Jan Warburton

Author and Ghost Writer

A few personal facts first: Although I was born in Hampshire, about a year later my family moved to Ealing, W. London where I was brought up and educated.
After 3 years training at Art School in Fashion and Design, I worked for a few years in haute couture for the House of Worth, and in wholesale fashion. I then married and spent over two years living in Germany before I had my children, Jayne and Justin.
After moving to rural Yorkshire in 1972 and subsequently getting divorced, I survived nearly six years as a single parent (an experience I drew on for my first novel).
I still live in Yorkshire and have been blissfully married to Mark for almost 29 years and between us we have quite an extended family, including my own two beautiful granddaughters, Abby 18 and Alexia 6.
I’ve always travelled widely and my two lengthy periods living abroad have provided me with amazing backgrounds for my novels. Singapore in the 60s was a particularly colourful place to live, and has featured twice in my books.

I’ve been a keen writer nearly all my life, but family and later career commitments always hindered me taking it any further. In 1991 I was made redundant from my sales job, and as by this time the children had long flown the nest, I decided to enrol on a correspondence writing course with The Writers’ Bureau.
After having a few articles and short stories published in magazines, I was spurred on to concentrate more on fiction and especially on writing a novel. Although my first attempts were pretty poor, I eventually completed my first novel.
However, it ended up far too long; more of an epic really, at well over 200,000 words!
It does have a great storyline though, set partly in Singapore, where I lived with my first husband for a while, and I still think, with re writing and much editing, it will be published one day.
Since completing the course I’ve written 4 more full length novels and my latest, entitled THE SECRET is to be published soon by Libros International.

Inevitably I’ve had my fair share of despair and frustration. Here I must mention The Romantic Novelists’ Association. I joined their New Writers’ Scheme after completing that first tediously long novel. Through this scheme one can submit a novel manuscript each year for a full critique and, if good enough, there is a chance of selection for their annual award short list and publication. Not that I ever quite got to that stage, but I did learn so much from the scheme. By attending RNA parties, conferences and functions I’ve met many published authors (such as Christina Jones, Carole Matthews, Valerie Wood and Trisha Ashley; just four of my favourites). At such events one also gets to mingle with the ‘Gods’ (Agents, publishers and editors). The friendship and encouragement I’ve gained through the RNA has been invaluable.

Swanwick Writers’ Summer School in Derbyshire, which I’ve attended each August for 13 years, has also been a constant inspiration to me, and again I would recommend the 6 day school to any aspiring or enthusiastic writer, whatever your chosen genre.
Another important factor in my writing life has been the regular support and enthusiasm my friends at Selby Writers’ Circle have always given me.

However, it was to be surprisingly something quite removed from novel writing that finally got me published…

Over dinner one evening with dear friends Mandy and Tommy Hunt about three years ago, Tommy mentioned to me that he had written his autobiography, which now in semi-retirement from show business, he hoped to get published… but he admitted it needed a huge amount of rewriting to get it into a publishable state. Now I knew Mandy better than Tommy, and although I was aware he was singer, up to this point I’d had absolutely no notion of quite how famous he was or had ever been. Anyway, I agreed to look at a few chapters for him.
It was clearly going to be a mammoth task… having been written by Tommy on an old computer in Notebook format; all in upper case with no punctuation! But after reading the first few pages I could tell it was well worth pursuing.
In fact I was bowled over by the incredible show biz story he had to tell and I couldn’t wait to get stuck into ghost writing the whole book. The most exciting thing was… he had a publisher already interested in it. What a great scoop… and what a joy and a revelation it was for me to recreate his amazing story for him! Most importantly, Tommy loved the ‘treatment’ I gave it.
I think this was where my novel writing experience came in useful. Instead of just telling the story, as autobiographies so often do, I made proper scenes of incidences using dialogue where appropriate in most chapters. And knowing Tommy’s American turn of phrase so well, I was able to keep ‘his voice’ evident throughout. This, I feel, makes it more personal to him and brings it more to life for the reader.
Please read a short excerpt from the book and take a look at a recently published review. It really is quite a compelling read.
Watch this space for news of my next book…