Lesley Jepps
Lesley Jepps was born in 1951 in Stockport Cheshire, to English parents.
Her father was in the Air force, and the family travelled to Egypt when she was two, at the time of the Suez crisis. Her father taught her to swim by making a lorry inner tube a life ring, then dropping her off the end of a small jetty, when she showed no fear of the water. She would pop to the surface and shout, "more daddy more!" Her mother saved her life one day, by pulling her under the table when the Egyptians fired into the crowds at the NAAFI shop. They would also pull the RAF personnel out of their vehicles and bury them alive, so they had armed guards and never stopped on quiet roads.
They had short spells in England before the next posting, and on one particular occasion, there was a wait for a forces home. Lesley was four, when her mum sat inside a pigsty. all day, on a farm, with her daugher on her knee, forcing the farmer to allow the family to live in an old railway carriage on his land. He relented in the end. Her sister Cheryl was born in their next home near York.
Other postings followed, the next one to Cologne Germany when Lesley was 7yrs old. From there, she lived in The Hook of Holland, and the headmistress of her school, Miss Stevenson, fostered her love of writing. It was a small school and Lesley would write many stories and be asked to read them to the class. Miss Stevenson wrote on one of her reports, that she would be a novelist one day, and entered her in the Cadbury's National Competition for Young writers. Lesley came second and can remember the wonderful certificate and chocolates which she received.
The family lived in Warton in Lancs for two years, and then were posted to Nicosia Cyprus. After a year, Lesley's parents separated, and she, her mum and sister came back to Lytham in Lancs to live. There she finished her education and worked in a library before training as a teacher. She married her husband Steve in 1979 and they had two children, Rachel and Emily. When they were 7 and 8yrs old, Lesley found time to start writing again, and wrote Umbrella in Time, a time travel book for 8years plus.
Lesley is also a reflexologist and reiki healer, and has had articles published in the local press, and Contract magazine.
The Guitar is one of her other passions, and she plays at a guitar club. They live in East Sussex.
Lesley and her illustrator, Tessa Pickering, had over a 100 copies of the book printed in the 1980's and W.H. Smith sold many. In 2014, Lesley published Umbrella in Time with Createspace and it's now for sale in paperback form and kindle, on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk This is a time travel book for 8yrs plus, about a girl who finds a Victorian Umbrella in her father's office, and this takes her back in time to meet it's former owners. There is a link between them all and her family in the present day, which eventually saves them from financial ruin. An updated version with a new cover designed by her daughter Emily, has now replaced the old one. There are good reviews.
Some years ago, a man who had read Umbrella in Time as an 8 yrs old, now had a child of his own, and he wanted to buy another copy for his daughter.
