Cally Taylor

Last updated

Cally Taylor, also known as C.L. Taylor, is an English Sunday Times bestselling crime author. As Cally Taylor she wrote romantic comedies published by Orion Publishing Group and as C.L. Taylor, she publishes psychological thrillers through HarperCollins. On 16 July 2024 she was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Northumbria in Newcastle-on-Tyne [1]

Contents

Biography

Taylor was born in Worcester and obtained her degree in Psychology from the University of Northumbria in Newcastle-on-Tyne. After graduating, she moved to London for two years and then spent 13 years in Brighton, where she began to write. She worked as a graphic designer, web developer, instructional designer. She now lives in Bristol, with her partner and their son, and writes full-time.

Work

Taylor first began writing short stories in 2005. In 2006, she won two short story competitions, the Helen Mullin Awards and the Bank Street Writers competition, and was also runner-up in the Woman's Own short story competition. She has had numerous stories published in women's magazines and newspapers including the Sunday People [2] and the Sunday Express. [3]

Taylor's debut novel, Heaven Can Wait, won the Pink Thong Award for Best Debut in the Chicklit Club 2009 awards and was the first book ever to score ten out of ten in the club's rating system. [4]

Her second novel, Home For Christmas, was made into a film by JumpStart Productions, directed by Jamie Patterson, and starring Lucy Griffiths, April Pearson, Karl Davies, Derren Nesbitt, Amanda Piery and Shirley Jaffe [5]

Her first psychological thriller, The Accident, sold over 150,000 copies in the UK alone and reached number 3 in the Amazon UK Kindle Chart. [6] The BookSeller magazine named The Accident 'One of the Top Ten Bestselling Debuts of 2014'.

The Lie, ranked at number 5 in the Sunday Times Bestseller charts in the first full week of publication [7] and remained in the top 20 for five weeks. It also hit the number one spots on Amazon.co.uk Kindle, Kobo, Google Books, iBooks and Sainsbury ebooks and took the number 2 spot below The Girl On The Train [8] in The Bookseller Official E-Book Sales Ranking for May 2015. [9] The Lie was shortlisted for two Dead Good Books Reader Awards in 2015: Most Recommended Read [10] and Most Exotic Location. [11] The Lie has been optioned for TV by The Forge. [12]

The Missing, was ranked at number 6 in the Sunday Times bestseller chart. [13] and sold over 100,000 paperbacks within a year of publication. [14]

The Escape, went to number 2 in the Sunday Times bestseller chart [15] and won the Dead Good Books Hidden Depths Award for Most Unreliable Narrator [16]

The Fear, reached number 6 in the Sunday Times bestseller chart [17]

Sleep, her first hardback, hit number 4 in the Sunday Times original fiction chart [18] and was selected as a Richard and Judy Book Club pick. [19] In July 2019, Cally appeared on the Sara Cox show on ITV alongside actor Ross Kemp and the Kaiser Chiefs' frontman Ricky Wilson. [20]

Taylor's novels have been published in the UK and US and translated into over twenty-five languages including Chinese, Russian, Hungarian, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Taiwanese, French, Italian, Polish, Indonesian, Croatian, Norwegian, and Czech. [21]

Taylor is represented by Madeleine Milburn, formerly of Darley Anderson Literary, TV and Film Agency, and now head of Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV and Film Agency.

Bibliography

Romantic comedies

Psychological thrillers

Young adult thrillers

Short Story Collections

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine Chidgey</span> New Zealand writer

Catherine Chidgey is a New Zealand novelist, short-story writer and university lecturer. She has published eight novels. Her honours include the inaugural Prize in Modern Letters; the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship to Menton, France; Best First Book at both the New Zealand Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize ; the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards on two occasions; and the Janet Frame Fiction Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jojo Moyes</span> English novelist and journalist

Pauline Sara Jo Moyes, known professionally as Jojo Moyes, is an English journalist and, since 2002, an award-winning romance novelist, #1 New York Times best selling author and screenwriter. She is one of only a few authors to have twice won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association and her works have been translated into twenty-eight languages and have sold over 40 million copies worldwide.

Jill Mansell is a British author of romantic comedy. Her books have sold over fifteen million copies worldwide.

Cathy Kelly is an Irish writer of women's fiction and a former journalist. In 2001, her novel Someone Like You won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award from the Romantic Novelists' Association.

Sadie Jones is an English writer and novelist best known for her award-winning debut novel, The Outcast (2008).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sean Thomas (writer)</span> British writer

Sean Thomas is a British journalist and author. Born in Devon, England, and educated at University College London, he has written for publications such as The Times, Daily Mail, The Spectator and The Guardian, mainly on travel, politics and art. He has written, as a journalist, of his troubled early life, and multiple step-mothers. His father was the writer and translator D. M. Thomas, who died in 2023.

Wendy Holden, also known as Taylor Holden, is an author, journalist and former war correspondent who has written more than thirty books. She was born in Pinner, North London and now lives in Suffolk, England.

