Holly's Inbox by Holly Denham

About the Book:

System alert: Inbox full of scandal, romance, and office hilarity!

Meet Holly Denham. It's her first day as a receptionist at a London investment bank and inexperienced Holly is struggling. How's a working girl supposed to have a love life with a demanding job, crazy friends, a dysfunctional family, and gossipy colleagues? Not to mention that Holly's been keeping a secret from everyone - and the past is about to catch up with her.

An affair with a sexy VP heats things up at the office, but when Holly's first flame (who, she thinks, left her in the lurch) gets a job at the same company, complications abound and Holly's inbox becomes a daily source of drama, laughter and scandal.

Repeatedly compared to Bridget Jones' Diary, www.hollysinbox.com became a website phenomenon, with thousands of daily visitors from all over the world. This novel tells Holly's story in full, and also includes exclusive extra material not available on the site.

I was lucky enough to be able to interview this author. Here are the answers that were provided:

Could you please tell us a little about your book?

My first objective when writing the book was to make people laugh, preferably loud and long, (now I’m going to hope you say it’s funny otherwise I’ll look ridiculous). Written entirely in email format, Holly’s Inbox follows the life of Holly Denham who just started as a receptionist for an investment bank in London. Holly attempts to retain her sanity, whilst juggling some rather surreal characters in both her personal and work life. Between her gossipy co-workers, supervisors breathing down her neck, and now some intriguing emails from a flirtatious VP, Holly is in for more than she ever imagined. And when a secret from her past makes an unwelcome appearance, Holly’s unsure if she has what it takes to survive the corporate workplace.

The book is feel good chic-lit, my favorite genre.

Did something specific happen to prompt you to write this book?

I run a recruitment agency for receptionists. The idea for the site came when someone in our company disappeared one day without any notice. We had to trawl through their emails to find out what they were working on, as it turned out they hadn’t been working on anything apart from their personal life, which I’m ashamed to say I became engrossed in.

The emails were full of office gossip, scandal, romance, and back stabbing; so this gave me the inspiration to set about building a website to deliver a ‘real time’ story. As emails come through you get so wrapped up in Holly’s life that you begin to feel you are sitting at her desk going through all the fun and disaster yourself.

The website http://www.hollysinbox.com/ is of course up and running with emails appearing in real-time, it’s very easy to catch up but make sure you read every email….

Who has influenced you throughout your career as a writer?

My wife, she really is a very odd woman (who I love), oh and Stephen King.

What is the most important thing in your life right now?

Making sure my wife doesn’t read the above comment.

What are you currently working on?

Another chic-lit type project, I really can’t write like a man.

Is there anything else you would like to share with us?

I would like to thank you very much Tracee for interviewing me, I enjoyed it. I will now go back to writing – actually I wont because I can hear my little girl (she’s 1½ ) calling up the stairs for me. She’s not actually saying “Daddy" or anything remotely understandable she’s still talking in adorable gobbledygook. The other more worrying possibility is of course that my daughter is making perfect sense, but my beautiful wife, in one of her more mischievous practical jokes, has been sneaking down at night and teaching her Japanese, I really do hope not, I’m terrible at learning languages. Thank you once again.

About the Author:

Holly Denham is the pen name for Bill Surie the owner of a placement service for receptionists and secretaries in London. He started the Holly's Inbox website as a place to serialize his first novel. The website became an overnight sensation and his second novel is now in the works.