Tell us about The Strategy.
A bit of fun, with a serious purpose. If you’re single and don’t want to be, how to make the most of ALL your opportunities to meet a mate and make it last – without going online or embarrassingly trying to sell yourself via an introduction agency. What am I talking about ? The Strategy: Single and Don’t Want to Be? All the directions and none of the detours … Now out on Kindle for a teeny tiny £2 and yet containing so many ruses, surprises and clever tips – right down to how to respond to a text for maximum attraction – and from some of the most up and coming dating guru’s too.

What genre is it?
Dating and relationship/self-help.

What would you say if someone asked what makes you an expert on this subject?
I found myself single again over 7 years ago and in that time have tried more or less everything there is – introduction agencies, blind dates, speed-dating, internet dating and ‘singles’ groups – in the misapprehension that you HAVE to be in a relationship. Of course you don’t – we would all just prefer to be, and for many, it is the difference between contentment and dissatisfaction.  My experiences have led me to believe that the old fashioned way of things actually work best – meet, befriend and then get intimate. As a result I now also run a singles social events group on the south coast of England with over 2000 members and we socialise. Of course some date too, but they are dating people they’ve already got to know and liked first …

What kind of readers will it appeal to?
Young, old and in between, as long as they’re single.

Aren’t the techniques a single 20 year old needs to employ different from those a 40 year old might use?
In many ways, no; you have to be able to make contact, flirt, interact and sustain a relationship in exactly the same way but possibly the venue and environment that a 20 year old does that in as opposed to a 40 year old differs sufficiently to make their behaviour different.

For a 20 year old a relationship can start and end in a night and they are still testing the waters with love and dating so their relationships are often more experimental and more casual. For a 40 something, the element of security and reliability is more important, so their approach will be more qualitative than quantitative. However, all the techniques in ‘The Strategy’ would work for either age or sex.

People sometimes say that if you go out looking for love that is when you are least likely to find it. Is that a nonsense?
No, I think it is true. When you aren’t seeking to impress or put on a show, you are your most natural self and you are far more likely to attract someone who is interested in the real you than when you are putting yourself on display. Think of all your friends – how did they become your friends? Because you went all out to convince them? Or because they simply got to know and liked you for who you are? The same applies with romantic relationships.

There are more singles out there than possibly ever before in human history. Are we just forgetting skills that came naturally to our forebears?
There are several reasons for the numbers of singles out there now.
•       Firstly there is choice and independence. Women are not now expected to marry and settle down. They can – and sometimes do – choose to put more into their career than their relationship potential.
•       There is no longer the same expectation that marriage is for life and you have to stick it out whatever. If it goes wrong, couples now choose to separate and try their luck with someone else.
•       The internet. Yes, there is no doubt it has affected our people skills. Whilst we think we are getting better at them, we are in fact getting worse. How many Customer Service operatives do you find rude and abrupt, rather than welcoming and helpful? How many people spend more time texting than talking? How many people opt to send an email to a phone call because it can be winged off immediately and the answer left in abeyance until it suits to reply? How many internet daters do you hear complaining about being ignored, cut off dead, two-timed or made to feel  of less interest than the other ones on their prospective dates list simply because they ARE on a list? Unfortunately the internet – for all its usefulness and expediency in current society – does create an artificial barrier between people which makes it easier to treat each other with less humanity, courtesy and care than if we had to deal with those same people face to face. Consequently our communication and people skills have become less sensitive and empathetic since the internet has connected us globally. If you had to talk to someone face to face and tell them why you had ignored their invitation to chat, would you ignore that invitation quite so readily…?

But we find our books, our music, our groceries, our friends online – so why should our life partners be so different?
Because life is lived in the real world and whilst the internet is part of our real world, people and relationships are what add the star quality to it. Books, groceries, music are all commodities. Friends and lovers are not. And although there are now dating sites online where you can have a virtual relationship with an avatar of your choice – do you really want to?

I will just round off by saying that I had a lot of fun internet dating and I tell some of the funny stories, but also one or two more disturbing ones in my book Are You The One?

Is it true that you have to kiss a lot of frogs to meet your prince?
Apparently we have to meet at least 17 people before the odds are stacked in our favour of one of them being attractive to you. OK, 17 people – that’s not so bad, but of course, whilst they might be the one out of your 17 that you find attractive, you might not be the one in their 17 that they find attractive – and so it goes on. I’ll leave you to calculate the odds of success…

You write fiction as well. Does writing non-fiction require a different skillset?
Writing fiction is totally different in terms of content, but the discipline is the same. You have to have a plan, try to stick to it and write a little every day or every time you’d planned to write. Sometimes you get stuck – the archetypal writers block, but the more you write the easier it is. If I get stuck I tend to leave it to distil a little and a few days later a new idea or a new twist on an old idea will pop out like a sausage out of the sausage machine – quite amusing really. Fiction is my real love and I have too many ideas usually. I often have at least 4 or 5 novel ideas simmering away at any one time but I only work on one idea at a time.  I am just completing my third novel which includes a throwback to the Salem witch trials, but already have the ideas and even some of the sentences forming for the second book in my box of darkness trilogy, the first of which, ‘Courting the Dark’, should be out next year. It will have to wait until after Christmas though when I have planned to have the first draft of the Salem book completed otherwise they will cross-fertilise and become confused.

My first novel will be published in January 2013 – ‘Chained Melody’, an unusual love and life story, and it will be available on Amazon and through my website so watch this space for it and many more.
Fiction tends to be more methodical in that there are a set of facts, principles and ideas that you want to get across in a coherent whole, but whilst also making it entertaining and engaging and that can be more difficult than writing fiction, which is naturally more interesting because it involves applying imagination, but that also makes writing a good non-fiction book a challenge, and I love a challenge!

How long did this book take to write?
About 3 months.

And what was the most challenging part of the process?
Actually, marshalling all the information – there is a lot of it!

Tell us a bit about yourself.
A child almost of the sixties, I’ve experienced a variety of careers and life. Now widowed, with two teenage daughters, living in a thatched cottage in Hampshire, I run a small social events business, work as a business event co-ordinator for the University of Winchester and have discovered I love writing. My first two works are non-fiction, the third a novel, which is coming out in January, 2013.

Have you got a blog where readers can keep up with your work?
Yes http://debbiemartin.wordpress.com/

And where can we buy The Strategy?
Amazon or via my website.

What’s next?
My novel, Chained Melody is due out in January 2013 and novel number 2, which is going to be the first in a trilogy – Courting the Dark will be following later on in 2013.