It was my pleasure to sit in on Eat My Brunch for Michelle today, especially as I got to meet the lovely Sylvia Kent and the equally lovely Sheila Norton in the May Book Club.

Sylvia and Sheila

Sheila was born in Romford and now lives near Chelmsford, Essex, and has been writing avidly since childhood.  For most of her life she worked as a medical secretary, retiring early to concentrate on her writing.

Her first publications were children’s stories, but after twice winning first prize in the Writers’ News short story competitions in the 1990s, she began to have short stories published regularly in women’s magazines.

Her first novel, The Trouble With Ally was published in 2003 by Piatkus Books, and she went on to have a further seven books published with Piatkus, including three under the pseudonym of Olivia Ryan, before beginning to self-publish her novels on Amazon. Her earlier novels were all ‘rom coms’, but recently she has published two books set mainly in the 1960s, and now a new novel A Grand Thing which is a family story with grandparents at its heart.

Sheila is now working on a completely new project, having signed contracts with Ebury Press (a division of Penguin Random House) for a book for the Christmas market, with a cat as its central character!

You can listen to our chat here –

You can connect with Sheila on Facebook here

Sheila’s website is down at the moment but should be back online soon here – www.sheilanorton.co.uk

and Sheila’s Amazon page is here

Bob and Sheila