This week I am thrilled to be interviewing author Vicky Peplow. Vicky will be sharing with us details of her writing life, telling us all about her new book ‘Between Life And Death: A Book of Short Stories‘, which was released on 1st July 2021 and answering a few fun questions too. This post contains affiliate links.

Hi, my name is Vicky Peplow. I’m 43 years old, and I live in Virginia, USA. I’m originally from the North-East of England and a coal mining village called Ryhope. I moved to Virginia nearly nine years ago to be with my better half, Lorie.

I have been an independent author for four years now, and I have released four books so far, with plenty more to come. I’ve also helped multiple other authors release their books by helping them with editing, formatting, and designing their book covers.

To be honest, no, I didn’t. I didn’t start writing until a couple of years ago. As a kid, I was too busy outside, running around and climbing trees.

A British children’s author called Terry Deary. I loved his books, especially the ones he wrote where you decided how the story would go.

I’ve always had a fascination with serial killers and how their minds worked. I had an idea in my head for quite some time but never had the chance to write it until maybe four or five years ago where I included where I’m originally from and the serial killer together.

Definitely a punster. I like to see where the story will go when I let it come out freely without being planned.

I generally check emails first thing in the morning after feeding our pets, check my social media, and then get to work for maybe eight or nine hours, take breaks now and then, and do some housework and let our dachshund out to do his business. If I’m doing editing, then I usually do 10-12 hour days.

Where Vicky Peplow Writes

Being able to let my mind and imagination run free and create a story from just my mind. Also, enjoy reading other author’s books and gain more inspiration from them.

A lot of the stories in this book are from personal experience and such things as PTSD. I contacted some personal friends who have PTSD and Facebook groups that help people get through the hardships. Also, some of the short stories are made up, so they didn’t need much research.

I actually found rough drafts of each story on my laptop. I just needed to clean them up and add a little more to them to round them up. So, it was only two months, give or take, a couple of days for this book.

I actually write in a couple of genres such as historical, paranormal, children’s, and now short stories. However, I like to try out something new when I can, and this was the perfect opportunity.

I have several different lead characters in this book, with it being a short story book. However, a lot of the names just came to me, and others are names of friends.

Each character within the book is going through their own hardships. First, we have a midwife who delivers a baby in a complicated delivery, then a couple who move from the big city to the country but get more than they bargained for from the other side of life. Then you have a soldier who comes home after being shot and has PTSD and thinks that he will live the rest of his life alone until he meets someone who has the same amount of trauma but from different life events. Plus many more.

It was a sense of accomplishment, but I knew that there was still the editing round to go before it was finished and published.

Mine is quite simple, and my dad used to say it to me all the time and write in every birthday card or Christmas card. “Keep your chin up.” Meaning, even if something gets you down, hold your head up and carry on.

Yes, we have two pets, well, four if you count the two outside cats we feed. We have Sir Milo, our eight-year-old dachshund, and twenty-two-year-old cat, Whiskers, whom we nickname Queenie as she is a little diva. Our outside cats are called PJ and Puss-Puss. They stay around our back porch and know when you are coming out to feed them.

*Sadly Whiskers, aka Queenie died this week.

Wow! I have a lot on my reading list at the moment. I tend to read at night before I go to sleep. It tends to calm me down. At the moment, I’m reading The Weight of the Soul by Shani Struthers. She is one of my favorite authors, and lucky to call her a friend.

Oh, good question. I would have to choose the first story in my book and on the Delivery Suite. A bit of a disclosure. I worked on this actual Delivery Suite before I moved to Virginia.

I don’t know if this counts but Fantasia from The Neverending Story. It was my favorite film when I grew up, and I always wanted to ride on Falkor.

“Move your feet, lose your seat.”

I would like to say a big thank you to Vicky Peplow for sharing with us details of her writing life and for a wonderful interview.

Share your thoughts on our interview with Vicky Peplow in the comment section below!