I have written stories for as long as I can remember. My first readers were my classmates at Grammar School – I used to write steamy romantic serials on paper torn from my exercise books, which were passed from hand to hand. Every episode ended with a cliffhanger, and I was kept busy keeping up with demand, until I was caught writing under the desk in a chemistry class. That put an end to my career for a long while!
I began writing professionally when I was a young mother and the wife of a policeman. Bored with washing nappies and sorely in need of some extra money, I wrote a short story and sent it off to a woman’s magazine. It sold! I continued writing short stories and serials, mostly commissioned, for about ten years before satisfying my desire to write something longer and more enduring.
My first novel, THE BLACK MOUNTAINS, was published in 1981 under my own name, Janet Tanner. This was set in a Somerset mining town – based on my home town, Radstock – and followed the Hall family from 1911-1921. It included many stories told me by my father, who had worked as a ‘carting boy’ in that era, although the plot was pure fiction. Eventually it became just the first in a quartet of books which followed the same family through succeeding generations up to the 1950s.
Many other Janet Tanner books followed – then, with move to Headline, my present publisher, in 2008, I became Amelia Carr, a name I borrowed from my younger granddaughter! DANCE WITH WINGS was the first of four multi-generational sagas, set partly in the present day and partly in the past.
Headline then asked me to write a series of family sagas, and so Jennie Felton and the Families of Fairley Terrace were born!
When I’m not writing I enjoy reading, walking, and swimming. And I love travelling, either researching exotic backgrounds or sitting on the patio in the sunshine in Madeira enjoying a glass of wine while I write!
Sadly, I lost my darling husband, Terry, in 2013, but I am lucky to have two amazing daughters and four wonderful grandchildren. At the end of May, 2016, I moved to lovely Leigh Woods, Bristol, so I am now much closer to all of them.
We always had dogs, German Shepherds, a Goldie, and a little Italian dog, Millie, who was rescued in Naples. Unfortunately I don’t have a dog at the moment, but love looking after my daughter’s little dog, Cooper, and my grandsons gecko.
Oh – and I have a private pilot’s licence – probably my proudest achievement! I don’t fly any more now, but taking to the skies was a great adventure I shall never forget.
So – that’s my life in a nutshell ….
And now I must get on with writing the latest story of The Families of Fairley Terrace …
But please, don’t forget I always love to hear from you, my dear readers!
