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Jill Treseder
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Jill Treseder Book Cover
Jill Treseder - Dittisham Author
Jill Treseder’s early morning starts are really beginning to pay off. The Dittisham author puts pen to paper at 6.00 am most days and writes continuously for two hours before breakfast.
She now has a novel available on Amazon and spoke at last month’s Ways With Words literary festival, at Dartington Hall, on the creative writing process.
She said: “I was thrilled to bits to be asked to speak, although a little nervous.
“I was approached by the festival’s director, Kay Dunbar, after she bought a copy of my book at its launch in the Red Lion pub earlier this year.
“Kay phoned me the night before my birthday in April. It was the best birthday present possible.”
Jill has been writing from her studio overlooking the River Dart for six years. Until two years ago she ran a B&B from the same home with her husband Hugh, so is used to the early morning starts.
She said: “The early morning is the most creative part of the day. I grab a pot of coffee and get stuck in.”
In her studio she has few distractions – with no mobile phone signal, an unplugged landline and self limited Internet connection.
She added: “It’s absolutely brilliant – I can only be distracted by a game of Spider Solitaire!”
Hugh is a retired home search agent who now paints watercolours and is very supportive of Jill’s writing.
The couple married 20 years ago. They had a relationship for two years when Jill was 19 and then, through ‘a strange set of coincidences’, met up again and were married within a year.
They moved to Dittisham to run their B&B 18 years ago, as they both had fond childhood memories of the area.
Hugh sailed around Dartmouth as a teenager and Jill spent ‘two idyllic years’ here as a child.
She said: “My father was an instructor at the naval college and I went to a very idiosyncratic school held in the sea cadet hut which used to be at the bottom of College Way.
“Except, of course, there was no College Way in those days but a path through the fields from Mount Boone where we had a flat - my dad’s morning route to work.”
Jill and Hugh moved to ‘The White House’ in 1996. It is so named because it was used as a US headquarters during the Second World War. There were offices downstairs, GIs slept upstairs and they cooked in what is now the garage, for those stationed at look out points around the coastline.
Jill has three children and six grandchildren – now living in Brighton, London and the West Country.
She lived in Winchester as a social worker, then a management development consultant and social work trainer.
Her non-fiction book, ‘The Wise Woman Within’, is a great read on feminine sources of wisdom and is based on her doctoral dissertation and her management development work.
But it is clear from the many books on her shelves that fiction is her true love.
Her first, recently published, novel ‘The Hatmaker’s Secret’ was inspired by a family secret unearthed after her mother’s death.
She explained: “When my mother died in 2006 I found a photograph of my West Indian great grandmother, who we knew nothing about.
“We were very surprised to say the least, so I did a lot of research and found many new relatives - and an idea for a novel.”
Jill said her great grandmother married a soldier in Bermuda, and came to Plymouth via Gibraltar and Sheerness. She had six children - her second son being Jill’s grandfather who she never met – and died in Plymouth, aged 90.
Two years after her mother’s death Jill’s research led to a four generational family reunion.
The process spurred Jill to write ‘The Hatmaker’s Secret’, with its timeless themes of secrets and identity, prejudice and betrayal.
An earlier attempt at a novel is, Jill said, “in the digital equivalent of a writer’s bottom drawer but might get plundered for material.”
Jill is now busy editing her second novel, ‘A Place of Safety’, set on Dartmoor, which is due to come out later this year.
She has meanwhile started a third novel based on the Hungarian uprising of 1956, but that is in its early stages.
She used to write as a child, but was never encouraged to pursue writing as a career.
Instead, she studied German at Bristol University.
She said: “I wish I had studied English Literature as I probably know more about Goethe than Shakespeare.
“Like a lot of people, I never used my degree subject, although it did come in useful for speaking to German guests at the B&B.”
As well as her early morning starts Jill maintains her enthusiasm and output of writing by being a member of writers’ groups – including the U3A in Dartmouth.
Her main tip for productive writing is to put the time required in a diary and ‘treat it like any other appointment’.
Jill’s literary heroes include Barbara Kingsolver and Andrea Levy, whose novel – based on the Empire Windrush ship which brought West Indian immigrants to the UK – was an inspiration during her research of her great grandmother.
It is clear that Jill and Hugh are very settled in Dittisham.
Jill said: “We have never lived anywhere with such a fantastic community. Everyone supports each other and everything that’s going on.
“There’s a terrific mix of local people and others who have moved into the village.”
Jill is very much involved in community life, including taking her turn to drive the West Dart community bus and being a member of the ‘Ditsum Players’.
For more information on Jill and her books visit www.jilltresederwriter.com
By the Dart August 2014