Interview - Linda Green: Writer who never gave up on life's ambition

So what is it like to be in the hot seat? "I gabble a lot, I like to talk and now, for 50 weeks of the year, I'm alone writing in my room, so it's really nice to just get out and meet people," says Green.

Green's latest novel, Things I Wish I'd Known, is actually a return to her first novel.

As a teenager, Green, who grew up in Hertfordshire, was a regular visitor to White Hart Lane where she watched her beloved Tottenham Hotspur. She had a teenage crush on Gary Mabbutt, the ex-Spurs and England player.

This teenage crush gave her the inspiration for a character who, at 15, has an affair with a professional footballer. This was the story at the heart of her first (unpublished) novel to which she has now returned.

"I am so pleased this story has finally been published. When I wrote it, I wanted to capture that intensity of what it's like when you're 15 and your idol is on a poster on your bedroom wall and what would happen if the idol from the poster actually walked into your life," says Green.

The plot is at the heart of Green's latest book, but is told from the perspective of the now thirty-something looking back at the affair she had as a teenager. Green had the confidence to return to her first novel thanks to the success of her first two books: I Did a Bad Thing was published in October 2007, and made the top thirty in the fiction bestsellers list and, in 2009, 10 Reasons Not to Fall in Love was published.

Following their success, Green got a two-book deal with Headline Review and is currently working on her fourth. Success as a novelist has been a long time coming for 40-year-old Green, the seeds of her career being sown when she was a child.

"I was eight when I first said that I wanted to have a novel published," she says.

"I didn't say that I wanted to write a novel, either, I was very clear that I wanted it to be published, even back then." Fate had other ideas for Green and after her A-levels she became a trainee reporter and spent ten years working for newspapers in the Midlands as a feature writer. "I started writing news stories, but soon found that I wanted to write more than I had space for, so I moved into writing features," she says. "But I found that I was outgrowing feature stories as well and still wanted to write more than I had space for."

In 1998, Green made the decision to quit the day job.

"At first people were really impressed at how brave I was, then after a year, they thought I had been foolish and after two years they started to ask what I was going to do next."

Green had been sending off manuscripts to agents and publishers, re-writing her story with each rejection. She had 102 before she was finally picked up by an agent, during which time she moved to Yorkshire with her husband, a press photographer. "I thought I'd cracked it when I got an agent," says Green.

The truth was that she faced another two years of rejection. The agent wasn't able to sell her first novel and asked Green to write a second. When that didn't sell either, Green was ready to throw in the towel.

"I had my son in the middle of all that, so I was really busy with him, which took my mind off things," says Green. "It was the closest I came to giving up." Fortunately Green rolled up her sleeves and, six months after son Rohan was born, started working on yet another re-write. A new agent and a new draft later and she cracked it, landing a two-book deal in 2005. "It has been a long hard slog, but it was something I knew I just had to do. It was my lifetime's ambition, so I was never going to give up."

Green will be signing copies of Things I Wish I'd Known at The Book Case in Market Street, Hebden Bridge on Saturday, May 15, from 11am-noon.

Things I Wish I'd Known, Headline Review, 6.99. www.linda-green.com