Why Not? Author Shari Low on chasing the dream

It took Shari Low until she was 30 to realise her ambition and put pen to paper. Nine books later, she talks about friends, family life and finding her inner author.

By Helen Brown
Published in the Courier : 11.10.11
Published online : 11.10.11 @ 03.40pm

I catch Shari Low just after she's done the school run with sons Callan, 10 and nine-year-old Brad. "I like it hectic!" she says cheerfully. "I'm rubbish at relaxing and the kids keep me busy.

"I have a step-daughter who's 22 — although she doesn't live here, she pops in a lot, which is great — and the two boys, so it's never dull. They're so different — one is really sporty, can't sit still and the other is musical, more calm and chilled out. But they have so much energy and I want that energy!"

One suspects that they might actually have got it in the first place from their mother who has rarely, it would seem, sat still or hung around in one place for long since her teenage years in Glasgow. Now a popular writer and humorous newspaper columnist, she could hardly have got where she is today by a more roundabout route.

Born and brought up there, she started out in sales, slogging around flogging fire extinguishers door-to-door all over England and Ireland, taking in Amsterdam along the way — the part of the advert that actually appealed to her most had mentioned "extensive foreign travel" and that was it!

A move into nightclub management back in Glasgow literally took over her life for the next few years, working all hours and sleeping hardly at all. Then, at 22, she went to work for the Sheraton group, managing a nightclub in their hotel in Shanghai. From there she transferred to Hong Kong, gaining, she says, "the best wardrobe and the biggest overdraft in South East Asia!" before heading back to Scotland.

She met her husband John during that short spell back in Glasgow working for Hilton Hotels and seven days later, they were engaged. That was 16 years ago, so this is obviously a woman whose first instincts and decision-making abilities are seriously impressive, not to say speedy.

"Having been in Hong Kong and China, then back to Glasgow for the opening of the Hilton, I was planning to go to Australia. But we met on a Tuesday and got engaged the following Tuesday.

"I'm open to a bit of spontaneity. I don't like to be too predictable."

If her career till that point had happened more by accident than design, her current writing success had its roots way back, a childhood ambition that somehow never went away.

She explained: "I was a voracious reader as a child — at high school I kept getting into trouble for reading when I should have been doing other things. I was never a literary reader — I loved Sidney Sheldon, Jackie Collins, Wilbur Smith, a bit of scandal, a really good story!

"But I did tell my high school English teacher in first year that I wanted to be a writer. He thought it was hilarious but he was very supportive about it, just convinced that I would never get anywhere. He's now a college lecturer and I went back to see him recently and he was really delighted that I'd actually done it!"

You wouldn't put your money on Shari not having a go at whatever took her fancy. She doesn't do things by halves. "I've lived on my own since I was in my teens and I had to support myself so I just kind of threw myself into what was around at the time. After John and I got married, the only thing I felt I was suited for — and could make any money at! — was sales but it wasn't all glamorous. I spent a lot of time with litter bins and toilet rolls!"

Continued...