Guest column by Sally Page

After studying history at university, Sally Page moved to London to work in advertising. In her spare time she studied floristry at night school and eventually opened her own flower shop. Sally came to appreciate that flower shops offer a unique window into people’s stories and she began to photograph and write about this floral life in a series of non-fiction books. Later, she continued her interest in writing when she founded her fountain pen company, Plooms.co.uk. In her debut novel, The Keeper of Stories, Sally combines her love of history and writing with her abiding interest in the stories people have to tell. In her second novel, The Book of Beginnings Sally draws on her love of stationery For her third novel, Sally returns to her great love, flowers in The Secrets of Flowers.

I once read that you need to be passionate to be an author.

Having now become an author with an international bestseller (The Keeper of Stories) and a new book, The Secrets of Flowers coming out with Blackstone Publishing (February 25th 2025), I would have to agree. The processes of getting an agent and publisher can be gruelling; I found it took drive and resilience to keep going in the face of so much rejection. At times I almost gave up. Then it was my passion for writing that got me through. That, and advice from people like the acclaimed novelist Elizabeth Strout. I recall hearing her say in an interview that every time she was rejected, she thought – well, I will just have to write better. I took this to heart and kept going. I think at the point I realised that even if I never got published I would always write, was when I got my first book deal. My passion was ultimately focussed on the words, and the story I wanted to tell.

Marrying Passion with Fiction

I believe it also helps authors (and readers) if you are passionate about the subject you are writing about – those nuggets within your work that are based on your own personal interests. Wanting to weave these into a story can bring another dimension to your writing, as well as giving the author the joy of the background research. For some people it might be their love of food, or possibly travel. I know some writers who always decide on the location of their book before they ever come up with a storyline! For my daughter, Libby Page, who was a Sunday Times bestseller several years before I was, her forthcoming book was driven by her love of bookshops. (This Book Made Me Think Of You: Berkley 2026)

My passions are history, and you will not be surprised to hear, flowers. Each chapter in The Secrets of Flowers is named after a particular variety. As a young woman I studied history at university and then went on to work in advertising. I realised quite early on this wasn’t the industry for me and I started travelling across London to an evening class on floristry. Following a period of part-time work in a flower shop I decided to open my own shop, and I ran this until becoming a mum made me rethink. I needed a career that was easier to balance, so for many years ran a market research company, using experience I had gained in advertising. It was when my daughters were teenagers that they persuaded me to get a part-time job in a flower shop – they could tell I was missing being amongst the flowers! From there came a series of non-fiction books detailing the changing seasons and life of an English country flower shop.

I don’t think it was a surprise that when, in my late fifties, I turned to creative writing, flowers and history were themes within my contemporary novels. In The Secrets of Flowers, a young widow, Emma, comes to work in a garden center and becomes intrigued by whether there were flowers on the Titanic. Grief drives her obsession and this intensifies when she feels a strange connection to a stewardess who worked on board. Had this woman been a florist too? The idea for the book started with my own passion for flowers and my discovery that the Titanic was ‘a ship full of flowers’. Indeed, there was such an abundance of blooms that passengers were reminded of being in the French Riviera. My own research is woven into the narrative, and I hoped readers would enjoy this floral journey of discovery and recovery.  Afterall, when I thought of the novels I liked to read, I loved it when I learnt something. In The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, I was captivated by the descriptions of the furniture restorer, and in Still Life by Sarah Winman it was her details of the globe makers of Florence that had me hooked.

Balancing Your Passion within Fiction

However, in the long processes of writing The Secrets of Flowers I came to appreciate, passion is a question of balance. There is definite danger that your own interest in a subject can overwhelm the tale you are trying to tell. You can become fixated on being so factually accurate that you start to forget this is work of fiction. Or you can become so engrossed in your passion you end up writing pages and pages on your favourite subject. That is when a good editor steps in, guiding and advising you.

I also found it helps to leave your writing alone for a while. When you come back to your manuscript it is much easier to see where you are overwhelming the reader with too many facts, too much enthusiasm. A bit like a golf-lover who is strident about getting friends and colleagues to take up the sport! What you are passionate about should interest and entice, not have readers skim-reading your pages.

I hope that I am learning to be better at this balancing act, the more I write. But it is hard – as it can be in life, when you are passionate about something and you are in conversation with friends. Only last week we had a couple over for supper and I started talking about a new project. Russian imperial history was involved. The Romanovs. Faberge. I thought I held my audience spell bound – we had drunk quite a bit of wine! In the morning I asked my partner, “Did I go on a bit last night?”

There was a long pause, followed by a drawn out, ‘Well…”

The Secrets of Flowers

The Secrets of Flowers by Sally Page

After losing her husband, Emma retreats into the quiet comfort of the florist shop where she works, content to fade into the background. But when a lecture on the Titanic sparks her curiosity, she embarks on a journey to uncover the forgotten story of the girl who arranged flowers on the ill-fated ship. As Emma unearths long-buried secrets, she begins to bloom once more—discovering that the past may hold the key to healing her own heart.

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