Having dreamt of working on teen magazine Jackie, Fiona Gibson secured a job there just after leaving school, setting her on the path to life as an author.
Fiona (57) grew up an only child in a tiny West Yorkshire village, where books were a constant source of companionship. “My parents read to me as a child and I grew up loving books and reading,” she recalls. “Especially Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series. I could devour three Famous Fives in a week.
“English was my favourite subject and I was always drawing little magazines and comic strips and writing stories. But I never, ever imagined I’d be an author. It seemed way out of reach.”
Now based in Glasgow with her husband, collie cross Jack and with three grown-up children, Fiona looks back on her time at Jackie fondly. “I loved it and felt so lucky. I worked on various magazines (including Just 17 and More!) until my early thirties, when our twin boys arrived – and from then on I was freelance.
“That gave me the headspace to start thinking about book ideas. I’d written lots of short stories over the years, but never a novel – and that felt like a challenge I was desperate to have a go at, if only to prove to myself that I could do it! My Jackie magazine training has come in handy as it’s made me always think of the reader, and make my writing as entertaining as possible.”
The Woman Who Took a Chance is the latest in a series of novels about women in their 40s and 50s, an age-group that Fiona feels is underrepresented in fiction. “I don’t think there’s a huge amount written about this life stage – about hitting your 40s and 50s, and being empty nesters or single in mid-life,” she says. “But the reason I’m so drawn to this age group is really because I’m in it myself, and it’s always easier to write about the stage I am at. When I started writing novels they were focussed on the baby and very early parenting stage – coming to terms with the almighty shocker of becoming a mum.”
“That stage feels way in the past for me now. There’s tons of humour and fun to be had in writing about the relationships we have with our young adult children – for instance, the way they come home on a rare visit, march in and announce, ‘Mum – the dog’s got fat.’”
Moments of fun
Those moments of fun are what keep many of us going and for Fiona, “Writing ‘the funny bits’ is my favourite part of being an author. When my kids were little – at one point we had three under four years old – being able to laugh at the crazy things and small disasters was the only thing that kept me sane, sometimes!
“That’s what I love to write about – the quirks and funny aspects of normal life, that my readers can hopefully relate to. I can’t imagine my characters navigating their lives without funny things happening to them!”
The Woman Who Took a Chance, which follows the adventures of a ‘permanently single 50 year old’, was written during lockdown and Fiona was keen to write something funny. “I knew I really wanted to play it for laughs, to set up scenarios that would be funny to read about,” she says. “I’d been chatting to a couple of friends about their online dating adventures, and heard about how dating could be funny but also a soul crushing affair. Dating was a subject I hadn’t really written about for several years.
“I started to think, ‘Why would someone only start dating at 50 years old?’ And then I thought, ‘She’s just been made redundant from a job that was all consuming, that she loved and that really fulfilled her. And now she has the time to try it.’ I liked the idea of Jen being a flight attendant – now grounded, and looking for a new adventure of her own.”
Diving into each book
With 16 books now under her belt, Fiona admits that she should probably plot her novels more thoroughly to make the writing process easier for herself saying, “I play around with idea and themes for a few weeks before getting properly stared. I write a very ‘bare bones’ sort of synopsis – but then I dive right in. I never really know where it’s going. It feels a bit ‘flying by the seat of my pants’, but I say this every time – I find it incredibly hard to change the way I work and write!”
In terms of her own reading, Fiona’s tastes are broad, covering everything from Nora Ephron (who was the scriptwriter on When Harry Met Sally) and David Sedaris’s essays. “David Nicholls, who wrote One Day and Us, is another favourite – he’s brilliant on the quirks of everyday life, and his characters are so flawed and funny. For thrillers I love Lisa Jewell. I simply can’t put them down. I read purely for pleasure but I guess my favourite authors inspire me too,” she enthuses.
She has been delighted with the response to her latest work and despite her previous successes she says it is, “It’s always nerve racking, sending a book out into the world – so I’m very happy and relieved! The news is so bad and scary at the moment, I think we appreciate a bit of lightness and escapism. I do hope people find it a fun, entertaining and heart-warming read.”
The Woman Who Took a Chance by Fiona Gibson is available now, £7.99, Harper Collins.
