When did you first consider yourself a writer? by Jane Riddell | Chergui's Child Book Tour

Chergui's Child by Jane Riddell is on virtual book tour.

The women's psychological fiction stops at Readeropolis with an author guest post.

Be sure to enter for a chance to win the giveaway for a $10 Amazon GC and follow the Silver Dagger book tour (for other dates see the link at the bottom of the post).

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

During the year 2007. Until then, writing had been a hobby. In a dark green hardbacked notebook with red tape binding, I wrote my first “book” aged 10, entitled The Missing Piece of Paper. It was trying to emulate Sherlock Holmes and I have no recollection of the plot. If only I’d kept it…

As an adult, I wrote intermittently, mainly short articles. During those years I worked as a dietitian and then a health promoter with the health service. Without having read any Mills & Boon, I wrote, Seychelles Song, in my thirties. It had a romantic theme and was rejected by Mills & Boon as not being up to the standard their readers expected. I then read one, and could understand why mine had been turned down. After all, a great-aunt, however spirited, doesn’t quite cut it as a main character in the world of romance.

Several drafts of my second novel, followed, but still I regarded my writing as an interest. Things changed when my family and I moved to France in 2006 for three years. Several months before leaving, I had a pivotal moment at the gym on a wet Saturday afternoon. While on the treadmill listening to “Dancing in the Street” I thought, “I’ll give my writing a go.” And I did.

Because of my limited French, I was unable to find work in France, so writing became more serious and productive. However, it was only halfway through our time there that I was able to say to people, “I’m a writer” without the inner voice taunting me, with “Who are you trying to kid?’ Now I easily tell people what I do. Without the questioning.

Chergui's Child

by Jane Riddell

Genre: Women's Psychological Fiction

Olivia has much to cope with. An embittered mother who puts her ambitions for her children before their own needs. A predatory professor who ends their affair when she becomes pregnant. Giving birth to twins in a Tangier hospital and believing neither has survived. Grief and loss overwhelm her and she abandons her studies. Then from her beloved aunt Dorothy, artistic, eccentric and mysteriously wealthy, she learns that one of the babies did survive and has been adopted. When her aunt dies she leaves Olivia a handsome legacy with the condition that it must be used to find and bring up the lost child. Olivia’s journey takes her from London to the south of France, with startling and painful revelations along the way.

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Jane Riddell is the author of novels: Daughters of the Lake, Chergui’s Child and Things We Choose to Hide.  She has also written a novella in the form of a diary, penned by a Russian cat who comes to Edinburgh to learn about creative writing: The Bakhtin Chronicles: Academia.  Inspired by her own editing process, she has published a short guide entitled Words’Worth: a fiction writer’s guide to serious editing.

Formerly Jane worked as a dietitian and health promoter for the NHS in the UK.  But after three years living in the beautiful Rhône Alps area of France, she decided to devote her mental energy to writing.

Jane lives in Edinburgh and apart from an abiding love of chocolate (her only vice), her passions include travelling and photography.  She regularly looks after animals – mainly cats – all over Europe, which inspires her writing and indulges her photography.

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