Meet the Author
Lorna Beedham spent all her childhood wanting to be a teacher. She ended up fulfilling that dream in 1987 when she qualified as a Primary School teacher. She taught in the Birmingham and surrounding areas and became a Headteacher in Rugby. She took opportunities to read poetry to the children especially those by Allan Ahlberg.
In 2002 she became a Primary School Adviser in Nottingham City and worked there for 11 years before deciding to become a foster carer in her home area. She and her husband did that for 7 years before Lorna took on a role as Shop Manager in a community hub her church established in the local town.
Once she decided to focus on her writing she set herself up as a dog-walker to keep her fit and healthy and to give a break from the time she spends writing. She enjoys both activities.
Background
Lorna Beedham has had a love of poetry since being read A.A. Milne’s Now We Are Six and When We Were Very Young by her father when she was a young child. Her home had collections of classic poems she could dip into at her leisure. At Junior School she had an amazing teacher, Mr Journeaux, who would cover her class when her class teacher was away and who would read poetry to the class with such intonation that Lorna was spellbound. Matilda, The Pobble Who Had No Toes were two favourites.
Her own writing of poetry really began at the loss of her mother-in-law and the writing of a poem that was used in her funeral service. That led to the writing of poems for people when they lost someone significant.
During the Covid lockdown period Lorna began to write a variety of poems exploring different themes but all obviously Christian in nature and she began to wonder if she had the skills and capacity to write a complete book. So, in 2023, as she was recovering from an operation she decided to have a go and see if she had a book within her and then ascertain whether it was publishable.
A Piece of Orange
Lorna originally thought that she would be taking the collection of poems she had written during Covid and expand them to create a collection. However, God obviously had other ideas. As she was praying about the book she got the title A Piece of Orange come into her head and the picture of an orange open with segments visible. She knew this was to represent the fruit of the Spirit which she had always recognised was one fruit and the orange had always been the way she illustrated this. Her only challenge – only 3 of the poems she had already written could be used with this theme. That meant a lot more poems to write; in fact, another 77 to be precise!
After a year of composing she approached Instant Apostle (publishers) to see if the book had any interest. They decided it had something that made it unique and in January 2025 Lorna had the final product in her hand. A Piece of Orange was no longer a possibility but a reality.
December 2025 saw Lorna recording the book as an audio book which is available from Audible.
If you want to hear more about the thinking behind, and the creation of, this book please watch the recording below.
Every Then and Now
Before A Piece of Orange was complete Lorna felt she had the title and content for book two – Every Then and Now. Her attention was caught by the miracle stories in the Gospels. In the Gospels we follow Jesus but don’t stop and consider what the miracles meant for the people receiving them. She felt she would stay behind and record what the impact of the miracle might have been. She wanted to consider what life was like for the woman with constant bleeding for 12 years. What was it like to wake up and not have to wash bedclothes and to be able to have the purification bath every other woman had monthly after her period? What would those whose condition meant their only option was to beg do now that their defining characteristic was no longer there and they had no reason to beg?
Again, she had the cover design in her head before even writing a line of the book, confirmed by the artist drawing the template for her who had a butterfly land on her window with a broken left wing and a whole right one – the design Lorna had asked her to draw.
Again, Lorna approached Instant Apostle to see if they would take on the publishing of the book and they graciously agreed to do so. Their front cover was taken again from Lorna’s friend’s drawing of her description for the design.
The printed book was in Lorna’s hands in July 2026 when she also went to Monkeynut Audiobooks and Sound (a Christian recording company who had recorded A Piece of Orange in audio form and the interview to go on this webpage) to record the audible version of, and an interview about, Every Then and Now.
Current Project
While working on Every Then and Now, Lorna got into a conversation with a friend of hers who works for an undertaker. Their conversation was about Lorna’s poetry and the difficulty undertakers have to give grieving families comforting material to read. Lorna shared the poetry she had written in the past for grieving friends which got a positive response. A discussion then took place around areas missing from the collection such as death resulting from suicide and those who suffered miscarriages. Lorna decided that once Every Then and Now was complete she would focus her attention on writing a small volume of poems which, hopefully, would go a little way to filling the gap.
Presently her thoughts are of a small volume which would then have follow-up volumes written in the spaces between her bigger writing projects.