Francesca Hornak Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Francesca Hornak is a British journalist that made a few waves across the literary landscape with her debut novel ‘Seven Days of Us’.

Francesca has written for magazines and newspapers like The Guardian and The Sunday Times.

+Biography

When Francesca Hornak was a teenager, she thought she would go into advertising. The author isn’t afraid to admit that her attention span is highly lacking. So the idea of creating short stories and songs for products seemed to appeal to her.

Things changed when a company called her in for an interview, asked her to analyze one of their products and she found that she had nothing of significance to say about it. That was the day she realized that the high flying world of marketing and advertising probably wasn’t for her.

But the fact that she kept her dream for the field of Advertising alive for so long showed determination and persistence. It also showed that Francesca was quite the dreamer. And she will be the first to tell you that she doesn’t regret the events of that particular failed interview because she was allowed to move forward and experiment with journalism and publishing.

By the time Francesca Hornak wrote ‘Seven Days of Us’ she was a highly sought-after columnist and magazine writer. It wasn’t by luck that Francesca garnered such respect. The author has loved magazines for as long as she can remember.

Francesca counts authors like Candace Bushnell, Jennifer Egan and Lori Moore amongst her favorites. It wasn’t like she did not read novels as a young girl. However, she held magazines in great esteem because they were so rare.

Her parents did not buy them so she would get pretty excited by any magazine that found its way into her hands. The author remembers stumbling upon a copy of Vogue and getting caught up in the images and interviews of the supermodels inside.

Francesca also remembers being influenced by the trends she read in her favorite magazines. And once she got holidays during her University days, she wasted no time in reaching out to those magazines and asking for work experience.

That got her a few internships and opened the way for her to carve out a career writing for magazines. Francesca graduated University in 2005. By that point in time, she had no illusions about her advertising dreams.

Her prior experience writing for different magazines got her a low-level job at ‘In Style’ and that opened the door for her to write for other magazines. The world in which she entered was so different from the environment she had tolerated during her college years.

Francesca Hornak found that she enjoyed the glamor and the urgency of her new job. She admits that she was pretty lucky to get into the magazine business during those early years.

Not only was it much easier to get into the business but there was still a lot of money in print media. The internet hadn’t yet gained enough of a foothold to threaten magazines.

The author has been commended for writing witty, compelling and engaging articles that have appeared in some of the biggest publications in England.

It wasn’t necessarily the author’s dream to write fiction. But when she finally decided to go into fiction writing and publishing, the author found that her journalistic history had perfectly equipped her to deal with the rigors ahead.

Not only did Francesca not struggle as much with the prospect of sitting down and getting her book written but she also found it that much easier to meet her deadlines.

The idea for ‘Seven Days of Us’ took some work to assemble. In the beginning, all the author knew was that she wanted to write something related to the family. She also needed to play with elements of humor and romance whilst also injecting serious threads into the story.

Francesca had a friend who had gone to Sierra Leone to help in the fight against Ebola. When she came back home, she contacted Francesca Hornak explaining that she would have to remain in quarantine for thirty days.

Francesca thought that whole scenario sounded like the perfect fictional device with which to tell an intense story about a dysfunctional family. Around that time, Francesca learned that she was pregnant.

Because she already had one child, the author knew that once she gave birth to another child, she would not have the time to write. So she tried to get her story written, edited and published within the next few months.

Her efforts paid off. ‘Seven Days of Us’ was very well received and it elicited quite the hefty financial benefits for Francesca Hornak.

The author initially struggled to build a strong, dynamic and successful relationship with her editors. Francesca found that she was quite precious about her work and the idea of making even the smallest of changes rubbed her the wrong way.

It wasn’t unheard of to find Francesca getting into altercations with sub-editors. However, she has grown immensely over time. At the very least, her working relationships with editors are far healthier.

Francesca has admitted to enjoying fiction writing more than her columns and articles because producing a novel gives her the leeway to be as descriptive as possible. This is as opposed to her days as a journalist where she was taught to be as succinct as possible.

+Seven Days of Us

It is a rare thing for the entire Birch family to be under the same roof at the same time. But that is exactly what is going to happen at Christmas. Emma and Andrew live on an aging country estate.

And they didn’t think their daughter Olivia would join them there. As a doctor, Olivia has made it her business to save the world. But this Christmas, because of her participation in the treating of an epidemic abroad, she has been quarantined at Weyfield Hall with the rest of her family.

It is not an ideal situation but there is no choice to be had. The Birches will spend seven days together. They cannot engage with their neighbors and the internet is spotty at best, which means they have no choice but to actually engage with one another.

There are plenty of secrets waiting to be unveiled, and as the days go by, each individual will be forced to contend with the tension simmering within the Birch Family.