Thank you to all of the authors who kindly gave up their time to answer our questions and offer words of wisdom and comfort to our valuable and brave front line staff. Their words have been interesting, inspiring and poignant and have also raised a few smiles during a difficult winter.
If you missed any of the posts you can catch up on them here
Thank you Jason Beresford, Vera Waters, Katie Fforde, Neil White, Catherine Jones, Milly Johnson, Debbie Johnson, Charlie Connolly, Laura Kemp and Araminta Hall for taking part in this project. We wish you all great success with your future writing projects.
We have a selection of books by these authors on display in the library. See the collection in our catalogue here. Please email us with any requests: academic.library@lscft.nhs.uk
Araminta Hall has worked as a writer, journalist and teacher. Her first novel, Everything & Nothing, was published in 2011 and became a Richard & Judy read that year. Her second, Dot, was published in 2013.
She teaches creative writing at New Writing South in Brighton, where she lives with her husband and three children. She is the great niece of Dodie Smith and great granddaughter of Lawrence Beesley, who survived the Titanic and wrote a bestselling account of the tragedy in the book, The Loss of the SS Titanic.
Her book, Our Kind of Cruelty, was published by Penguin Random House in 2018. It is a deeply unsettling thriller of a love story, in which a secret game between lovers has deadly consequences… This was followed by her latest novel, Imperfect Women, published by Orion in August 2020.
As our featured author, Araminta has kindly answered a few questions for us about books that have entertained and inspired her and her work as an author.
Laura Kemp started writing to get out of doing a real job.
A journalist for 15 years, she turned freelance after having a baby because she couldn’t get out of the house, washed and dressed, until lunchtime at the earliest.
A columnist and contributor, she regularly writes for national newspapers and magazines, such as The Daily Mail, The Sun and Grazia, and spends too much time on Twitter.
Married with a son and a neurotic cat, Laura lives in the provinces, where she goes about her business ignorant of what’s on-trend until it reaches her town, by which time it’s out of fashion.
Laura’s first novel Mums Like Us was published by Arrow in February 2013 and Mums on Strike was published in January 2014. The Late Blossoming of Frankie Green was published by Head of Zeus in June 2016, The Year of Surprising Acts of Kindness was published by Orion in February 2018, and Bring Me Sunshine was published in June 2019.
Her latest novel, Under A Starry Sky, was published in paperback in July 2020.
As our featured author, Laura has kindly answered a few questions for us about books that have entertained and inspired her and her work as an author.
Charlie Connelly is a bestselling author and award-winning broadcaster. His many books include Attention All Shipping: A Journey Round The Shipping Forecast, In Search of Elvis: A Journey To Find The Man Beneath The Jumpsuit and And Did Those Feet: Walking Through 2000 Years Of British And Irish History. Three of his books have featured as Radio 4′s Book of the Week read by Martin Freeman, Stephen Mangan and Tom Goodman-Hill.
Charlie was also a popular presenter on the BBC1 Holiday programme and co-presented the first three series of BBC Radio 4′s Traveller’s Tree with Fi Glover.
His book Gilbert: The Last Years of WG Grace was shortlisted for the 2016 MCC/Cricket Society Book of the Year. The book he wrote with his friend Bernard Sumner, Chapter And Verse: New Order, Joy Division And Me was shortlisted for Book of the Year at the NME Awards, while his most recent co-writing project, Winner: A Racing Life with the champion jockey AP McCoy was shortlisted for Sports Autobiography of the Year.
His book, Last Train to Hilversum, was published by Bloomsbury in 2019 and is followed by his latest work, The Channel, published in 2020.
He has written comedy scripts for BBC radio and RTÉ radio in Ireland and made documentaries for BBC Radio 4 on subjects as diverse as the poetry of Noel Coward and the legendary cricket coach Alf Gover.
As our featured author, Charlie has kindly answered a few questions for us about books that have entertained and inspired him and his work as an author.
Debbie Johnson is a best-selling author who lives and works in Liverpool, where she divides her time between writing, caring for a small tribe of children and animals, and not doing the housework.
She worked as a journalist for many years, until she decided it would be more fun to make up her own stories than to tell other people’s.
After trying her hand at pretty much every genre of writing other than Westerns and spy dramas, she now specialises in creating uplifting women’s fiction that seems to make people laugh and make people cry, often at the same time.
Her books focus on the things that really matter to most of us – love, family, community and getting by with a little help from our friends. They include The A-Z of Everything and the hugely successful Comfort Food Cafe series.
Debbie has now sold more than 1,000,000 copies of her books, and is published in the USA, France, Germany, Sweden, Holland, Turkey, Italy and Ukraine. Two of her books – The A-Z of Everything and Never Kiss A Man in a Christmas Sweater – have been optioned for film/TV.
As our featured author, Debbie has kindly answered a few questions for us about books that have entertained and inspired her and her work as an author.
Milly Johnson is an international novelist, poet, after-dinner speaker, professional joke writer, script-writer, columnist, cruise correspondent, short-story writer and winner of Come Dine With Me. She lives in Barnsley with her partner, her teenage sons, rescue cats, her dog and Alan the rabbit.
After leaving university Milly trained for a while as an accountant in a building society, a job she truly hated. She supplemented her income by writing copy for greetings cards by Purple Ronnie. Having some of her poems turned into these popular greetings cards spurred her on in her writing and she started to write her first book.
