For me, spending time with a good book can be transporting.

As a child of freelance journalists and writers, the joy of reading (and writing) was something I discovered at an early age; I devoured anything I could get my hands on, including the side of the cornflakes packet if there was nothing else new to read in the house. I tried my hand at novel-writing years ago whilst building my career in communications, and I still have that first attempt lurking at the back of a drawer somewhere. But life got in the way of a long-held ambition to write and it wasn’t until after the sale of my businesses that I was able to focus on what I wanted to do next.

My favourite authors can take me to places I’ve never seen,
back into history
or into parallel worlds.

Inspired by one of the UK’s top literary agents, who kindly read an early draft of my first novel, I now spend half my time focused on writing. Successes so far include being accepted onto a prestigious selective novel-writing course run by Curtis Brown Creative, and being longlisted for several novel-writing competitions (Blue Pencil First Novel Award 2019, Flash 500 Novel Opening & Synopsis Competition 2019 and the Yeovil Literary Prize 2020).

For me, spending time with a good book can be transporting. My favourite authors can take me to places I’ve never seen, back into history (Hilary Mantel) or into parallel worlds (Ben Aaronovitch), they can grip me with the desire to know ‘whodunnit’ (Elly Griffiths), or put me right inside the mind of young lovers (Sally Rooney). Part of the joy of my own writing journey has been learning about the different ways novelists construct plot and build characters, and it’s only increased my admiration for this particular form of creativity.