FREDA         LIGHTFOOT        for compulsive, heartwarming family saga

I was born in Oswaldtwistle, a small mill town in Lancashire, famous for James Hargreaves and his spinning jenny.  My mother was a weaver before she married, as was her mother before her.  They could lip-read and would mee-maw silently to each other as they had learned to do in the weaving shed above the clatter of the looms.

My father was a shoe retailer and repairer and I was brought up behind the shop.  I still remember my first pair of clogs which he made for me.  They were green leather with a picture of Mickey Mouse picked out in brass nails on the wooden soles.

We didn't have much money and rarely managed a meal without being interrupted by the shop door bell during the long hours the shop was open.  Yet we were a close family and always seemed to be happy and content with our lot.  Once a year we'd close the shop and go off on holiday for a week to Scotland or North Wales.  It took us all year to save up for it, but even if we'd stayed at home there would have been no trade.  The cotton towns were empty and silent during these wakes weeks.

Writing:
I always dreamed of becoming a writer but this was considered rather an exotic ambition so my parents encouraged me to 'get an education' first.  No one in my family had ever had one before, so I was elected to blaze the trail.  I attended Edge Hill Training College in Ormskirk, and worked as a primary teacher for a number of years.  I married David in 1969 and we moved to the Lake District with our two daughters but I still dreamed of becoming a writer.

I tried anything and everything.  Short stories, serials, a children’s novel, picture scripts and a couple of Mills & Boon contemporaries, although I gained more rejection slips than cheques.  The aim was to send material out faster than it came back, which wasn't easy.  We had a brilliant postal service and all the rejections would come bouncing back with remarkable speed.

But at last the day came when I sold my first short story to D.C.Thompson.  It was a red letter day indeed. That was also the name of the magazine, now defunct.  Following this breakthrough I seemed to develop the knack, or my luck changed, for I went on to sell many more stories to My Weekly, People’s Friend, and My Story magazine.  With renewed confidence I tried again for Mills & Boon, this time with a historical, Madeiran Legacy, which was accepted.  (reprinted as Wine and Roses by Severn House)  I wrote four more of these and only then did I have sufficient confidence to try for the mainstream fiction market, selling Luckpenny Land to Hodder & Stoughton in 1993 on a fantastic three book contract.

Telegraph Article on Ex-pats

Secret Spain

Interview - Levante Lifestyle   Nov 2006

Interview with Euro Weekly (pdf file)

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