Siân grew up in the Hills of Perth, and her passion for storytelling began at a young age. She now lives by the scenic coast of Western Australia with her husband and two sons, where she is currently writing the Cruise Control novels, a rock band romance series inspired by her love for music-makers and their lives behind the fame.

The Cruise Control novels started when she did NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). The first book in the series sat at a word count of 50,950 for 7 years. In 2018, she began writing again after a close friend begged her to finish it so she could find out how it ended.

From there, she went on to write the sequel, The Wedding and then, The Baby. She is also writing four companion hero novels, as well as a Young Adult series about the band when they first met.

The third instalment in the Cruise Control series, The Baby, comes out today, so I caught up with Siân to find out more about her writing process, and the woman behind the band!

How, where, and when do you write?

I write exclusively electronically. A friend recently convinced me to switch to Google Docs, and it’s been life-changing, since they can hang out in the doc with me and we can make comments, etc.

There’s nothing more terrifying than writing with someone literally watching as you type, though!

Do you set yourself a word goal every day/week?

In months like NaNoWriMo, yes, but generally, no. I did decide to write Dreams (an electrifying paranormal romance) in a month, and ended up writing 55k words in two weeks.

Have you ever suffered from writers’ block? Have you got any tips for overcoming it?

Yes, I have. It usually happens when I know that I’m writing the story “wrong”. As an example, I struggled really hard to finish The Baby. I reached a point where the book could go one of two ways… and I chose the wrong way. That was around the five week mark. It took me eight more weeks to finish it, it was a real struggle.

When the advance readers read it, they all gave the same feedback and I knew that I needed to go back and rewrite it from that point, but take the other course of action. I ended up with a much better book because of it.

So, I think my advice would be to just keep writing through the writer’s block. It doesn’t matter if what you write is terrible, because you can always change it.

Can you describe The Baby using three emojis?

???

Without giving too much away, which scenes were your favourite and least favourite to write?

There’s a scene in the book where they record a song, it’s hands down one of the most beautiful things I’ve written and I wish that song existed.

Least favourite is… a major spoiler, but it’s one where Lita is probably the most upset that she is in the whole book. Equal to the one above, I think it might be the most devastating things I’ve ever written… and that’s saying a lot to anyone who’s read The Wedding!

Are you working on anything new at the moment – and if so, can you give us a sneak peek? What was the last line that you wrote?

As of today, I’m working on Gabriel’s Album, again! It’s the companion book to The Album, and is the story told from Gabriel’s point of view. I’m actually doing a cover reveal on all of my social media channels this week.

The last thing I wrote, though, was the special one-shot for people who subscribe to my newsletter after reading The Baby, and the last line was:

“So much for a fun day out with the family, I guess.”

What are you reading at the moment?

I literally got All or Nothing by Missy Johnson last week when it was released. She’s an awesome Australian author, and her books are hilarious. I highly recommend her!

Which fictional character would you most like to meet? What would you say to them/want them to say to you?

Not even gonna lie, Sebastian Fox, and, “I love you”… we’ll have to pretend Lita doesn’t exist 😛

What is a book that everyone seems to love but you never got on with?

The Book Thief. I tried to read it several times, and listen to the audiobook, but I just couldn’t get into it. All of my friends and family were raving about it.

How do you take your tea/coffee?

I generally drink tisanes (basically a fancy way of saying fruit tea), and they’re steeped for five minutes in boiling water and you don’t add milk, but sometimes I add something called Turkish Apple from T2, which is an apple flavoured sugar.

What is your favourite time of day?

The time when everyone else is asleep, and I can do my writing.

How do you like to relax when you’re not writing?

Mostly, playing with my boys. They’re at a really fun age and have recently discovered Uno… but not how to win or lose gracefully yet, which is less fun!

Other than that, watching Netflix, probably. I recently became obsessed with Julie and the Phantoms and have watched it three times since last week (in my defence, it’s short!).

The Baby is available to download from Amazon from November 18th 2020. For updates on all her future works, you can follow Siân on Instagram @sianceinwen, and to receive exclusive content from the author, sign up to her mailing list at https://cruisecontrolnovels.com/.