What to wear? Perfect clothes to snare a job...

Apparently, I’m an adult.

At the time of writing, there are just DAYS until I finish university and have to enter the REAL WORLD.

A scary place where the flash of a student card doesn’t make Topshop that little bit cheaper and a £500 fashion allowance is an offer dreams are made of.

As much as I could pop the entire budget into my currently non-existent dream Mulberry bag fund (a £925 Oversized Alexa in Oak Light Patent Leather please!) a growing up girl needs a grown-up outfit.

Job hunting starts next May so I need a killer, take-down-the-advert, stop the recruitment, we’ve found our girl kinda outfit.

So Nancy Sinatra’s boots are made for walking, but I need shoes. Shoes that are made for hiring. Then, walking, talking, writing, editing, business meetings, long lunches, longer office parties and everything else in-between.

These two-tone Classic Collection LK Bennett courts are perfect, they have a high enough heel to ensure I’m confidently walking tall, yet aren’t knee-buckling, blister-causing skyscrapers.

The caramel and black colour-block of the shoe provides a hint of Chanel class. Very K-Middy.  At £185 these are definitely a necessary investment.

Some tailored trousers are next on my wish list. A pair of £110 Ted Baker velvet cigarette legged trousers provide a nod to the androgynous trend, whilst still holding a feminine edge. Fabulous. Next, I want a shirt that I can utilise in lots of office outside. H&M, the source of ‘I love your dress…how much? REALLY?’ conversations, is where I’ll head. This pearl chiffon blouse is a wardrobe staple for just less than twenty British pounds.

I shall of course be abiding by the work-wear fashion commandment – thou shalt wear smart tailoring. Epitomised by Jaeger at London Fashion Week in pastel candy colours, my interview outfit needs a fitted blazer.

My current wardrobe is packed with hues of chocolate and caramel, so this camel blazer definitely caught my eye. Found in high street haven All Saints, its creased paper-like finish will contrast nicely against my sleek trousers and blouse.

At £180, it would go great with a shift dress, tights and ankle boots too. A winner.

I’d wear the blazer open, showing off the pussy-bow detail of my bargain blouse.

My hair twisted into an effortless yet smart top-knot, I’ll add a cute bow hair clip to finish the look for just £3.50. Accessorize always gets a gold star for their outfit making extras at pocket money prices, and this clip is no exception. It adds a fab girly touch to my interview outfit.

Holding onto my savvy student spending ways, I’m left with a whole £3.50 to spare. That’s just enough for a pre-interview latte and a muffin.

So now I’ve got the look… who’s hiring?

'How I came to write BAD SISTERS'

Author Rebecca Chance

Rivalry, catfights, jealousy, stealing each other’s clothes, an unspoken competition that lasts your whole life… how could I not want to write about sisters for one of my bonkbusters? My subject, what I’m really fascinated by, is women – what we do to each other, good and bad, how we relate to each other, and there’s no richer place to find women loving and hating and scheming than in a family, the closest bond of all. I have two sisters myself – good ones, who I love very much – but there’s no way you can be a sibling and not be aware that for the whole of your life, you’re comparing yourself to the other girls in your family. Who has the best legs? Who makes the most money? Who’s Mummy or Daddy’s favourite? Maybe it’s because I’m one of three sisters myself, but that immediately seemed the perfect number – three means that two can gang up on the other one, it means you never have just two girls going head-to-head without a third perspective coming in as well. Because sisters always get in each other’s business.

I used to write crime novels under my real name, Lauren Henderson, and I always try to have a crime or mystery element to the Rebecca Chance novels. So as soon I’d decided that I really wanted to write about three sisters, I thought: family secret. I would give them something that tied them together even tighter than the blood bond that family members share, an awful, hidden secret that they would all have to keep buried for the rest of their lives. And there would have to be a twist to it, of course, some revelation that would come out in the last few chapters. I’d play fair all the way along, describing scenes as they had happened, but at least one of the sisters would have an extra, concealed motivation for everything she did and said. A betrayal that would be even more powerful, because she wasn’t playing fair with her own family.

