On being asked to write a short piece on ‘A Day in the Life of Leigh Russell,’ I agreed without giving the question a second thought.
Class Murder
After all, how difficult could it be, given that I am Leigh Russell, and writing is what I do? Yet sitting down to describe a typical day in my life, I immediately came up against a problem. Thinking back over the past few weeks, what quickly became apparent was that no two days in my life are the same. Like most women, I spend my time juggling different roles, and those roles are many and varied.
When I had a day job my life followed a certain pattern, with my turning up in the same place at the same time every day, and keeping, more or less, to an externally imposed schedule. Now that my day job is writing fiction, not only do I have more choice in how to spend my time, but there’s no fixed routine to my life. In theory that absence of routine should provide a sense of freedom, but in practice things don’t pan out quite like that, at least not for me. The mornings when I am able to wake up and think ‘What shall I do today?’ are rare. There’s always too much to do.
A lot of my time is spent travelling for literary festivals or research trips which have taken me all over the UK, the US and Europe, and as far afield as the Seychelles. When I’m not travelling, I might be out and about visiting my father, looking after my granddaughter, working with university students as a Royal Literary Fellow, attending a board meeting of the Crime Writers Association, visiting a library, giving a talk about my books, or running a writing master class. Of course it’s wonderful to be able do all of this, but it can sometimes be a struggle to find time to write.
Because among all the other demands on my time, I’m an author. Since I’ve only been writing for ten years, you’ll understand why I find it incredible that seventeen books of mine have already hit the shelves. It seems as though I’ve only just started putting pen to paper and suddenly whoosh! there are three long shelves of books in my study, published in many different languages, all with my name on the cover. How did that happen?
Yet despite all the writing, travelling, talking and teaching, some aspects of my life remain constant. My day always starts with a cup of tea in bed, and ends with my staying up late writing when I should be asleep.
Leigh Russell writes the Geraldine Steel series of crime novels which has sold well over a million books so far. The tenth title in the series, Class Murder, was published this year and will be followed in July by Death Rope.
In addition Leigh has written a trilogy of books for Geraldine’s sergeant, Ian Peterson, a trilogy of books for investigative journalist Lucy Hall, and a stand alone psychological crime thriller, The Adulterer’s Wife.
Links to Leigh’s books can be found on http://www.leighrussell.co.uk where you can also subscribe to her monthly newsletter and find links to her facebook and twitter pages.
Tagged in Leigh Russell