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
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.
We are looking for good quality used books to add to our stock for our patient libraries
If you have any books that you have finished with that you would be willing to donate to the library please let us know. These can be dropped off in the library or posted to us in the internal mail:-
The Gosall Library, Lantern Centre, Vicarage Lane, Preston PR2 8DW
The books will be sent to our patient libraries at the Harbour, Guild Lodge and the Cove for our patients to enjoy.
We are looking for books of up to about 5 years old, or in good condition, in any genre, paperback or hardback, including books suitable for children and young people (ages 8 to 18).
If you have a pile of books waiting to be taken to the charity shops when they re-open maybe we can take them off your hands instead! Or, as spring is just around the corner, maybe it is time for a spring clean?
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.
Now that we are into a new year why not try reading something new, a new author or genre maybe?
We have a large collection of fiction in the Gosall library, you can search our catalogue here. If you normally read crime or mystery novels why not try reading a biography? Or if fantasy is normally your bag why not give romance a go?!
We have a few ideas on display in the main library and the rest of our fiction collection can be found in the snug. Please feel free to browse and check out any books of interest using the self-issue machine. Alternatively, email the library team at academic.library@lscft.nhs.uk and we can post books out to you.
The library team is also happy to recommend books for you.
This month, the online book group will be talking about The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer. As a young boy, Matthew loses his older brother while on a family holiday. Now nineteen, this is the story of how he deals with this loss and his own mental illness.
Register your place to join the online discussion here
Join the King’s Fund for their online book group in July when readers will be discussing So lucky by Nicola Griffith. The novel follows Mara Tagarelli who discovers in the space of a week that her wife is leaving her and that she has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The novel is an exploration of identity, disability and ableism.