A succession of jobs followed. In offices, mills, banks, sales, exports – she hated them all, but loved the women she worked with and they informed her writing. She worked with older women who showed her that friendships knocked down barriers of age, background, colour, creed. And she worked with younger women who were fabulously nutty. She ‘lived’ in her 20s and 30s – had some great times and horrific times and it coloured and enriched how and what she wrote.
When she was made redundant the week before finding out she was pregnant, Milly wrote off to greetings cards firms and asked them to buy her wares. And they did. She set up a little company called ‘Black Sheep’ and became a professional joke writer which was the best job she had ever had in her life. She 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 her jigsaw. It was the silver medal job and there was only one gold – the novel.
Milly fell pregnant at the same time as two of her pals. Their journey through pregnancy was an insightful one and she experienced a lightbulb moment. Realising that extraordinary exists within the parameters of ordinary, everyday life she started to write a story about friendships, Yorkshire, pregnancy and work. And the rest is history.
She got her publishing deal when she was 40. She loves what she does and hopes that this comes through in her work.
As our featured author, Milly has kindly answered a few questions for us about books that have entertained and inspired her and her work as an author.
Catherine Jones is a best-selling romantic novelist, also writing as Kate Lace and Fiona Field.
She went to one, all-girls’ school from 4 -18 and left to join the army where the ratio of men to women (500:1) was much more satisfactory. In the next few years she met her husband, moved countless times and discovered extreme sports.
When, after eight years of marriage, she fell pregnant and had to give her job up, she produced three children in four-and-a-half years and wrote a book taking the micky out of being an army wife. Luckily even the army liked the book so her husband kept his job until he decided that 17 moves were more than enough and it was time to stop.
Catherine now writes romantic novels (she has had 22 published), lives in her own home in Oxfordshire where she has put down roots, got to know her neighbours and looks after her cats, kids and husband (not listed in any order of priority). She is vice chairman of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and captained their team in University Challenge – The Professionals in 2005.
As our featured author, Catherine has kindly answered a few questions for us about books that have entertained and inspired her and her work as an author.
Best-selling author Neil White is a criminal lawyer as well as a crime writer.
He was born above a shoe shop in Mexborough, a small northern mining town, and grew up on an estate on the edge of Wakefield. His father worked in the shoe trade but seemed happiest when he was reading a book, and he filled the house with them: sci-fi, horror and history books. And if it wasn’t books, it was Johnny Cash who took over.
Neil’s books were initially set in America but after rewriting them to change their settings to England he had more success. After swapping Chicago for London and Indiana for a small town in Lancashire he caught the interest of a publisher.
He veered away from crime briefly and wrote the book he had always wanted to write, Lost In Nashville. He had always wanted to visit the places Johnny Cash sang about, so he did, but crafted a book from it. It is a tale of a father and son who travel Johnny Cash’s life and songs and try to reconnect along the way. It is his favourite of all his books, purely because it has so much emotional resonance for him.
Eventually Neil gave up full-time lawyering and turned mainly to writing, although he still practices as a freelance lawyer.
Neil has kindly answered a few questions for us about books that have entertained and inspired him and his work as an author.
Katie Fforde is a popular best-selling author of modern day romance books. She believes that falling in love is the best thing in the world, and wants all her characters to experience it, and her readers to share their stories.
Katie first started writing when her mother gave her a writing kit for Christmas, and once she started she just couldn’t stop. She has now written 28 novels. Her first, Living Dangerously, was published in 1995 and her most recent, A Springtime Affair, was published in paperback in January this year.
Each of Katie’s books explores a different profession or background and her research has helped her to bring these to life. She has been a porter in an auction house, tried her hand at pottery, refurbished furniture, delved behind the scenes of a dating website, and has even been on a Ray Mears survival course.
Katie has kindly answered a few questions for us about books that have entertained and inspired her and her work as an author. Read the interview here.
Vera Waters is a member of the Society of Authors and has written several books including ‘Half a Rainbow: Insight into Stress’, which was first published in 1990 and ‘Another Cup: An Anthology of Encounters’ (published in 2017). Her books are collections of true stories about people she has met throughout her interesting life and career. As well as writing and speaking to audiences, Vera is a prodigious reader with a collection of over 3,500 books at home.
Vera has kindly answered a few questions for us about books that have entertained and inspired her and her work as an author.
With a background in education, Vera’s career and life experience has taken her into many varied areas and situations. Trouble Shooter, Pioneer, an Agent of Change – this is how the Press have described her over the years. From Berlin to Australia and then over 12 years in America where she is billed as an inspirational and motivational speaker or as the Virginians say a ‘Stem-Winder’.
After holding an important senior position in the NHS at a Preston based psychiatric hospital, Vera found herself advising Greater Manchester Police and Lancashire Constabulary. She was the first private counsellor to be retained by a police force and was awarded a rare Home Office Research Grant. She taught police officers of all ranks in 21 forces how to approach people with mental health issues and worked debriefing officers after traumatic events, such as the 1985 Manchester Airport disaster.
Vera’s interesting career and philosophy on life are truly inspiring and her books are filled with fascinating, moving true stories that will resonate or educate.
Read more about Vera and her diverse and fascinating career on her website. Vera’s collection of books are available to borrow now in the Gosall Library or, may be purchased online here.
