I’ve sold three million books and live in a castle... but don’t call me the queen of chick lit
After 32 titles, writer Jenny Colgan is understandably irked she’s not on the shelf with Rankin et al
HER debut novel famously made her a millionaire before a word was published and her books regularly appear on best-seller lists around the world – yet Jenny Colgan confesses to a guilty secret involving her work each time she passes through departures at Edinburgh airport.
Irked by the Scottish fiction section in WHSmith – and the fact that her prolific back-catalogue of romantic comedies rarely appears in it – she is forced to take drastic, and some would say shameless, action.
With a laugh, Colgan, who grew up in Prestwick, Ayrshire, but has spent much of her career living outwith Scotland, admits: ‘I head over to the “general fiction” section and, when no one’s looking, get an armful of my books and casually stick a pile of them in with Ian Rankin, Val McDermid and Irvine Welsh.
‘It’s like a compulsion, it gets me every time. I can’t pass by without doing it and it’s very satisfying when I walk away leaving that stack there. It’s just a reminder that I’m Scottish, too.’
To some, it might seem a petty gesture, but not for Colgan, who regards all three writers as personal friends, to the point she and Trainspotting author Welsh met for a catch-up recently in Miami, Florida, where he has his new home.
Since 2015, her own home has been a 20th century castle in Fife, previously owned by artist Jack Vettriano and overlooking the Firth of Forth.
She shares the majestic property with husband Andrew, a marine engineer from Auckland, New Zealand, and their children – Wallace, 13, Michael-Francis, 11, and Delphine, nine.
There is also the family’s twoyear-old Lakeland terrier, Nora Barnacle (named after James Joyce’s wife), who is expecting her first litter in January.
It has been 20 years since Colgan found herself juggling, in her words, a ‘boring’ job as the manager of a health policy think-tank in London, along with a stint of stand-up comedy, as well as writing her first novel, Amanda’s Wedding, a tale of two Londoners hilariously sabotaging a friend’s marriage plans.
THE reaction to her writing skills, if not her comedy turns, was beyond anything she could have imagined. She was immediately offered a six-figure two-book deal, with Warner Brothers adding a further £200,000 to buy the film rights.
The fact the movie has never been made appears not to bother Colgan, now 47, nor similar offers by other studios for a number of her titles.
‘They do it all the time,’ she says, with a casual shrug. ‘They still have the option of making them one day, which I hope they will.’
Her incredible success has allowed her the freedom to work when she wants to but, typically, the productive Colgan is not one to sit around. Having sold more than three million books, she has just published her 32nd, the aptly named, given the approaching festive season, An Island Christmas.
She already has another novel waiting – a children’s title – for publication in the spring.
She says: ‘I didn’t realise it at the time but I was incredibly lucky to have that success with my first book. Some authors have success much later and it took a while for it to sink in.
‘That’s the one thing being a writer has given me – the luxury of being there for my kids when they get home from school and not having to commute anywhere. I have it easier than most working mothers.’
It could so easily have been different, she says, if her questionable attempts at stand-up on London’s comedy circuit hadn’t been so poor.
She said: ‘I knew it was time to give up when I was on stage and mid-act a man’s phone suddenly started to vibrate.
‘He was trying very hard not to disrupt the show and kept his voice lowered when he answered it. He didn’t think I could hear him, but as I was telling some whimsical story I thought was funny, I heard him
saying to whoever was on the phone, “I’ll be out soon, I’m still here, listening to some s**t comedy”.’
While she chuckles at the memory, it is clear she has little humour left for the label given to the style that has made her name – ‘chick lit’.
It is a term she admits embracing when she first started but says she now despises, as it’s become a ‘derogatory and dismissive’ catchall for women’s commercial fiction.
‘It’s such a bulls**t term,’ she blasts. ‘It is belittling. Romantic comedy is hugely successful and has its place, just like crime or other genres. I found my style a long time ago and I stick to it.’ An Island Christmas is the third in a series, set on the fictional island of Mure and starring tried and tested characters, such as Flora Mackenzie and her love interest, Joel Binder.
