KELLY Frost is on the cusp of something big, probably bigger than big. Until the end of last year a trainee reporter in the JEP and Bailiwick Express newsroom, the 25-year-old is about to embark on a life-changing journey that she has been planning, more or less, since the age of 15.
Standing on a platform so full of promise, she seems caught between wanting to scream with excitement, sharing it with everyone, and playing it down, worried that any exuberance might appear boastful. You have to hope that she hangs on to this grounding in the years ahead, and everything suggests that she will because her journey is, in part, a self-aware exploration of truth, honesty and authenticity – a timeless literary quest for the essence of humanity.
On Thursday, Kelly’s debut novel, The Kings Head, was launched in a book shop in London’s Finsbury Park, close to the pub where she discovered the gang of girls who have changed her life (…although, pub or no pub, you get the impression nothing was going to stop that stubbornly determined 15-year-old getting on her train). On Sunday, it was named as Book of the Month in the Sunday Times – that’s like John Peel putting your debut single at No 1 on his radio-show playlist (…for those old enough to remember).
She’s coy about the pay cheque, and points out that writers are not paid like premiership footballers. But her mind is not imagining what she will do with the money, a breath of fresh air in a world where too many kids dream of celebrity and easy millions from TikTok, and of buying their first gold-studded Lambo.
She is acutely aware of how special the past few years have been that have brought her to this point. And again, her response demonstrates that grounding and a dedication to her vocation.
Kelly wrote The Kings Head in secret, alone and free to wander in a world she created, what Stephen King describes as “writing with the door closed” in his book On Writing. She didn’t even tell her parents what she was doing for all those hours during Covid in her bedroom. But how does she feel now, with the spotlight arcing across the stage towards her and expectation mounting?
“I’m yet to get to a point with my writing where I feel hindered by any of that,” she says. “I don’t think it’s got to that point yet where I’ve got such a demand on me. There’s this writer I really like called Daisy Johnson, who I interviewed when I worked at a literary magazine. She was really insightful in telling me that you’ve got to figure out what you want to do, and do as much writing as you can before the book comes out and before any of this happens, because that’s when I feel like the pressure will come.
“One thing I will say is I will never be able to have that experience again of that first time I wrote it, because I had no pressure on me. I had no one waiting. No one knew about it. It was mine, literally. No one knew about it apart from me. So I had no kind of worry about who was going to read it.
“I didn’t really write it with anyone else in mind. I mean, anyone who says they didn’t write with publication in mind, I think, is lying, because why would you write the book? But I didn’t really care too much about that. I was just trying it out and seeing how I went, and I didn’t really think about whether it was good or not. I didn’t really think about that at the time.
“I’m always trying out new stuff and getting better, hopefully. I tried really hard to write as much as I could and figure as much out, so that when I felt like I was in a position, if I ever did, where I felt like I’m under real pressure and struggling, I’ve at least got a nice foundation to build on. I feel twitchy if I’m not working on something.”
She adds: “I don’t want to spend my whole career coming across as someone who was like, ‘Oh, I don’t deserve this’. I think I need to start getting out of that mentality. I think it’s fine to still talk like this at the moment, but I’m just aware that I don’t want to come across as someone who is a bit kind of, ‘Oh, look at me’. But I also don’t want to spend my whole life apologising for success.”
Kelly describes Sunday as a strange day.
“It was very surreal and a real shift in mentality for me and for people around me as well, I think, because once that happens, there was this sudden moment of ‘Oh, wow, this is actually quite a big thing, and this is happening’.
“It’s just madness, even trying to explain it to relatives and friends, and they were like, ‘What?’ It’s just, it’s really surreal.”
On Amazon, her book blurb has a tempo that draws you to the story. “1957, London. A gang of girls called the Kings rule the bomb-struck streets of Finsbury Park,” it says. “When Harry, their unpredictable but charismatic leader, tries to encroach on the territory of the rival Seven Sisters gang, the Kings know they’re in for a fight.
“Armed with flick knives and fists, they do battle in dancehalls and on football fields. But with the authorities closing in and conscripted boys threatening to reclaim what was once theirs, the Kings must ask if they’re willing to pay the price of loyalty.
“Bound by wild friendship and brutal competition, these young women will do anything to carve a space for themselves in this ruthless city.”
Is it Peaky Blinders for the Gen Z #metoo generation? If so, the timing is perfect and Kelly says she would love to write the screenplay.
But how did she go from seeing some photos in a London pub to being able to paint a believable picture of 1950s Britain, bringing characters of 70 years ago alive?
“There was a lot of Googling,” she explains. “There is a surprising amount of information out there at your fingertips. YouTube was really helpful too. I found loads of videos of people at the time talking, people being spoken to by the police and I got a lot of inspiration from those clips, but there was also a lot of my own embellishment.”
