JANE HILL

About Me 

BIOGRAPHY

I was born and brought up in Southsea, the seaside resort of Portsmouth.  I studied English at University College London and took a postgraduate diploma in Radio Journalism at college in Cornwall.  I worked in commercial radio for twenty years.  I started as a journalist in the south of England and then moved to Lincoln to become head of programming for a group of local radio stations.

It was while working in radio that I wrote my first novel Grievous Angel.  Although I'd been writing all my life it wasn't until I was in my late thirties that I finally wrote something that I thought was worth sending to an agent.  Maybe it was a midlife crisis?  I had wanted to write a novel all my life, and it was 40 looming on the horizon that finally made me do it - proof that it's never too late.

I left my full-time radio job a couple of years ago to concentrate on writing, and also on developing my other career as a stand-up comedian.  Thrillers and stand-up comedy aren't the most obvious match, but I guess that both of them involving weaving stories and keeping people's attention!

I now live with my partner in rural Northamptonshire, and I'm currently working on my fourth novel.  In my spare time I love cooking, reading (crime fiction and history, mostly), listening to music (I adore Neil Young) and trying to stay fit.

COMEDY

I've been involved in comedy since I was dared to do my first stand-up set at the age of 41, nearly four years ago.  I now gig regularly all around the country and am planning my first one-woman Edinburgh Fringe show for August 2009.  It's a comedic look at my double life, called Murder for Profit and Pleasure.  For more details about my comedy please see www.janehill.co.uk.

RADIO

Although I no longer work full-time in radio, I stay involved in the industry and recently taught the postgraduate Broadcast Journalism course at Highbury College.  I'm available for broadcasting, consultancy and training work, including bespoke training for presenters and journalists in local radio.  Please contact me for details.

I was a radio journalist for ten years before becoming Director of Programming for the Lincs FM Group.  In this capacity I helped launch eight new radio stations in Yorkshire and the East Midlands.  I was nominated for the Sony Radio Academy Award for the Programmer of the Year in 2004 and sat on many industry committees - including giving evidence on behalf of small-scale commercial local radio at the BBC Charter Review hearings.

FAq

How did you start writing?

I've always written, even as a very young child.   Stories, poems, anything.  But it took me a long time to get it into some sort of shape.

Who are your favourite authors?

I read my first Agatha Christie at the age of 12 and was hooked.  I still am.  I wish by some miracle she had continued forever at her 1930s and 1940s peak producing a "Christie for Christmas" every year.  The American writer Joan Didion is my favourite prose stylist, and my all-time favourite novels are her book Democracy and Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.  Here I am talking about my love of Rebecca (warning: SPOILERS!).

Where do your ideas come from?

My imagination!  I enjoy putting my characters into extreme situations and imagining how they might cope.  Occasionally I'll be inspired by the emotion of something I read in a newspaper or see in a TV documentary, but I've never actually based one of my plots or characters on real life.

Any tips on becoming a writer?

Just do it.  I've lost count of the number of people who've said to me, "I've always wanted to be a writer".  Wanting to be a writer won't get you anywhere.  There's no substitute for actually doing it.  But it's really important that you enjoy the act of writing - write to entertain yourself, first and foremost.