Colgan says: ‘When you’re writing a series, it’s quite helpful because you don’t have to keep coming up with new characters and new worlds. It’s nice to go back and revisit characters because you do, weirdly, get fond of them.
‘I figured quite early that it’s best not to write about real places, so Mure is a cross between the Western Isles and Shetland, one of those places where the nearest railway station is Bergen.’
The novel also features two additional storylines – one about a ‘big brash American’ in a clash with the local community over a controversial development, not unlike Donald Trump’s wind farm battle with Aberdeenshire locals before he was elected US President, Colgan elaborates with a wry smile.
The other was influenced by the Isle of Bute taking in refugees from war-torn Syria.
She says: ‘I thought it was so impressive that they were so welcoming, so in this book the island doctor is also a refugee who is trying to enjoy his first Western Christmas with his sons – but without his missing wife.’
Family is something she finds herself writing about more these days, she says, particularly since the death of her mother, Mary, three years ago. Her severe dementia prompted Colgan to up sticks in France, where she had lived for several years, and return to Scotland to spend her final months with her.
After unsuccessfully looking for the right house in Edinburgh, she opted for a tower house near Aberdour, Fife.
Designed to look much older than it is, it has had two owners since Vettriano and even has its own battlements, complete with miniature cannon.
Today, the building’s size and versatility means it has become the epicentre of everything she does, from writing her books to exercising with friends in the extensive grounds twice a week with a personal trainer, to entertaining family. She has even been taking lessons on one of their two pianos and is waiting in anticipation having recently sat her Grade 4 theory exam – her results are due by Christmas.
‘The house is mental but it’s not unmanageable,’ she says, passing a suit of armour on the stairs.
‘It’s a weirdly practical house for a family, with a big kitchen and smallish bedrooms.
‘One of the first things [we did] when we moved in was make it warmer. So, Andrew hand-insulated 30 windows and installed underfloor heating in the kitchen.’
Does her husband, whom she met at a yacht party (he was working at the time) in Florida, like her novels? ‘Absolutely not!’ she laughs. ‘He prefers technical manuals.’
Her prolific output of writing is down to a daily challenge she sets herself of writing 2,500 words before finishing work for the day.
‘To a novelist, that’s a really high word count,’ she adds, ‘and as soon as I hit it I can go, so that can be a real incentive. If I get 10,000 words a week done, then the rest of the time belongs to me.
‘Everyone writes in different ways but I write a quick and dirty first draft, usually over three months, then go back and redraft it and send it in to the publisher.
‘Weirdly, I find a blank page fairly straightforward but I find editing really hard work.’
AMASSIVE Doctor Who fan since childhood, she also writes audio script spin-offs for the BBC series, which feature the voices of former Time Lord David Tennant, and supporting actors Catherine Tate and Alex Kingston. Under the pseudonym J T Colgan – the T is for Tardis – she has published novels tied to the TV programme as well. She says: ‘I’m loving the new Doctor Who, as are my kids. Jodie Whittaker is fabulous. I’m particularly liking the fact they’ve refocused it to be more for children and it’s not so complicated. It’s just really clear little adventures and a good mix of scary again.’ Last year, Colgan found herself caught up in scary herself when she was attacked on social media for a review of Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain’s debut fiction novel, asking if the talented cook, who hired a ghost writer to co-author the book, needed to put her name to a novel, too, ‘when there’s only so much shelf space to go around?’. It was said tongue-incheek, but Colgan was appalled to find herself accused of being ‘meanspirited’ and ‘highly ignorant’. In the end, she shut down her Twitter account. She now says: ‘All people want to do these days is yell at you. I’m a very contented individual and I don’t like it. ‘That’s why I like to write about Mure – escapism! If I could live there for ever, I’d be happy.’