Carole Matthews is a successful and popular British author, famous for her sense of humour and her romantic comedy novels. Her books have sold over 7.0 million books worldwide and have been published in more than 31 countries. In 2011, Matthews was inducted into the Festival of Romance Hall of Fame for her outstanding contribution to romance writing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adam Kay (writer)</span> British comedy writer, author, youtuber, comedian and former doctor (born 1980)

Adam Richard Kay is a British TV writer, author, comedian and former doctor. He is the author of the memoir This Is Going to Hurt (2017), about his time as a trainee doctor. His television writing credits include This is Going to Hurt, Crims, Mrs. Brown's Boys and Mitchell and Webb.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christie Watson</span>

Christie Watson is a British writer and Professor of Medical Humanities at the University of East Anglia. She has written six books including her first novel Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, which won the Costa First Novel Award, and first memoir The Language of Kindness which was a Number One Sunday Times Bestseller. Her work has been translated into 23 languages and adapted for theatre. Her latest book Moral Injuries is currently being developed as a television series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CJ Daugherty</span> British writer

CJ Daugherty, also known as Christi Daugherty, is a novelist best known for Night School and sequels, a series of bestselling young adult romantic thrillers set in a fictional boarding school called Cimmeria Academy. She began her career as a journalist, writing for publications such as the Dallas Morning News, Reuters, and Time Out. After a brief period working for the British government, she began writing novels in 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rachel Abbott</span> British author

Rachel Abbott is an English author of psychological thrillers. A self-publisher, her first seven novels have combined to sell over three million copies, and have all been bestsellers on Amazon's Kindle store. In 2015, she was named the 14th bestselling author over the last five years on Amazon's Kindle in the UK.

Louise Ross, known by her pen name LJ Ross, is the author of the DCI Ryan, Summer Suspense and Doctor Gregory series of mystery thrillers. Her debut novel, Holy Island, was released in January 2015 and, by May, it had reached number one in the Amazon UK chart. Its sequel, Sycamore Gap, released in September 2015, is also a UK bestseller. She released further books in the DCI Ryan series, amassing more than twenty UK No. 1s and selling over ten million copies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clare Mackintosh</span> British author and former police officer

Clare Mackintosh is a British author and former police officer.

Elizabeth Heery is a British actress, screenwriter and novelist. As an actress and author she works under the name Elizabeth Morton and Eliza Morton. She played Madeline Bassett in ITV series Jeeves and Wooster. Since 2016, she has been an ambassador for the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond. She trained at the Guildhall School of Drama and The Royal Court Young Writers Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruth Ware</span> British author of crime thrillers (born 1977)

Ruth Warburton, known by the alias Ruth Ware, is a British psychological thriller author. Her novels include In a Dark, Dark Wood (2015), The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016), The Lying Game (2017), The Death of Mrs Westaway (2018), The Turn of the Key (2019), One By One (2020), The It Girl (2022) and Zero Days (2023). Both In a Dark, Dark Wood and The Woman in Cabin 10 were on the UK's Sunday Times and The New York Times top ten bestseller lists. She is represented by Eve White of the Eve White Literary Agency. She switched to the pen name Ruth Ware to distinguish her crime novels from the young-adult fantasy novels published under her birth name.

Gaby Wood, Hon. FRSL, is an English journalist, author and literary critic who has written for publications including The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, London Review of Books, Granta, and Vogue. She is the literary director of the Booker Prize Foundation, appointed in succession to Ion Trewin and having taken over the post at the conclusion of the prize for 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Holly Bourne</span> British author of young adult fiction

Holly Bourne is a British author of young adult fiction. She is the author of best-selling novel Am I Normal Yet? and several other critically acclaimed books. She also writes online on feminist issues and writes for The Mix, a charity-run advice website for under-25s.

Dilly Court is an English author of popular historical fiction and family saga novels also writing under the pseudonym of Lily Baxter. She published her first book when she was 65 and, as of 2023, her novels have sold more than four million copies.

References

  1. ↑ "Prolific author awarded honorary degree from Northumbria University".
  2. ↑ Taylor CL (2015) The Curtain Twitcher. Sunday magazine. 26 April 2015 p 28
  3. ↑ CL Taylor (26 April 2015). "Goodbye My Lover: Short story by The Lie author CL Taylor | Books | Entertainment | Daily Express". Express.co.uk. Retrieved 10 September 2015.
  4. ↑ "Chicklit Club - Pink Thong Awards 2009 - our choices for best books of the year". www.chicklitclub.com. Retrieved 5 December 2019.
  5. ↑ "UK Cinema Release Dates | Search | home for christmas". www.filmdates.co.uk. Retrieved 5 December 2019.
  6. ↑ Walters HM (2015) A writer with two heads. Writer's Forum #162 p 7
  7. ↑ The Weekly Charts. Review Magazine. The Guardian. 9 May 2015
  8. ↑ Tivnan Tom (2015) The Lie fails to derail Hawkins' train. The Bookseller 3 July 2015. p 12
  9. ↑ Official E-Book Sales Ranking. The Bookseller. 3 July 2015 p13
  10. ↑ "The Dead Good Recommends Award for Most Recommended Book - Dead Good". 15 June 2015. Archived from the original on 15 June 2015. Retrieved 5 December 2019.
  11. ↑ "The Patricia Highsmith Award for Most Exotic Location - Dead Good". 15 June 2015. Archived from the original on 15 June 2015. Retrieved 5 December 2019.
  12. ↑ "Interview: C.L. Taylor, Knowle's thriller queen |". 15 March 2017.
  13. ↑ "THE MISSING is a No. 6 Sunday Times bestseller - Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency".
  14. ↑ "THE MISSING by C. L. Taylor sells over 100,000 copies in paperback - Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency".
  15. ↑ "The Escape is the UK's No.2 Bestseller! - Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency" . Retrieved 5 December 2019.
  16. ↑ "The Dead Good Reader Awards 2017". 9 June 2017.
  17. ↑ "The Fear by C.L. Taylor No.6 on the Sunday Times bestseller chart".
  18. ↑ "C.L. Taylor's Sleep at No. 4 in second week of sales".
  19. ↑ "Halls, Horowitz and Braithwaite make Richard and Judy Book Club picks | The Bookseller". www.thebookseller.com. Retrieved 5 December 2019.
  20. ↑ "The Sara Cox Show Episode 30".
  21. ↑ "cally taylor - Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency" . Retrieved 5 December 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.