‘The Lost Children’ by Theresa Talbot
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Hi I’m THERESA TALBOT – and I’m a writer.

I feel as though I should be standing up at a support group to utter that phrase as it’s taken me so long to say it out loud.

My day job is ‘broadcast journalist͛. It sounds slightly grander than it is; basically it’s talking out loud on the wireless. I present the traffic & travel on BBC Radio Scotland and sometimes read the news. Several years ago I also presented the weekly gardening programme, but that was taken off-air and replaced with a programme about men hitting balls with sticks, or men kicking balls, or men swerving out of the way of balls … I can’t really remember which, but there were a lot of men and a lot of balls.

My writing journey has been as long and meandering as the road to Ballacheulish. It would be lovely to say I always had a burning ambition to write, that it’s part of my DNA and as a child I would sit for hours on my own scribbling furiously then pass my stories on to the other kids on the street in exchange for popularity. But in truth I was a listener rather than a teller. For me there was nothing more delicious than being told a story from a grown-up. One of those fabulously illicit tales of gore, ghost and ghouls that seemingly had no part in childhood. Scratch the surface of any fairy tale and there lies the most appalling horror of savage wolves, lost children in the woods and wicked witches on a killing frenzy armed with no more than a basket of poisoned apples.

I can’t remember when I decided I would like to become a writer, certainly not as a child, as to me being ‘a writer͛  was something only posh people did. I never even considered it could be a job, and certainly not my job. I remember my sister having one of those portable typewriters – ‘Petite’ I think was the brand name – it had its own blue carrying case and I was in awe as she battered out ‘the quick brown dog jumps over the lazy fox dog’ time and time again with lightening speed.

I fell into journalism after a range of jobs as diverse as Library Assistant, Pepsi Challenge Girl and Medical Rep, but somewhere along the line a seed must have been sown that compelled me to write. I went to a few writers͛ groups, toyed with short stories, but they were never my thing and I never took myself seriously as a writer, which was fine as neither did anyone else.

Looking back I’ve actually written every day of my professional life for the past twenty two years as a radio journalist – and because I write for the spoken word, this helps enormously when it comes to writing dialogue. I was a freelance comedy writer too. I was listening to a show on BBC Radio Scotland and noticed that there was what seemed like a ton of writers at the end credits. I phoned up the production company that made the weekly programme and asked them where they got their material from. Basically writers just submitted jokes and that was that. Seemed simple enough, then the following week I was in the hairdressers and a chap sat next to me was chatting away and told me he was a comedy writer for the very same programme. I sent him a joke and he told me to ‘try it, nothing to lose͛.  So I did and they used it. I did the same the following week, they used that joke too. Armed with my two jokes I went to a BBC producer and nagged her into reading a few other things, and before I knew it I had a weekly slot on another sketch show. I have to say writing a two minute sketch was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It took me almost the whole week to get it right. Like short stories, short sketches just weren’t my thing. But, I’d started on road to becoming a writer and by this time had the bit between my teeth.

When I decided to actually write a book I confess I didn’t have a clue. The main thing that prompted me to get started was that I had a P.C. No longer would I succumb to the noxious fumes of tipex – as typing was not, and still isn’t, my strong point. I had no plan, no structure, just an idea which I started writing. I was inspired by two things – an early ghost story my Dad had told of a priest dying on the altar, and Glasgow’s Magdalene Institution which closed down after a three day riot in 1958.