This book, A Little Learning, is where my writing life began, for this is the first book I ever had published, originally for Headline Publishers but later bought and re-issued by HarperCollins. At the time, I was living in beautiful North Wales, moving from Birmingham after I had been invalided out of teaching because a spinal injury left me unable to walk and in a wheelchair.
As I had time on my hands – a luxury I hadn’t had before – I decided to take to writing seriously. I had been dabbling from when I was a child though I never dreamt I would ever make my living this way. I initially researched and wrote about the origin of nursery rhymes, something that has always intrigued me, and then books for the children I had taught, which were never published and are still in manuscript form. I then wrote short stories for Writing Magazine which I received every month though never submitted to them until 1995 when I wrote a spoof romance for a writing competition centred around Valentine’s Day and won second prize which was a year’s subscription to the Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA).
Although I didn’t want to write straight romance I joined and found they ran a critique service called the New Writers’ Scheme (NWS) and as they would consider all stories with an emotional content, I sent my first submission in September of that year. My reader said it was good, but not good enough for publication and explained why it wasn’t. So, armed with that assessment, I wrote my second novel in 1996 making sure I didn’t make the same mistakes again. This time a different reader said it was too wordy and suggested losing 30,000 words. It meant a rewrite which I completed in four months before sending it to Headline Publishers.
The editor at Headline liked it but also suggested changes and corrections which I took on board and eventually that book became this one which they published in the spring of 1998 after offering me a two-book contract. Altogether I had four books initially published by Headline before we parted company in 2001 and I joined HarperCollins. I found Harper Collins an amazing publishing house to work for and have sixteen books published by them in addition to the Headline ones.
I have now been in the writing business for twenty-one mainly happy years and I am busier than ever and consider myself a very fortunate person doing a job I love.
‘Do you really want to sit the exams for grammar school?’ Duncan asked his sister, hardly able to believe she did.
Janet spun round in excitement. ‘More than anything,’ she said.
Duncan stared at his sister in astonishment. He couldn’t understand her, and that bothered him, because he and Janet had always been very close, at least till this business. He couldn’t deny she was excited, it shone out of her. He’d never thought of Janet as pretty. He was the good-looking one, with his blond curls and brilliant blue eyes. When he was younger, people were always saying he was too pretty to be a boy and what a shame his sister was so plain. He’d never looked at Janet much, she was just his sister, but he looked at her now. He noted that the mousy hair, that Mom made her keep short because of the risk of nits, seemed to have more body and was somehow fluffed out around her face. Even her eyes, usually a nondescript sort of deep grey, sparkled with excitement and transformed her whole face. Her skin had lost its sallowness and her mouth didn’t seem so large, caught up as it was in a beam of happiness.
Duncan couldn’t help grinning back at his sister. Janet’s delight was infectious. He shook his head as he said, ‘Well, I can see you’re pleased, Jan, but I don’t see what you’ve got to be pleased about.’
‘Oh, Duncan, it’s what I’ve always dreamed of.’
‘Well,’ Duncan said, ‘if it means that much to you I hope you pass, but I still think you need your head testing.’
Janet watched Duncan kicking a ball up the garden for his young twin brothers to run after, but didn’t run after them. They’d all been sent to the garden because their parents wanted to talk, and Janet knew what about. Though her father had come round a bit about the exams, in the beginning he was all for not letting Janet take them at all. She knew he was worried about the expense of it all, like keeping her at school all those extra years and buying her uniform. Her mother said she’d just fix it and Janet would like to believe her, but how would she find money they hadn’t got? She chewed at her thumb nail and wished she could hear what was being said inside.
‘Well, say our Janet passes this bloody exam you talked me into letting her sit,’ Bert said glumly, ‘how the hell are we going to afford the uniform? This bloke at work told me it costs a bleeding fortune.’
Betty knew only too well that it did – she’d checked it herself – but if Janet passed, then somehow the money for the uniform had to be found.
‘We’ll afford it, don’t you worry,’ she said fiercely.
‘Look, old girl,’ Bert said, ‘I don’t want to put a damper on the whole thing, but exactly how are we to pay for it all?’
‘I’ll get a Co-op cheque out,’ Betty promised. ‘That will do for the uniform at least, and paid in weekly, it won’t be so bad.’
‘And how will you pay for that?’ Bert persisted. ‘A five-pound cheque won’t cover this.’
‘I know,’ Betty said impatiently. ‘I suppose I could go back on the twilight shift at the sauce factory. Our Breda could put a word in, and they always said I could go back.’
‘I know that’s what they said, but I don’t think it’s right, you working nights like that just to send our girl to grammar school,’ Bert said.
‘Don’t you see!’ Betty cried. ‘I’m going to work so she won’t have to work like me. I’m going, to give her a chance.’
‘You said all this before,’ grumbled Bert, ‘when you and that Miss Wentworth talked me round for her to put in for the bloody exam in the first place.’
