Early years

I come from Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England, UK. Barnsley is a medium-sized ex-mining town in the north of England (inbetween Leeds and Sheffield if you need a pointer).

It’s done a great job of regenerating itself after all the mines closed and we have a surprising amount of creatives who come from here: poets, actors, musicians and artists, even world famous Egyptologists, and writers like Barry Hines who you might know as the novelist behind the film ‘Kes’ and Joanne Harris who wrote, among many other things, Chocolat (her mum and dad taught me French at school).

I’ve lived in Barnsley all my life – apart from four years at University in Exeter, Devon doing Drama and Education and thirteen years in the village of Haworth in West Yorkshire, where the very famous Bronte family lived. I went there hoping to catch some Bronte writing magic. I married there and had children before coming back to my OG home part of the county.

The dream

I can’t remember a time before I didn’t want to write. I wanted to make people feel about my books the way I felt about books myself – bereft when I’d finished them, or I’d laugh or cry real tears at emotional parts.  

But I didn’t think that ordinary girls like me got those sorts of jobs (I know, I know.) The trouble was I was split down the middle; half of me was saying I had no chance and to be sensible and get a proper job, the other half was telling me that it was all I wanted to do.  

I listened to side A too much in the beginning. I was an academic at school so it made sense for me to go to university and I did a vocational teaching degree in drama and education.

I didn’t really want to be either a teacher or an actress but, mixing with a load of actors on a film set on a summer job I had, I did realise that they were all giving it their best shot even though some of them would make it big (and they did – Game of Thrones big!) and some would fall by the wayside… they were trying to make their dreams come true.

‘Proper’ jobs

I left university, trained for a while as an accountant in a building society (oh my – I hated that job so much), moved to Haworth and supplemented my income in the late 1980s by asking greetings cards firms if they’d buy the four-line verse I used to write on the train travelling to and from work.

One wonderful firm replied and said that they’d like to give me a chance as a ghost writer, writing copy for a new project – Purple Ronnie. Having some of my poems turned into those cards spurred me on so much. They might have only been daft cards (which turned out to be a multi-million pound industry phenomenon) but I – YES I – was in print!  I started to write my first book about a woman who fell in love with a vampire but the rejection letters came thick and fast. Seems I was too early for a girl/vampire love story (plus it was a bit crap) but I finished it.

The accountancy job didn’t last very long. There was only one coat that fitted, so I did a selection of various jobs in various places to pay the mortgage then once I was at home, I dragged out my typewriter that my dad bought me and wrote.  The trouble was I had nothing much to say. The books I write have come from a lot of life experience and I hadn’t had any then. And the books I attempted back then had no real sense of where they were set because I couldn’t write about the south and I didn’t think anyone would be interested in hearing about the north.

It was only when I was sacked for having too much of a ‘common’ Yorkshire accent (by a Yorkshire woman who had a Yorkshire firm in Yorkshire) that my humiliation led me to a state of sheer resolve that my next book would be set in Yorkshire and stuffed full of Yorkshire. And it was. But it was also rubbish and more rejection letters followed.

I had a succession of short-term jobs, in offices, mills, banks, sales, exports and I hated them all, but I loved the women I worked with and they informed my writing.  I worked with older women who showed me that friendships knocked down barriers of age, background, colour, creed. And I worked with younger women who were fabulous fun.  I ‘lived’ in my 20s and 30s, had some great times and horrific times and it coloured and enriched how and what I wrote.

When I lost my job days before I found out I was pregnant, I wrote off to loads of greetings cards firms and asked them to buy my wares. And they did. I set up a little company called ‘Black Sheep’ and I became a professional joke and rhyme writer. I was content, happy, working from home with a wonderful set of people to meet up with on work events… but there was just that one missing piece in my jigsaw. My job was the silver medal position and there was only one gold for me – becoming a novelist.

The start of it all

When I fell pregnant , it was at the same time as two of my pals. My journey through pregnancy was nothing like I thought it would be. I kept a diary both times I was pregnant which was to come in handy.  

One day, sitting in my front room with these two friends after the births of our first-borns, I experienced a lightbulb moment.  ‘Why aren’t you writing about this?’ said the lightbulb. ‘Friendships, Yorkshire, pregnancy, work, relationships… the extraordinary things that happen within the parameters of ordinary, everyday life.’

That dropped a seed in my head. I carried on being a copywriter, moved back to Barnsley from Haworth, filed for divorce when I was pregnant with my second son and then I hit forty. I was feeling that life was passing me by and I needed to get a move on if I was to become the novelist I wanted to be. So I used my pregnancy diaries and started to write a story about three friends who became pregnant at the same time and sent it off to the agent I had been chasing on and off for FIFTEEN YEARS. And Lucie Whitehouse, who was an agent there then (now a crime writer who is amazing and lives in New York) sold me to Simon and Schuster and the rest… as they say… is history.

Chase the dream

I am the poster girl for giving it your best shot and making it happen and many of my books do feature women who have been knocked into an alternative groove to the one they always imagined they’d be in but find their way back to their dreams.  

I got my publishing deal when I was forty-one.  

I love what I do and I hope that comes through in my work. I have sold millions of copies of my books all around the globe now.

So you see what you can achieve if you just put your mind to it even if the odds are against you. I had never done a creative writing class, didn’t know anyone in the industry. I was a single mum of two small boys holding down a full-time job and I had to write my books through the night until I was earning enough to let the day job go. 

It can be done.