When you meet lovely Lesley Cookman you can see straight away that she was once a model, but that she edited Poultry Farmers’ Weekly might be harder to imagine!

However, like many writers she has tackled many different careers, including an actor, an air stewardess and finally a free-lance journalist. For years, while attempting to raise four children, she wrote features for magazines including Business Matters and Which Computer. And as well as Poultry Farmers’ Weekly, she was the editor of The Call Boy, the magazine of the British Music Hall Society. She also wrote pantomimes, all of which were published after their trial run and happily bring in the holiday money each year.

Lesley now writes the popular Libby Sarjeant Mystery Series, the tenth of which was published in June. Currently, she has nine of them in the top twenty Amazon download chart for British Detectives. Phew.

So finish my sentences, Lesley…

When you were small, you wanted to … write stories and act. I wrote stories and made them into little books, and made my friend act out scenes with me in the kitchen, with a sheet over the clothes line as curtains. We used to stand on the table. Not exactly safety conscious. The scenes we acted mostly were from “The Glass Slipper” by Eleanor Farjeon. This was prophetic in several ways.

The one thing you can never resist is … Books and whisky.

You may not say it aloud but… I can’t think of anything I wouldn’t say out loud, unless it was open criticism of another person. Excepting politicians, of course. I’m not known for keeping my opinions to myself.

The last time you went ‘WOOP’ with excitement was … I didn’t exactly woop, but I was very pleased when nine of my novels made it into the top twenty of one of Amazon’s download charts. Due only to a special offer, I grant you.

Your five favourite words are …. I just love words. All words. After all, that’s how we all make our living.

Additional thoughts:

Favourite writing place in Kent: My office in my house in Whitstable. I’m not good at writing anywhere else, although I do write on holiday in Turkey.

A book about Kent or by a Kent writer you would recommend: Lawks. I suppose the nearest I can get is the books of Amy Myers, who writes in my own genre, and all of whose series are set in Kent.

Thank you, Lesley! And just for you…