How Penny Rudge wrote her first at Salts Mill (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

How Penny Rudge wrote her first at Salts Mill

6:04pm Thursday 11th March 2010 in

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A novelist who penned her debut book at a restaurant in Salts Mill as her baby slept beside her is celebrating seeing her name in print.

Penny Rudge, 39, gave birth to her first child Alfie, only months before her deadline for completing the book, Foolish Lessons In Life And Love.

She said Salt’s Diner was the best place she could find to keep him asleep while she worked.

She said: “I used to go there every morning and my baby would fall asleep as I pushed the pram up the cobbles.

“I used to rush for the lift before the bell rang so it wouldn’t wake him up. The clattering and chatter would keep him asleep, and I could get on with my work.”

Mrs Rudge, who grew up in Surrey, won a national children’s writing competition at the age of eight and said she had wanted to be a professional writer since then. She is now working on her second novel.

Now with a second child, Arthur, aged seven months, and having moved to Harrogate, she admitted she is struggling to find somewhere to write.

“I’m writing my second book at the moment and I miss being at the mill,” she said. “It’s much harder with two of them, and not having somewhere as good as Salts Mill, it’s hard to find somewhere so good for prams.