Aliya Ali-Afzal is a local author and her debut novel Would I Lie To You? will be published on July 8. Aliya has been thrilled by the early reviews. Sophie Kinsella describes the novel as ‘warm, intelligent and brilliantly wry…keeps up the tension right to the end’ and Cosmopolitan calls it ‘an uplifting and joyous read… a refreshing new voice in commercial fiction.’ The novel has been described as Big Little Lies meets Shopaholic.
Aliya grew up in Wimbledon and has lived there for most of her life, and Wimbledon Village is also the setting for Would I Lie To You? It is the story of a woman called Faiza who has secretly spent her family’s emergency savings fund and when her husband Tom suddenly loses his job, she must replace the money before her discovers the truth.
Aliya only started writing her novel in her late 40s. Although she has been a lifelong bookworm and always enjoyed writing for fun, she never considered becoming an author. She didn’t know any authors in real life and after studying Russian and German at University College London, she was a stay-at-home mother, before becoming a City head-hunter for investments banks. After having her third child she decided to retrain as a career coach and worked with MBAs at London Business School and other international business schools to help people find their dream jobs or a new career. While helping her clients to pursue their career and life goals, some of Aliya’s coaching must have rubbed off on herself too and she finally decided to pursue her own secret, lifelong dream of writing a novel.
Aliya applied for a novel writing course at Curtis Brown Creative and was chosen as one of 15 participants out of over 250 applicants. This was a great confidence boost and for the first time, Aliya thought that perhaps this was something she could actually do. However, despite starting to write, Aliya found it difficult to continue. She was still working full-time, including travelling to Dubai every 4 weeks, her three children were still young and she was also the only carer for her elderly mum who was very unwell and frequently in hospital. Aliya’s life simply did not have the capacity to add writing a novel to the mix and she decided to stop. For three years she didn’t do any writing. But she couldn’t give up on her dream entirely. During this time, even though she wasn’t writing, she stayed connected to her writing group socially and she also took occasional writing courses, or attended talksby authors. She missed writing very much and the idea for her novel would not leave her mind either. Once life was calmer, Aliya went back to her novel and completed it in three years. She also started a part-time MA in Creative writing at Royal Holloway. She was finally ready to commit to making her dream come true.
Writing a novel is only the start of a long process to get published though. Luckily for Aliya, although writing the novel took her a long time, getting published was unexpectedly quick. She was signed up by top literary agentJuliet Mushens within four days of sending in her novel, and a few months later, Aliya’s novel was sold in a multiple publisher auction in a two-book deal in the UK, and as a pre-empt in the USA.
Aliya is now a full-time author, working on her second novel.In June she was invited to speak at Wimbledon BookFest, and has several more author events coming up over the summer.
Aliya attended Putney High School where her English teacher told Aliya when she was 11 that she should be a writer. Aliya has emailed her to let her know that she did take this advice- even if it was 40 years later!
Aliya would love to hear from readers and you can find her on Twitter @AAAiswriting or on Instagram @aliyaaliafzalauthor.
Pre-order her debut novel at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Would-Lie-You-Aliya-Ali-Afzal-ebook/dp/B08HDBHFTZ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?dchild=1&keywords=would+i+lie+to+you&qid=1606825654&s=digital-text&sr=1-3&linkCode=sl1&tag=hozorganicsocial-21&linkId=3eefc00af722683b9f92f31f0c7cc3e9&language=en_GB
You may also enjoy reading https://darlingmagazine.co.uk/women-to-watch/kirsten-and-aiyven-13-and-12-year-old-authors-and-kidpreneurs/
