My guest today is popular author Fiona Gibson. Fiona is going to talk to us about her writing journey, and her latest book. So grab yourself a cuppa, get cosy and let’s get chatting to Fiona.

Short bio

Fiona was born in a youth hostel in Yorkshire. She started working on teen magazine Jackie at age 17, then went on to join Just Seventeen and More! where she invented the infamous ‘Position of the Fortnight.’ Fiona now lives in Scotland with her husband Jimmy, their three children and a wayward rescue collie cross called Jack. For more info, visit http://www.fionagibson.com. You can follow Fiona on Twitter @fionagibson.

Welcome Fiona. Can you tell us about your writing journey?

As a teenager I’d always been obsessed with magazines. Grabbing my copy of Jackie really was the highlight of my week. It was my dad who spotted a tiny recruitment ad in our local paper – Jackie’s publishers, DC Thomson, were looking for new recruits for their magazines in Dundee. I went along for an interview and was delighted to be offered a job.

At seventeen, having just left school, it was heaven to work in the office where Jackie was made. I had a bedsit and bunch of new friends, all my own age – many are still friends now, over forty years on – and it was far too much fun to be called work really. I wrote the horoscopes (which I made up), features on all kinds of stuff, and those multi-choice quizzes: ‘How to tell if he has a crush on you’ type thing! So much was about how to ‘get noticed’ by boys. It was a different era. But I think Jackie was a hugely important source of information for teenage girls, like the wiser older sister you’d always wanted.

From Jackie I moved to London to work on Just Seventeen, which I also loved – again, it was a fantastic gang and we had a ball all running around Soho together. It was hard to leave, but I thought I should find a more grown up magazine to work on as I progressed through my twenties. I worked on a couple of TV magazines, which was fun and interesting but not completely my thing. At one point I lived on a narrowboat on the canal. I was Features Editor on a TV magazine and I didn’t even have a TV!

I moved to More! magazine – my first editor’s job. I loved it there and came up with an idea for a regular feature which ended up going on for years. Whenever I mention ‘Position of the Fortnight’ at book readings there’s an immediate and very enthusiastic response from women of a certain age. People really remember that. Sometimes we’d act out positions in the office (fully clothed of course!) to check they were feasible and that no one was going to injure themselves.

By the time I reached my early thirties I’d had my twin sons, and decided to step away from the crazy hours of magazine life and go freelance instead. I’d always written short stories on the side, for various women’s magazines, but decided to try writing a novel, which I’d always had an inkling to do.

An agent got in touch, saying she liked my magazine columns and asking if I wrote fiction at all. I quickly dashed off a few chapters and sent them to her. She liked them, and thought the idea had legs – so I cranked out the whole novel and my agent sold it to the publishers, Hodder.

I hadn’t really found my ‘novel writing’ feet at that point, and it was only when I wrote my fourth book that I felt I’d settled on the writing ‘voice’ that felt most natural to me. I learned to lighten up, to have fun with writing and to treat it as if I was writing columns for magazines.

Since then, I’ve changed agents and publishers, and it hasn’t all been plain sailing – but in twenty years I’ve written around twenty-four books (I’ve actually lost count) and scored a few top ten best sellers. It’s been hard work but it’s given me a decent living for most of that time.

I still love writing fiction and at the moment I’m contracted to write two novels a year. It can be tricky, working alone for so much of the time – but when the words are flowing, there’s nothing quite like it. After all this time it still thrills me. It really is the best feeling in the world.

What a fantastic writing journey, Fiona. Thanks for dropping by to talk to us about it. Wishing you lots of luck with your future writing.

Fiona’s new novel, The Full Nest, is published by Avon. You can read her weekly column at fionagibson.substack.com

Fiona’s latest book

One family home. Three generations. What could possibly go wrong?

Carly loves her family. She really does. It’s just that now her three children are grown up, she thought it was her time.

Everyone talks about the empty nest and how difficult that can be, but Carly and her husband, Frank, have often fantasised about it – meals without arguments, conversation without shouting over the sound of the Xbox, holidays planned around the culture not the kids’ club.

But Carly’s nest is far from empty. Her elderly dad needs more support and is moving in ‘temporarily’. On top of which, Carly’s son, Eddie, is far too comfortable at home – why go out and get a job, when your parents keep you fed and your clothes laundered? And just when Carly is starting to pull her hair out, Eddie drops a bombshell that changes everything.

Is there room in the nest for one more?

Out on 13 March

Buy link: Amazon