverage, and they get that by shooting unusual weddings with lots of personal details. Take the time to describe your day and it could help you swing a discount – but be sure to mention other persuasion points, like your wedding being off-season or midweek. The less likely they are to already be or to become booked up, the more moolah you’re likely to save.

‘If that doesn’t work out – and trust me, we were offered cuts of as much as 50% for our winter wedding – don’t be shy about asking for recommendations of other lens-lovers who are more in your price range. Many photographers know others in their industry, or work with a second whose figures are waaaay less fanciful.’

 

Thank you so much Samantha for being so honest and warm and just lovely.  You have also been very generous sharing those wonderful tips and I have a feeling that your book will be flying off the shelves, both virtual and real.

Chat soon everyone,

Carmel

 

The High-Street Bride’s Guide on Facebook

Twitters:

@SamBirchWrite and also

@HighStreetBride for bridal tips

Buy links :

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