I remember it well, Terri. And didn’t we have fun at the health clinic? Must have been at least 20 years ago. Yet it was ages before we discovered we were writers. Amazing it took so long. But so super that both of us have now landed publishing deals with two of the top publishers.

Coincidences can set off exciting times in real life as well as in novels!

You say about bumping into someone in a small town which is more believable than London but I must tell you this story. My husband bumped into his father on two separate occasions in London. Neither of them had any idea at all that the other was going to London. They both lived out in the country completely separately from each other in different towns on different train lines.

But again, that’s real life where huge coincidences can and do happen. We just have to be careful in fiction. But I love them, true or fictitious!

Denise

Hello Maj

I’m wondering now exactly who you are, and feeling just a little hurt that I only valued your house and you didn’t instruct me to sell it! 🙂

I sold the business after 17 years to become a full-time writer, but unfortunately I sold to a couple of fraudsters. However, I wrote a book about it which was published a few years ago: Seller Beware: How Not To Sell Your Business. It was a horrible nightmare, and actually there were a few true-life coincidences which wouldn’t have rung true in fiction. It doesn’t seem fair.

Denise

You’re so right. I pitched to an agent recently. She said, ‘I love the writing but it’s rather far-fetched.’ She gave me a sharp look and added, ‘Or is it based on truth?’ ‘No, it’s all made up,’ I said. She looked thoughtful and then said, ‘Saying that, the person before you had written something much more far-fetched and when I told her that she said, ‘It really happened!’

So there you have it.

Denise

That’s a neatly-put answer to the coincidence question. I’d go along with that one.

Denise