Author in the Headlights - Donna Douglas

Today I am very happy to have Donna Douglas as guest on my blog.

Donna is the author of The Nightingale Girls, the first in a series of stories set in an East End hospital in the 1930s. She has previously written eight contemporary novels under the name Donna Hay, the first of which won the Romantic Novelists Association’s New Writers Award. She was born in London but now lives in York with her husband and a cat called Trevor.

Who has influenced your life the most? My grandmother. She brought me up, and was my 'mum' until she died when I was 17. She was a typical working class matriarch, who worked for cleaning jobs to keep the family. She was determined I should have the chances in life she didn't.

Which is your favourite book? My favourite ‘classic’ is To Kill A Mockingbird, but my ultimate comfort read has to be Riders, by Jilly Cooper

Other than those you love in fire, what would you save in a fire? I’d say photos, but I might not save anything. My friend’s house caught fire, and she says you panic so much you don’t even think about cherished family heirlooms, etc. She actually didn’t even realise she was standing in the street naked until one of the firefighters pointed it out.  I should make it clear the fire happened in the middle of the night – she doesn’t usually wander round the house naked…

Which film have you seen several times? Chariots of Fire. I know it by heart and recently irritated my daughter by reciting it line by line as we were watching it pre-Olympics.

What in your life do you regret doing? Deciding to have a dramatic change of hairstyle just hours before I went to an important party. Looking like an extra from Prisoner: Cell Block H does nothing for your confidence, let me tell you.

What ambition do you have? To write an episode of EastEnders. I would kill off Ian Beale, definitely. Or to appear on Pointless, my favourite game-show.

What is your favourite colour? Orange. It’s such a happy, positive colour.

If you were an animal, what would you be? I think I’d be a bear. They’re not particularly aggressive if you don’t bother them. But if you go out of your way to provoke them, or worse still, threaten their cubs – beware!  

What temptation do you wish you could resist? Kettle Chips, Fruit Gums, and watching daytime TV when I should be working. Not in that order, obviously.

What, in others, makes you angry? Unfairness. I can put up with things not going my way, if I think the situation has been handled fairly. The other thing that makes me angry is people who don’t park their supermarket trolleys properly when they’ve finished with them. It’s not rocket science, people!

What wisdom would you share with a child? Don’t waste your life trying to fit in with the cool kids, because they’re really not that cool.

What is your philosophy on life? Treat others as you’d like to be treated.

What is your favourite song? Have I The Right, by the Honeycombs. It always reminds me of family caravan holidays in the Isle of Sheppey when I was very young. And The Honeycombs also had a kicking girl drummer!

What is your favourite piece of music? Anything from Holst’s Planets Suite, but my favourite is Jupiter. It’s so stirring and triumphant!

Which four people would you like to invite to dinner and why? Any of my great grandparents. They were working class Londoners like my characters in The Nightingale Girls and I’d love to hear more about their lives. One of my great grandmothers had nine children. When her husband died she put them all in the workhouse until she remarried, then got them out again and had nine more kids. My grandmother’s mother died when she was young. Her father then married a woman called Rose, who had two sons. Rose hated my grandmother, and treated her like a skivvy.

What do your regret from the past? That my grandmother didn’t live long enough to see what I’ve achieved. I hope she would have been proud of me.

What has made you happiest? Having a wonderful family. I’ve been so lucky to have been married for 25 years to a kind, extremely tolerant man. And our daughter makes me proud every day.

What would you want if you could choose anything? For my daughter to be successful and happy all her life.

Who is the most fascinating person you’ve met? I’ve been lucky enough to meet lots of interesting people in my life. One of the most fascinating I’ve met recently was a very lively elderly lady called Betty, a former nurse who helped me with my research for The Nightingale Girls. She was in her 90s and had trained as a nurse in the 1930s. Some of the stories she told about life on and off the wards were unprintable!

Where is your favourite place in the world? The Lake District. We love walking on the fells, especially around Ambleside and Grasmere. Or the west coast of America. We’ve driven from San Francisco to Los Angeles several times, and the Pacific views are breathtaking.

Who is your real life hero? My husband. He deserves a medal for putting up with the ups and downs on my working life!

If you weren’t a writer, what would you be? I really don’t know – I don’t think I’m very good at anything else! I think I might like to be a beauty therapist. That seems like a very relaxing job, making people feel good all day.

Five things you might not know about Donna Douglas:

She can tap dance;

She can recite Chaucer in the original Middle English;

She started her career writing photo love stories for teenage magazines;

She once saw a ghost in a hotel room in Barcelona;

She has a secret crush on Richard, the quizmaster on Pointless.

Thank you, Donna, for taking time to pop in - and I agree with you about Richard on Pointless. There's something about him!

To find out more about Donna visit her web site by clicking here and visit Amazon here to pre-order your copy of The Nightingale Girls, which is out next week.  

And you can follow Donna on Twitter @donnahay1.