Falling Hard For The Royal Guard

Today we interviewed Megan Clawson, the author of ‘Falling Hard for The Royal Guard’ who came to our school for an interview, sign books, autographs and the occasional selfie!

Megan Clawson is an inspirational story writer and actor known for her new novel “Falling Hard For The Royal Guard”. She lives in the Tower of London with her dad, dog, and her own Royal Guard. Her novel is a big hit with our Local Waterstones in Boston already being sold out of copies. The young author grew up in Boston and attended our school. She graduated from Kings College in London and moved to the Tower of London with her dad. She is also Tik Tok famous!

The book is about a heroin with striking hair, Maggie, trying to forget her crazy ex and thinks she has sworn off men for good. But when she stumbles into charming Royal Guard Freddie, the chemistry is instant. Will they get their happy ever after or will it end up in a disaster?

Megan shared her thoughts and source of inspiration with us explaining, “living in the Tower of London is very interesting. I’d say it’s very different from living in Boston because living in Boston I just live in a regular house in a regular estate and then I went to live in the Tower of London and now I’ve got lots of people peering into my house from all corners of the world. It’s very interesting and very exciting, you see lots of new people every day so it’s a very interesting place to live. 

You learn a lot from the people and the actual place. I did always want to be an author. I was always writing so when I was at school, I would do lots of it and I’d publish things online that not very many people would read, thankfully! But then I always assumed that I would have to be an old, retired lady that has had to have a whole other job in her lifetime to be able to sit down and then be a writer when I’m all old.  I never anticipated being a writer and that being my main career straight out of university because I always thought it was inaccessible to younger people. I thought you had to have a lot of money behind you to do it so that was something I always wanted to do but never thought that I’d be able to do it now, it is exciting that I can. 

I’ve always wanted to write a book and I’d written lots of different things and got about three chapters in and given up, not wanting to carry it on. Whereas, with this one I knew I wanted to write a story about the Tower, but I always thought I’d write something historical like everyone else. Then my publisher got in contact with me, and they suggested writing a book a little bit like this one: a romantic comedy. And I thought ‘oh, I’m not that funny, am I?’ So I gave it a go and it worked out nicely! It was just kind of having that deadline of somebody telling me that ‘you need to write this now’ that inspired me to get writing this one and it made me finally finish something. 

I always thought that when you write a book, you write up a draft of it; somebody edits it and then it gets sent out into the world. And that could not be further from the truth! It took me about five months to write the first draft from start to finish and then it goes round editing three or four times. So, somebody then makes notes on it and sends it back to me and says ‘you need to add this in; you need to add that in; add in another twenty thousand words basically. All in all, with the editing and everything like that, it took about eleven months or so to write it start to finish. So, I was lucky, usually when you write a book, you must find an agent and you have to find somebody that will represent your book and then sell it to a publisher. But I was really lucky because I put myself out there on social media, the publisher came directly to me, so they cut the corners as little bit on that one. It was a much easier process for me because I’d done all the stuff on social media. So, it meant that I just went to my publisher. They were chatting to me about it, we figured out what I was going to write and then I wrote it for them. That’s not really the usual way of doing it but because of the powers of social media it was a little bit easier for me which I’m really grateful for. 

I would say that my characters are based off a lot of people, especially the Beefeaters. They’re not necessarily based on one person, they’re based on the kind of stereotypes and archetypes of all of the Beefeaters I know. So, if I’m having a conversation with a group of them, that conversation will then turn into one of them. So, yeah, a lot of my characters are a collection of people all merged into one person which is sometimes why they are a little bit over the top and a little bit silly.  

I literally just announced it on Tuesday but I’m writing a book called ‘Love At First Knight’ which is about a young girl, who’s from Lincolnshire, who hasn’t really gone anywhere after school. She struggled with getting herself out there, she’s a little bit stuck living with her family but she does what we call live action roleplay. So, on the weekends her and her family dress up as all these medieval characters and they kind of play fight essentially.”

As a group, all we can say is ‘Wow!’ This interview has been great fun especially with someone like Megan. Her whole experience is fascinating and inspiring to many young people who are looking for a career in writing. However, she isn’t just a writer she also took part in a movie in which she played an elf in season 2 of The Witcher. This might not seem like a big deal, but this shows how you can be anything. 

Our team would like to thank Megan Clawson for heading all the way from London to visit Boston High School! We would all highly recommend her book as it is phenomenal and Megan truly does deserve all the fame coming her way, who knows she may well be the next J.K Rowling. Falling Hard for The Royal Guard is available at your local waterstones.

By Alexandra, Maisy, Megan & Poppy Yr7 & Scarlett Yr8

Boston High School News team