When she left All Island Media in December to focus on preparation for this week and beyond, she was one of a group of talented and super-smart young women who now populate the newsroom. In different ways, they want to change the world with the power of storytelling – the future of local journalism in Jersey is in good hands.
There are a remarkable group, perhaps principally because they have found their voices, strong voices, so young, something which, despite all the angst about the world we have handed down to young people today, suggests that we are doing something right.
Kelly stood out among them because she so visibly and viscerally burns with what a colleague describes as the essential quality of a good journalist – righteous indignation.
It is no coincidence that she found her muse in old photographs hanging in The King’s Head of the girls who inspired the story of her debut novel. There is an affinity, a sense that she is taking her fight to the world through these characters, the Seven Sisters gang being many things in the story of her real life, and certainly those who stand in the way of women and girls.
“What I will say is this: when I was growing up I loved Westside Story and The Outsiders, but they were about male relationships and I think there was this question for me of there being something missing, casual female friendship. There’s something about the bond that comes from coming from the same circumstances and the same area as other people.
“I didn’t have that group of friends when I was young and maybe it was me wanting that, to have someone who knows you so well that they can anticipate what you are going to do, how you are going to act. I did have close friends, but not that sort of bond.”
She adds: “I very proudly describe myself as a feminist, and I am very outspoken about things I find unfair or unequal,” she says, adding that she hopes that sentiment finds expression in her books. “I think I’m still yet to hit the point in my career when I become outspoken.”
Kelly says that she decided that she wanted to be a writer when at school in Salisbury, where she was a choral scholar – a soprano. (She achieved grade 8 in singing and is also grade 8 on the flute and grade 6 on the piano.) She went on to study literature at UCL and, as a postgraduate, at Oxford, where she indulged her passion for American literature from the period of the American Civil War, reading authors like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.
Of her music, she says: “I was just really into it. I think I really liked being busy. I liked doing it.
“I grew up watching a lot of movies, and I’ve been surrounded by the film industry, through friends and family. My brother works in films on set. He wants to be an assistant director. If The Kings Head is made into the film, I’d love to have a part in it, a part in the writing.”
She adds: “This is all I’ve ever wanted to do since I was 15. Definitely. I didn’t really consider anything else once I became a teenager. I just thought it was non-negotiable for me. It’s like any career. My best friend wanted to do medicine and be a doctor, and that’s what she’s doing, and I wanted to be a writer and write books, and that’s what I’m doing. So I think it makes total sense.”
Now she has got to this point, does she feel daunted, aware that she will inevitably have to give up a bit of herself when the book festivals, the signings and the media frenzy starts?
“I think it’s happening so gradually that I don’t feel too overwhelmed by it,” she explains. “I think one thing I’ve learned is that it’s possible to be so incredibly stressed but also really excited. You can be both at the same time. You can find you’ve got quite a lot to deal with and to manage. And I think writing is quite a personal thing, you do it by yourself. And I mean, I wrote the novel all solo. I didn’t even tell my parents anything until I signed an agent, because I just was so scared it wasn’t going to turn into anything. So I think that’s probably been the hardest part in learning to share all of that and talk openly about it and not finding it cringe or embarrassing.
“I definitely think Covid was a big part of my journey to this point. Everything was stripped back. It was my final year of uni, and then sort of the year after uni and my first year of work. And I think those are the years in which I probably would have gone out a lot more and done a lot more travelling, maybe, and stuff like that, but maybe not focused on the book.
“I was stuck at home. I ended up going into a retail job, which I don’t think I would have done. I had everything stripped back, and I looked at myself and just had the chance to think, ‘What did I really want?’
“I think I’ve stayed grounded throughout it because I’ve been working nine to five this entire time. So it’s quite a funny shift. Sunday, the Sunday Times, that was huge, and then the next day I was at work answering emails to people asking things of me.”
The path Kelly took after opening her door to let others read what she had created offers another insight into her drive, quiet self-belief and ambition.
“The first people who read it were the agents I sent it to. I was 21 when I wrote it, and I immediately sent it to agents. That was such a cocky thing to do.
“I’m 25, so it’s taken four years. It was weird because I sent it off in 2021 and heard back from some people, but it was in quite a casual way, just, ‘This is good. We think you’re quite good, but maybe you’re not. It’s not polished yet. You’re not ready’, which honestly was probably the right thing I needed to hear because I then went off and did my master’s. I went to Oxford and thought I was going to do academia or something in that sphere, maybe a PhD, but I got to the end of that year and decided that university isn’t really the real world, and I was getting a bit fed up of being a student.
