Jill Mansell is reasonably content as the author of 19 hit romantic comedies. She would much rather compose pop songs - it looks easier and far more lucrative - but book sales of more than 3 million keep her in jewellery and a presentable house.
The mother of two knocks out a manuscript in three months. She can't understand why it takes a year for her publisher to install the novel on shop shelves, or why the editors who bash her work into shape aren't writing their own romantic comedies and making a fortune.
Don't ask her about writer's block or finding inspiration. Makes no sense at all to this Bristol girl. Becoming one of Britain's top 20 most commercially successful contemporary fiction writers is as easy as watching daytime television. More ideas than any author would need, and they arrive before 11am.
All Mansell knows is that life has been more comfortable since she quit her career as an electro-encephalographic nurse at Burden Neurological Hospital in the 1980s.
'I was working in the hospital for 18 years testing people's brains. It was all physics, technology, biology and chemistry. I never imagined doing that in the first place,' she says at the Sheraton on the Park Hotel in Sydney.
'I was thinking: could I write songs? I always think it's fantastic that you can write a three-minute song and it can change your life and everybody can get to know it. Like, George Michael wrote Last Christmas while watching a football programme on TV. Just that song on its own would set you up for life.
'But I can't sing in tune and I can't write music and I can't play a musical instrument. Then I read this article about romance writers and I thought I could have a go at doing that,' she recalls.