And it would also be about each sister trying to break free from the family ties and find out who she was – because that’s something that we’ve all experienced. Deeley, the sweet, ditzy youngest sister, who’d been happily ensconced as a trophy girlfriend in LA, would be unceremoniously kicked out of her cosy nest and have to find her own feet for the first time. Devon, the gorgeous celebrity cook, would realise that though her marriage seemed perfect to outsiders, the reason she was comfort-eating was that she wasn’t really satisfied or happy. Deeley would be jealous of Devon’s success, Devon of Deeley’s freewheeling style and natural slimness. And Maxie, the oldest sister, the most successful and ambitious, would be jealous of the other two, because they had it easier than her; she’d done all the hard work to pull them out of the gutter and into a dazzling A-list life, and they’d just followed along in her wake.

I hadn’t even plotted the book out in detail, and already I had more than enough material. Over drinks with my editors at a club on Shaftesbury Avenue, we talked about the idea. Thankfully, they loved it and were brimming with great ideas and suggestions; we jabbered away for a few hours, I went home and the next day I wrote an eleven-page outline and sent it off to them. They approved it with hardly any changes, and I promptly started writing. It was barely even like work – when you have an idea that really flows, it comes very easily, and Bad Sisters certainly did. Ironically, the title came last, suggested by my editor! Well, someone else had already taken Three Sisters…

'What it's really like to be a published author'

Tara Hyland

As a little girl, I would furtively read Enid Blyton well past my bedtime, hidden under the duvet with a torch, listening out for my parents’ footsteps on the stairs. I loved the magical world that authors created, how it allowed me to escape from my ordinary life, and longed to be able to do the same.

So seeing my first novel, Daughters of Fortune, being published is a dream come true for me. Yes, it’s a horrible cliché, and as a writer I should be able to come up with something better. But while it may be unoriginal, it’s also true.

The road to publication hasn’t been without its heartaches, though. It’s been three years since I finished the manuscript for Daughters of Fortune, so I’ve certainly had a long buildup to seeing it in print. And inevitably with all that anticipation, the actual event threatened to be an anticlimax.

With so much time on my hands, I made the classic mistake: I turned stalker. In an age when there’s so much information available on the Internet, it was hard not to sneak a look at how other authors were doing. From the news sections on their website, to twitter and facebook, I would read all about their fabulous reviews, tremendous sales, brilliant new book deals… 

Sitting alone at my computer, it made for depressing reading. How was I ever going to compete against all these amazingly successful authors? Nothing that great was happening to me! It took my husband to point out that people only ever publicize their good news, so I was inevitably getting a skewed idea of how well my peers were doing.

That made me feel better for a while at least. But there were also other unavoidable setbacks, which inevitably got blown out of proportion in this overly sensitive – i.e. totally neurotic – writer’s mind.

A few days before publication, I was invited to take part in a feature on debut novelists. There was going to be a photo shoot and an interview, so I excitedly booked my hairdressing appointment, arranged to go shopping with my mum for a new outfit, began to drink lots of water so I wouldn’t get that inevitable zit…

And then an email arrived telling me that my services were no longer required. Along with disappointment came those nagging concerns: why didn’t they want me? Was it because the editor didn’t like my book? Did she decide I wasn’t interesting enough? Or, worse still, that I was too ugly!

But as the publication date got nearer, things began to improve. I started to get excited texts and emails from friends who’d spotted posters of Daughters of Fortune at train and tube stations. It was named book of the month on CBS. There was a fantastic full-page advert in Company magazine.

And then there it was – Daughters of Fortune was finally in the shops! I confess that even now – three weeks later – I can’t walk past a bookstore without going in to check out if they stock my book! It’s pretty much everywhere, prominently displayed at the front of stores and in the book charts.

As my publishers have started passing on sales news, things got even better. People were actually going to buy the book! Lots of them, too. But most importantly of all, I started receiving emails from readers – telling me how much they loved my book.

My best moment so far? Being in a bookstore in Waterloo Station, and seeing someone actually going up to the counter to buy Daughters of Fortune. It didn’t even cross my mind to go up and say that I was the author! I wouldn’t have wanted to put someone on the spot like that. But I can’t help wondering what she would have said if I had…