LOUISE JENSEN
A forced change of pace set Louise Jensen on the writing road, she tells Margaret James
AUTHOR PROFILE
Margaret James
When an author’s first two novels become number one bestsellers, it’s obvious the author must be doing something very right. So I was delighted to be offered the chance to profile Louise Jensen, whose debut novel The Sister has sold over half a million copies to date and been translated into at least ten languages.
It must have been somewhat nervewracking for Louise to know that she had given herself a hard act to follow, but her psychological thriller The Gift has attracted even more readers, topping the UK’s Amazon Kindle chart the week it was published.
All the same, Louise’s path to publication and success has been a challenging one and the story of her writer’s journey is hugely inspiring.
‘I was always desperate to be a writer,’ she says. ‘As a child, I was forever scribbling stories and making my own books, all of them badly illustrated and sellotaped together by me.
‘Just before I left senior school, I had a meeting with a careers advisor who told me it was almost impossible to make a career out of writing. She said I should become a secretary instead. At a loss to know how to move on, I did as she suggested and became a secretary. But then, in my thirties, I was involved in a car accident which exacerbated a preexisting condition and also caused some new damage, and I found myself with extremely limited mobility.