Sheila at a signing at The Bookcase in Chester-le-Street
Sheila Quigley started work at 15 as a presser in Hepworths, a tailoring factory. She married at 18 and had three daughters: Dawn, Janine and Diane and a younger son, Michael. Recently divorced, she now has eight grandchildren, five boys and three girls, and every Saturday and Sunday can be found at a football match for the under tens and under fifteens. Sheila has lived on the Homelands Estate (at present with her son and two dogs) at Houghton-le-Spring near Sunderland for 30 years.
2007was a bad year: Sheila told her readers that it seemed to move from one crisis to the next. "Starting in January with three car crashes in the family - thankfully no one was hurt at all - and it went down hill from there. A stay in hospital. Duke the dog, who is the dog from the books that now resides with Lorraine Hunt, suffered a stroke: he is now fully recovered and hankering after lady dogs as much as ever!"
She also knew that she would need to have an operation for cataracts, and was dreading it. This was done at the beginning of 2008, and Sheila now says:
I have had the cataract operation for both eyes done now, and it was a huge success: I can see for miles - it is fantastic. If this happens to you, please do not be afraid. and get it done as soon as possible.
I was born in the small village of Herrington, between Houghton Le Spring and Sunderland. Don't know if it was the way I looked, or the way I cried, but ten days later I was given up for adoption. Taken to New Silksworth by my new mother and father, I lived a quite happy life until I was eighteen, apart from one or two upsets. I found out at age eight that I was adopted and this is very harrowing what ever age you are.
I shared the company of two wonderful dogs in my childhood: the first one - a cross collie - was Rex, who was wrongfully accused of biting someone and was immediately taken away put down, when he was eight and I was ten. Two weeks later the real culprit arrived in the street, and bit another child: he was a dead ringer for Rex, but it was too late for Rex. The other was Pepper - another lab /collie cross. I was married with two little girls and cried for weeks when she died.
I had plenty friends, and was happy playing or reading, whichever fancy took. By the time i was eleven I decided that I either wanted to climb mountains or write books. I never did get to climb a mountain, a real one that is, but plenty of metophorical ones reared their heads. However one of my dreams came true and for that I am truly grateful.
How did Run for Home come to be published? Are Sheila's stories (and characters) based on real life? Read an interview with Sheila Quigley in Shots e-zine to learn the answers to these questions; or read a more recent interview from Shots magazine (December 2009).
Listen to a Woman's Hour interview with Sheila broadcast on April 5th 2004.
Meet the author: short video clips in which Sheila talks about Run for Home and about Bad Moon Rising.
Sheila Quigley talks about crime fiction - what she writes and what she reads - with fellow authors Stuart McBride, Simon Kernick and Martyn Waites; their conversation at the 2007 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate was recorded by The Yorkshire Post in its OutLoud series: and you can hear the 20 minute interview - or just read the background material - on its own dedicated page on the Yorkshire Post website. Note: If you have trouble playing the interview by clicking the top link offered ("Listen now on your PC") try left-clicking the second link ("Download and take with you...").