“The summer after the masters, I really took those comments seriously. I still had not really told parents at this point, by the way.
“So in the summer after Oxford, I polished it up, sent it out again, and just got an agent pretty much straight away, within a month or two, and that was a moment where it kind of shifted, because in the publishing industry, if you get an agent, that’s a big step towards getting published. An agent wouldn’t pick it up if they didn’t like it, so that was a big step for me. Then I went through another edit. That’s when I started at the JEP, when this was all happening, because I decided I wanted some safety, just to stay in Jersey and see how it all played out. I didn’t want to go off and do mad things in London. So that happened. And then we got the book deal in June 2023, and then it’s just been editing and getting it all sorted.”
She says that the editing and working with an editor was an amazing experience. The process saw the novel shortened.
“I really respect her and I really like her, and I do want to say that she was a huge help. She was the best thing.”
Despite her years at university immersed in literature, Kelly has never studied creative or been on courses.
“I feel like, if you’re a writer, there’s very little that could ever hinder you if you’re a good writer.”
Despite that inner confidence, Kelly remains overwhelmed with unease about her success.
“Oh God, the impostor syndrome is so bad. Honestly, it’s terrible. I thought it would go away, I thought Sunday would make a difference.
“I always think it’s funny being a writer, because I want the writing to speak for itself. I don’t want to be selling myself. I think I’ll become more confident. I’m just trying to navigate my early career.
“It’s a bit loser-ish, but I have this coaster that someone got me. It’s got my name, Kelly, on it and a picture of a swan or something, and it says,’She knows what she wants and she won’t stop anything to get it’. When you’re younger, and that sits on your desk every day – well, I really took it to heart.
“I definitely have this mentality, like I said. I just picked my goal, which was being a writer, and just stuck to it.”
Kelly hopes that her journey and her success will be a beacon for others.
“I just think when you’re growing up, you know, there’s no one at the careers fair who’s telling you you can be an author. I was at uni and it was all things like law and stuff like that.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone tell me you couldn’t do this, but that’s not the same thing.
“At uni, it was always in the back of my mind, it’s what I wanted to do. You talk about being a lawyer, or you talk about journalism and all these things, and in some ways they are very similar careers, basically other versions of being a writer.”
The Sunday Times reviewer wrote this about The Kings Head: “Kelly Frost has chosen an original milieu for her debut novel. The Kings Head is not only a compelling story but also an understated celebration of female friendship and a lament for how it changes over time.”
“That was really nice,” she says. “There’s nothing nicer than being called original, unique.”
Kelly says that it is easy to romanticise the writing process, because the reality was that there were times where she wanted to stop and do something else, and times when it was a slog.
“I think I just know what I want, and I don’t have time to make excuses. You really can’t complain if you have not tried, which is such a privileged thing to say, I know. I’m aware of my privileged background, but I have worked hard. You know, I haven’t had this handed to me, not in any way.
“I just want to get across that the world of grit and graft and hard work is not dead. And I think if you are shying away from that or someone who thinks that it’s going to come to them, that’s a problem.”
It is a work ethic she learned young, along with a love of books.
“Another thing I wanted to mention is reading was really how I got into it,” she says. “I don’t really remember how I got into reading. I don’t think my parents made me read or anything, but we were taken to the library and we got books at Christmas. When I was at school, I would rather be in the library than go outside. I was a bit of a nerd. I went to Salisbury Cathedral School. It was a prep school, but I was there on a scholarship because I was a chorister at the cathedral. I think that is where a lot of my discipline comes from, really, because I didn’t have weekends, I didn’t have Christmases for four years. I loved it, but I do think it was a quite an intense schedule for a 12-year-old.
“I just like to be busy and productive. And I’m that classic person where if I haven’t done something, I feel really guilty at the end of the day. Yeah, I can’t do a lazy Sunday.”
Ten years ago, a determined 15-year-old set herself on a course which has reached its first major staging point. But what does a 25-year-old Kelly, equally as determined and with a bit more experience under her belt, want to achieve now that she is a published author and a Sunday Times Pick of the Month?
“Historical fiction is definitely my bag, purely because I just can’t write about people with phones. It just makes me cringe. Hilary Mantel was a big hero of mine. She made historical fiction exciting and she made it a best seller, and everyone read it. I think for me, that would be the dream to write something that reimagined a genre, or it just made people rally around books, because I love the fact that, with Hilary, people will be like, ‘Oh yeah, no, I’ve read Hilary Mantel’ as if it’s like, ‘Of course, I have’.”
Until fairly recently, when her novel was still a secret, people might have laughed at this young woman suggesting that she would like to emulate Hilary Mantel. Now, though, who knows? Watch this space.
