I began writing in earnest when I left my job as a Director of Adult Social Services in 2010. My early work was focused on short stories and drama for the theatre. One of my stories won an award and two others were published. A couple of my short plays were produced and two full length plays had rehearsed readings. When Lockdown came in I decided to turn my attention to writing a novel. I’d always put this decision off as it takes so much time but that excuse did not apply any more.

My first novel – Tracking Back – was published in 2023 and is a crime mystery.

When her father dies, lawyer Sarah Curtis returns to her hometown of Bolton to wind up his law practice. She plans to leave as soon as she can but when Gerry, a family friend, goes missing and his family receive death threats, she agrees to help his wife move to a safe location and find out what’s behind Gerry’s disappearance.

Gerry is one of a group of ex-Bolton Wanderers footballers, who have fallen on hard times since their careers ended. When Sarah learns that another player was recently shot dead at his home, she realises the danger she is in, with threads tracing back to the highest level of organised crime.

With only a down-at-heel private investigator to help her tackle a gang of professional criminals, Sarah soon finds herself in too deep to back out and is forced into a desperate race against time to find Gerry before it’s too late.

My second novel – Worktown – is now written and I hope to have it published in 2025.

1938. Britain is in recession and another global war is looming. A group of idealists and intellectuals make an expedition to Lancashire to record the grim reality of working-class life in the hope of shaming the government into action. The team conduct themselves as if they were observing a remote tribe in the South Pacific, chronicling strange rituals and relying on local scouts and interpreters to understand what they see.

Edward, a Cambridge graduate at a loose end, falls in love with a young weaver, Molly, who is part of the local Labour Party. He thinks he can find his purpose in life through her and through him she glimpses another world away from the drudgery of the mill. But the gulf in their backgrounds and their total ignorance about sex stand in their way. Can their love survive as the project starts to break up in anger and disarray?

Worktown is a fictional account of the first ever Mass Observation field study and asks if you can really learn about life by observing it safely from the sidelines or whether you must jump in and take the plunge if you want to make a difference.

My next project will be another piece of historical fiction – a perilous love triangle set in the Irish Civil War in 1922/23.