Guest Post ~~ Jeanette Ford ~ Author and New Blogger

Hello, people! Please welcome new blogger and author Jeanette Ford. Today Jeanette tells us how she began writing and what lead her to write her books. Take it away Jeanette!

 

 

Hi Jackie, thank you very much for inviting me to be a guest on your blog. This is so exciting for me because, as a new and almost completely unknown author, this is something I’ve never done before. I’m so grateful to you for giving me the chance to get my face shown out there. I’m a new blogger too and thus far I have enjoyed meeting some fellow bloggers; they are all such lovely people and I look forward to meeting many more.

When I was little, because of my illnesses, I spent a lot of time alone at home. I always had my nose in a book and therefore I had an active imagination and loved to write too. I carried on writing in various ways over the years during my busy life as the mother of six children – so much for being ‘delicate’ – mostly writing letters, some memoirs which I called ‘Norfolk Reflections’ and later when I took a college course, I adored doing all the writing involved and was sorry when I had finished the course. There followed a job I loved as a Teaching Assistant in a junior school until I retired.

Because of my illnesses, I ended up going to a special school for children who were struggling like me. Of recent years, I came into contact with fellow pupils from that school through a facebook page. I ‘met’ a man whose sisters had attended the school the same time as me and we connected immediately, especially when we discovered that we both liked writing. He joined a poetry group and encouraged me to join too. So I found myself writing poetry. Then I went on to a ‘Flash Fiction’ group and started writing for that. Eventually, I thought I’d like to write a book and so, in 2011, I wrote ‘The Sixpenny Tiger’ based upon my experience of working in a children’s home back in the nineteen sixties.

I found myself hooked and when I took voluntary early retirement because my school was having some financial problems, I wrote three books in the first year of my retirement. Two of those books are now available from Amazon: ‘Rosa’, a psychological thriller and ‘Bell of Warning’, a ghostly tale set in Cromer where I grew up. The third one I wrote is a children’s book, called ‘Robin’s Ring’, which as yet is not published as I’m still waiting for someone to draw the interior pictures for me. I have a third book published called ‘The Hiraeth’, which is the first book of a trilogy, inspired by the beautiful ruined castle, Gwrych, in North Wales. ‘The Sixpenny Tiger’, a story about a boy subjected to abuse, is to be published very soon.

Because of my ‘delicate’ childhood, I am uneducated really; I have no ‘O’ or ‘A’ levels, I have never studied at university, I have never taken a writing course or won any competitions. I never went out of the country until 2007. I write about what I know and about the places I know. I am fascinated by atmospheric places and intrigued by life after death and so, some of my books lean towards the ghostly. But I don’t write in a particular genre; I write what comes to me, be it a ghost story, or a children’s tale or about the plight of a child in care or even a picture book for very young children. I have in mind a sort of crime thriller which I intend to have a go at doing at some point in the future. I hardly know what I’m going to be writing next but one thing I’m sure of – I’m not going to stop until I have to!

 

 

 

Thank you so much for guest posting Jeanette! I love your attitude on writing. Just write what inspires you. If anyone is interested in purchasing Jeanette’s books, please look up Jeanette on Amazon by typing in Jeanette Taylor Ford and there you will find all her books for sale. Also, please visit her blog and say Jackie sent you….you can find it here.