SWAPPING hospital work for a writing career was a money-making tactic for bestselling romance writer Jill Mansell.

As her 25th book is released, Hannah Stephenson discovers the author’s love of Twitter, her dislike of sex scenes and why happy endings are so important Women’s fiction writer Jill Mansell likes nothing better than to sit in front of the telly in the a morning, Harley Davidson fountain pen at the ready to scribble down any new ideas she has for plots and characters in her escapist romantic novels.

She doesn’t like the term ‘chick-lit’ but would rather her books were deemed ‘feel-good’.

“I don’t want anybody to be put off reading my books because they think chick-lit is just about a girl in her twenties whose only interests are shoes, chocolate and getting a boyfriend. I love writing about all age groups.”

She doesn’t do sad endings and humour is ever-present in her romantic yarns, which have sold more than three million copies over the years.

In fact, the humour in her novels cut short what could have been a promising career with Mills and Boon, she reflects.

“I wasn’t getting the emotion that Mills and Boon wanted and I was putting in too much comedy,” she recalls. “Mills and Boon didn’t want that. So I thought I’d try and write like Jilly Cooper, my favourite style of author. I think I’d find it impossible to write without the humour.”

Her 25th novel, The Unpredictable Consequences Of Love, set in the idyllic seaside town of St Carys in Cornwall, tells the story of a female photographer who’s given up on true love and is hiding a major secret from her past from the man who falls for her.

If you’re after Fifty Shades fodder, Mansell’s books won’t be your bag. Explicit sex scenes are not featured in her stories.

“That’s because my mum used to type my books and now my daughter Lydia does,” she says, laughing. “Even if a character of the age of 30 kisses another character of 30, my daughter says, ‘Oh gross, OAP sex’.”

Mansell, 56, has been penning her bestsellers, including A Walk In The Park, Head Over Heels and Take A Chance On Me, for more than 20 years now, and boasts more than 15,000 followers on Twitter, which provides yet another distraction from her writing, although she does love to chat with her fans.

“I write feel-good fiction and the kind of books which cheer people up,” she adds. “I make no apologies for that.”