Author Jenny turns the page on success
Prestwick author Jenny Colgan is celebrating the release of her latest paperback by being part of an all- woman top 10.
Jenny, a former pupil of Queen Margaret Academy, was delighted when The Summer Seaside Kitchen entered the chart at number six.
And talking to the Ticket, the Sunday Times bestselling author of Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery and The Little Shop of Happy Ever After, has revealed one of her highlights was seeing her latest romantic comedy appearing on a huge advertising board at Edinburgh’s Waverly train station.
She said: “It’s very exciting. You can actually see the adverts for the book at various stations, but that was just brilliant!”
The new book features Flora, who is definitely, absolutely sure that escaping from the quiet Scottish island of Mure where she grew up to the noise and hustle of the big city was the right choice. In the city, she can be anonymous, ambitious – and indulge herself in a hopeless crush on her gorgeous boss, Joel.
When a new client demands Flora’s presence back on Mure, she’s suddenly swept back into life with her brothers and her father. As Flora explores her new- found love of cooking and breathes life into the dusty little pink- fronted shop on the harbour, she’s also going to have to come to terms with past mistakes – and work out exactly where her future lies.
Jenny continued: “When you write a book, you never know how it’s going to go, but I think there’s a lot of people who want to read about Scotland, so this is set in a lovely part of the country - and it shows Scotland isn’t all like Trainspotting!
“I have a book out every spring, so I’m probaby going to do a followup to that for next year. I just love writing about Scotland and all its nice bits!
“There’s a lot of things going on in the world right now that people want to get away from, and I know when I’m reading, I’m looking for a bit of escapism.
“I’m tired of worry about things all the time when I watch the news. A bit of escapism is good for us all.”
Jenny, who has lived in London, the Netherlands, the US and France, currently lives just morth of Edinburgh with her husband Andrew, her dog Nevil Shute, and her three children, Wallace, Michael- Francis and Delphine.
Meanwhile, Jenny’s getting ready for the release of her new novel in May, Spandex in the City, in which mild- mannered PR girl Holly Phillips doesn’t think much of costumed superhero Ultimate Man - especially after he embarrasses her.
She laughs: “It just seemed like a good idea - a girl who falls in love with a superhero. It’s a very broad comedy and it seemed like the right time to do it.”
Although best known as a romantic comedy writer, Jenny recently wrote Through The Ruins, a new audio play featuring the stars of TV series Torchwood.
Released as part of a trio of plays, Torchwood One - Before the Fall, Jenny penned the second of the adventures.
She brought together the character of Ianto Jones from the popular Doctor Who spin- off show, alongside Yvonne Hartman, played by former EastEnders star Tracy Ann Oberman - the woman who killed her on- screen husband, Dirty Den Watts.
Jenny said: “It was great to do. Tracy is so brilliant - I love her.
“We did that seriesreally fast, and it was a huge amount of fun to do.
The series producer James Goss adds: “Fans of Jenny’s bestselling works about people finding love in unlikely places will be delighted by what she’s written for Torchwood.
“It features a super spy and a plumber having quite the meet cute while being chased by aliens and assassins - but, really it’s about much more than that. Absolutely seriously, it proves Jenny’s incredibly versatility as a writer - it’s gritty, unpleasant, but full of laugh out loud lines.”
Jenny also has another novel on the way this month, a paperback edition of her Doctor Who novel In The Blood, which featured David Tennant’s Time Lord, and came out in hardback last May.