MY LIGHT BULB MOMENT
AmAndA Robson’s obsession was one of last year’s surprise publishing hits. Aged 58, she lives in Twickenham, middlesex, with her husband Richard, a QC. I’VE always loved reading. As a child, I’d hide a book and a torch under my pillow. And I remember telling a friend I’d write a novel one day.
But I went on to do science A-levels and a degree in physiology. I was brought up outside Liverpool, in Formby, and the teachers thought science would be an easier career.
I became a medical writer in the pharmaceutical industry, but it wasn’t imaginative. Then I was a housewife for 19 years: I wanted to be with our two boys.
As they got older, things changed. I did English A-level when my youngest son went to school, but still felt something was missing.
Ten years ago, my eldest was doing his A-levels and my younger son his GCSEs, and they were both rowing for their school.
I was driving them to training, waiting hours for them to come off the river, and washing their smelly sports kit.
My husband, a lawyer, had become a silk, and I was just running after everybody else. You know when you’ve got your whole life ahead of you and you’re excited about what you might do? All that feeling had gone. I felt as if my life — my intellectual life — had stopped.
It really was a light bulb moment: I woke up one morning and sat up. I thought, they’re all doing what they want. I’ve looked after them for all these years and I really want to do what I want to do — and I’m going to start today. That was it.
I wrote a book about a mum who had two sons who rowed — even the names were similar. My family was mortified. I moved on from that idea, but writing about what I knew was a good way to learn.
The next big step was going on the Faber writing course in London in 2011, to learn more about how to do it. I wondered: what would happen if one woman seduced another’s husband — how might a friendship spin out of control? From that stemmed my first book, Obsession, a psychological thriller. Now, my second book Guilt has come out.
If I can do it, maybe anyone can. I went to a comprehensive when they weren’t even teaching grammar! If you’ve got a good imagination and ideas, give it a go.
GuilT, by Amanda Robson, is published by Avon, priced £7.99 in paperback.