My guest today is prizewinning author Sheila Norton. Sheila 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 Sheila. ☺️

Sheila Norton lives in Chelmsford, Essex and part-time in Torquay, Devon. She is the author of over 20 novels, covering several different sub-genres of contemporary fiction, and is now writing family dramas for Boldwood Books.

Sheila worked for most of her life in the NHS but has always also been a writer. Before her first novel was published in 2003 she had over 100 stories published in women’s magazines, and won prizes for two of her short stories. In 2022 she was the winner of the Romantic Novelists Association’s Christmas/Winter book award with her novel ‘Winter at Cliff’s End Cottage’.

Sheila is married and has three daughters and six grandchildren. She can be contacted through her website http://www.sheilanorton.com.

Welcome to my blog, Sheila. Can you tell us about your writing journey?

Hello Karen! Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to describe my writing journey.

I’m one of those writers who’s been doing it all my life. As a little girl, I was always scribbling things – diary entries, letters and notes to friends, ‘magazines’ to give out to classmates – and ‘composition’ was the thing I really excelled at in school. As a teenager, I wrote lurid teenage romances in sixpenny notebooks to pass around the class, and poetry, some of which was published in the school magazine and Sixth Form Opinion. Back then in the 1960s, I didn’t know anyone else at all with ambitions to become a writer, and had no idea how to proceed (or enough confidence to try). I presumed I needed to be a journalist, but I was talked out of this by my headmistress, who didn’t think I had the right personality. So instead, I took a secretarial course and for most of my life I worked in the NHS, and my writing remained just a hobby.

After having our three daughters, I started writing stories and narrative verse for them, and when the eldest joined the Brownies, I sent a short story to The Brownie magazine. This was accepted for publication, followed by several more, including some series. When she went up to Guides, I did the same with Today’s Guide magazine. I now had a little more confidence, and started taking Writers’ News (now Writing Magazine), to find out how to proceed. I entered one of their short story competitions, and to my surprise, won first prize! Three years later, I won another first prize, and I was then awarded Winner of Winners for the year. At the award ceremony, I met another writer who suggested I should submit to the women’s magazine market. I decided to give it a try, and had my first submission accepted by Woman’s Weekly – followed by over 100 more, to Woman, Woman’s Realm, and others, over the course of the following decade.

By now, I was nearly fifty, and wanted to finally try my hand at writing a novel. I had the idea to write a chick-lit story (this was the Bridget Jones era) – but with a middle-aged woman as the heroine. The Trouble With Ally was the result – and after two years of submitting to agents and publishers, it was finally accepted by Piatkus Books in 2002. I was 53 and had waited all my life for that moment!

Since then, I’ve been through many changes: of publishers, agents, different sub-genres of women’s fiction – even my name at one point! I tried self-publishing, have written 1960s stories, cat stories, feel-good fiction (one of which, Winter at Cliff’s End Cottage, won a category of the RoNA awards in 2022), and am now, in another big change, writing emotional family dramas for the wonderful Boldwood Books. The latest of these, If I Lost You, was published in March 2025 and is my twenty-seventh book. I had a long apprenticeship, but my childhood dream came true!

What a wonderful and varied writing journey, Sheila. Long may your success continue.

Sheila’s latest book

Jo’s life is a mess. Her marriage is in trouble, she works in a dead-end job for a horrible boss, and worst of all, her little son George has asthma which is getting worse and worse – nothing seems to help. And his older sister, Molly, is becoming jealous of all the extra attention he gets because of it. Then, suddenly, Jo’s birth mother – a complete stranger to her – turns up. Jo would love a relationship with her, but is she going to help her – or not?

Buy Link: Amazon

More of Sheila’s books

Mia is telling me a story. It’s about a princess, who lives on a street just like ours. I’m distracted for a moment by her little hand softly slipping into mine. My daughter. My angel.

But then she says something that snaps me back to reality. She says that there’s an old lady who’s a queen, and who’s kind. Except that she doesn’t treat the princess well. She punishes her and doesn’t let her eat anything…

Helen, my neighbour, has been so good to me. And more importantly, she’s amazing with the children, looking after them when I am struggling as a single parent, having escaped an abusive relationship. Surely this is just another story of Mia’s, just make believe?

But if it’s not, what if my own father was right, and I was never good enough to be a mother in the first place?

I tighten my grip on my sweet, trusting little girl’s hand. And vow I will do whatever it takes to protect her…

Buy link: Amazon

I found you because I wanted to tell you. Jack is with someone else. He’s got no intention of sending for you or the kiddie or seeing you ever again. Don’t try to contact him, you’ll never find him.

All it takes is one message for Gemma’s life to fall apart. A confirmation of all she’s feared these last few months. Jack was supposed to be preparing for their new start in Australia, building their home, building their life together. And now this. Gone. Without a trace. Leaving their perfect world – all that their two-year-old daughter, Poppy, knows and cherishes – shattered.

Crystal comes into Gemma’s life at the opportune moment. This new friend, who’s been through it before, who knows how it feels for all of your hopes and dreams to suddenly implode, who wants to help, who will do anything…

Crystal loves Poppy. And Poppy loves Crystal. The minute they meet it’s as if all of the heartbreak over her dad leaving dissipates. Poppy feels whole again. And in a way, so does Gemma.

But what starts as a small kernel of jealousy soon grows into a larger sense of unease. Who is this woman who’s so obsessed with her daughter? And why does it feel like there’s something she’s not telling her?

Buy link: Amazon