The Waverley Gazette

‘Our time in The Sunday Post’ at The West End Festival

When Jill Scott and Bill Hicks began working for The Sunday Post in the 1970s, the paper was listed in The Guinness Book of Records as the best-read paper in the world. It sold over 1.5 million copies a week. Jill Scott and Bill Hicks have recently been promoting their book on the history of the Glasgow Central Hotel (Waverley Books) and are helping to promote Bill Anderson’s book, God Bless Mrs McGinty – My Life and The Sunday Post (Waverley Books). (Bill Anderson was Editor of The Sunday Post 1968-1990 and Glasgow based HON Man – holiday on nothing).

Otter Books, Nelson, BC, Canada - Waverley Real Cloth Tartan notebooks

Woodbridge Emporium: Jan Ellis's The Bookshop Detective, and A Summer of Surprises on display in Suffolk

Romance in France, romance in London, romance in Devon.

Jan Ellis lives in Wells, Somerset and is an academic. So just how does an academic turn her hand to writing a funny romantic novel? And funny with an edge? For example, in The Bookshop Detective the main character Eleanor has got married for the second time, but refuses to move in with her husband. She does not want to leave the lovely sanctuary of her tiny cottage, attached to her business, a bookshop called ‘The Reading Room’ in a seaside town in Devon.

And in French Kisses, published 4^th May by Waverley Books, Rachel is suddenly left alone with her two children in France, when her husband leaves her for the children’s dance teacher. Rather than fall apart, Rachel has to create a new job for herself to maintain a life for her and the children. With a little help from her friends and family, she turns the house into a cosy B&B.

Is there a theme emerging here?

Born and brought up in Manchester, Jan Ellis now lives in Somerset. For many years Jan lived and worked in London. Creative and resourceful, Jan herself wanted a different life and ended up moving to the country. Her female characters all also to seem to have something of the city-life-turned-country-living gal about them, but in a working, real way. None of them are ladies who lunch.

‘You write about what you know,’ Jan Ellis says on this point. ‘A London Affair is about a young woman who is pushed one way by her parents and boyfriend, and instead goes to London to work and try a new life. In French Kisses, Rachel is determined to fight for her way of life and find new ways to stay put. In An Unexpected Affair (the first story featuring bookshop owner Eleanor Mace), Eleanor moves from London to Devon, but finds she has just taken her problems with her. So she discovers an old flame online and sets off to the South of France (with her sister as protection) to find a man she last saw in her twenties’.

The second novella with An Unexpected Affair is A Summer of Surprises is a gentle humorous story of one woman’s efforts to rebuild her life that is entertaining and wry.

Jan Ellis writes about ordinary women who need to work for a living. They live down to earth lives, and don’t have love dropping into their laps on page one.

All the books are available from Waverley Books and can be ordered from bookshops or online.