I’ve been asked to write a brief biography to promote my books, and it’s more difficult than it sounds. The bare reduced facts are rather dull and end up like a list. Bare-faced lies, poetic license, exaggeration might be what creative writing is about but for something which tells people about me, there has to be mostly the truth in there. i fear that what I have written is rather dull:
Lois Elsden was born and brought up in Cambridge, and story-telling has always been her passion. Her family moved to Weston-super-Mare and after several years of being by the sea, she moved to study in Manchester. She had a variety of jobs including working in a pickled onion factory, before working in a high school in Moss Side, Manchester. She taught English to young people whose first language was not English but her writing continued and she had several short stories published in national magazines.
She moved to Oldham where she was head of English as a language and she produced stories and novellas for her students. She was delighted to return to Weston-super-Mare and work in a pupil referral unit. While there she published three of her novels for reluctant readers.
Lois left her day job to become a full-time writer, self-publishing her novels; the first was ‘Farholm’, set on the fictitious Farholm Island. In 2014 she published what was to become the first in a seven book series, ‘Radwinter’. The novels about Thomas Radwinter are genealogical mysteries; the main character Thomas doesn’t only research the past he investigates other seemingly trivial events, lilies left on a grave by an unknown well-wisher, a mysterious Lama, a young woman found washed up on the beach with no memory… She has also written a guide to writing, ‘So You Want to Write…’
Lois is passionate about writing, and is part of the very lively writing scene in Weston. She is in two writing groups and writers’ collective; up until this year she has given talks and workshops, and led creative writing and family history groups.
For Lois, every day is a writing day! She has published over a dozen novels, writes two blogs, and is in three different writing groups.
Lois’s books are available on Amazon, and are published as eBooks,; the following are available as paperbacks:
- Radwinter
- Saltpans
- Winterdyke
- So You Want to Write…
- Run, Blue, Run!
- Screaming King Billy
- The Story of Rufus Redmayne
- https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=lois+elsden&crid=2E5KR50C51DVR&sprefix=lois+elsd%2Caps%2C272&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_9