It does not quite fit the image of a best-selling romantic comedy writer, but neither does her previous 18-year career as an electro-encephalographic technician at Burden Neurological Hospital, where she dealt with people with a wide range of conditions, from epilepsy to brain tumours.
The work included working in intensive care recording brain death for people whose organs would later be used for transplants and visiting prisons to test people suspected of committing murders.
There were conditions which caused people to commit violent acts without the person being aware of it, she said in an interview in Dunedin this week.
She began training for the job at 16 after her mother saw the job in a newspaper. The title hooked her, even though she was much better at art than science at school.
She found the work "absolutely fascinating''.
The hospital was a friendly place to work and ‘‘if the cleaner had a party, all of the consultants would go along and vice-versa''.
Mansell pursued her artistic interests through art classes in sculpture, life drawing and cartooning. She was quite good at cartooning, but realised that exaggerating people's features was not a good way to win friends.
Her party piece was forging signatures, a skill she demonstrated during our interview with a more than passable copy of mine, which she conceded was more difficult than most she had attempted.
However, she was not pleased recently when she discovered her son had been forging her signature on a daily report. After she had finished telling him off, he said, ‘‘but tell me something - was it a good signature?'' She had to admit it was.
Although Mansell was keen on writing as a child, she virtually stopped reading as a young adult and remembers her mother, a great reader, forcing her to read Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca by paying her to do so.
She could relate to her partner treating reading her first book like an exam.
‘‘He'd say ‘I'm up to chapter 36. Test me, I know it'.''
Her life changed when she saw a feature in the Sunday Express about women writers who had made a living from writing.
Working in the hospital, she knew how much money she was going to earn ‘‘to a penny'' to the day she retired and she felt that writing was something she could attempt without a great outlay.
She joined a writing class of about 20 women; four are now published authors.
The whereabouts of her first handwritten book is a mystery. It was going to be typed by a girl who worked with her partner, so she gave it to the typist and never saw it again. It was the only copy.
She laughs about the experience now, saying the book probably was ‘‘really bad''.
Mansell's next offering was rejected by Mills & Boon for having too much humour, but she found it impossible to take the humour out.
Her first publishing success she describes as being like Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
‘‘The first agent said it was unpublishable because too much happens in it, the second said it was unpublishable because not enough happens in it and, could there be more sex in it - there couldn't be because my mum was typing it for me - and the third agent said it was just right.''
The book was Fast Friends, first published in 1991. She now has 19 books to her name, dealing with issues such as unwanted pregnancy, adultery and the empty nest syndrome in a ‘‘feel-good'' fiction way.
She left work to write full-time when she became pregnant with her daughter more than 15 years ago, thinking her baby would be sleeping all the time and she could carry on writing.
‘‘She didn't sleep at all. It was an absolute nightmare, but luckily for me it did work out.''
Mansell said the family could not have afforded to pay for child-care to allow her to continue in her previous occupation.
She makes no apologies for writing light fiction and is irritated by people who ask how many books she ‘‘churns'' out in a year.
‘‘If it is so easy, why don't they do it?''
There was nothing wrong with making people laugh and cry and cheering people up. Sometimes, people wrote to say they were grateful to have her books when they were going through tough times.
During her time in New Zealand, she will not be taking time out to catch up with rugby players, saying she is ‘‘ a bit past that''.
At home, however, members of the Bristol rugby team who practise on grounds near her house are used to seeing her become airborne as she bounces on her trampoline in her back yard during her writing breaks.
‘‘It must put them off.''
