Jan Ryan
My name is Jan Ryan, I’m forty eight years old and live in Newcastle with Paul, my husband of twenty six years and our twenty two year old son Mark. We have a Victorian town house that’s spread over four floors and we’ve nearly completed a ten year renovation project. Like any house of this age though, it’s an ongoing thing and one job inevitably leads to another and so on. I doubt it’ll ever be completely finished!
I was diagnosed with Supra Ventricular Tachycardia several years ago, which at the moment isn’t much of a problem and doesn’t slow me down at all, but it is something that makes for an interesting ice breaker with the students and buying holiday insurance a trial.
I work at Newcastle-under-Lyme College of Further Education where I’ve been since 1989. This year I’m primarily in the ICT department, where I work with students with specific learning difficulties such as Dyslexia, Autistic Spectrum Disorders and physical disabilities. I find this a rewarding but exhausting job, always changing year to year and always something new to find out.
When I’m not at work, I like to write, mainly in what would be classed as the fantasy genre, not always the most popular I agree, but I like it because you can play about with characters and situations in a way you can’t with gritty realism or light hearted ‘chick lit’. I usually work to a simple theme, normal people in abnormal situations who for whatever reason, have to cope with things they never thought they would. I also prefer my lead characters, I don’t like to call them heroes, to be like the majority of us in the country, over forty, not conventionally attractive and with all the insecurities that betray their past suffering.
Apart from writing I enjoy ancient Egyptian mythology and history, travel to archaeological sites around the world when we can afford it, holidays in Benidorm where the quality of the live music is what draws us back almost every year, music of all kinds, films and sci-fi, specifically Star Trek, yes I admit it, my husband’s a Trekkie!
Thanks for being interested in me, I hope to hear from you shortly.
Thanks