On becoming a writer:

I started off on my writing journey twenty years ago when I first attended a creative writing class at my local Adult Education Centre. Six years later, I had a masters in Professional Writing, and a year after that I started teaching that class myself. I continued teaching at the centre for 12 more years, whilst also writing and publishing a range of short stories, magazine articles and life pieces. This was how I learned my craft, and eventually I felt emboldened enough to embark on a novel, the form always nearest to my heart.

Debut novel:

My debut novel, The Bycatch Principle, came out in 2023 with a small traditional press and is a conspiracy thriller pitched at the young (and not so young) adult reader. I have also co-written the first draft of a children’s novel, which I’m hoping will be ready by the spring, and I am currently working on the plot of an adult thriller, which I suspect will take rather longer. 

What else I do:

In 2014, I co-founded The Writing Retreat in Cornwall with a writing colleague and I run online courses, online critique groups, one-day workshops, weekend escapes and 5 night residential retreats, as well as offering a whole host of more bespoke writing services. 

Life: 

I live in Cornwall, which I use as a backdrop for many of the scenes in my stories. When I’m not writing, or working with other writers on their writing, I’m likely to be found out and about in my van with my dog, the lovely Becks, parked up beside some Cornish beauty spot fiddling with an edit, reading or having a sly scribble in an old notebook. I support myself entirely through my work as a writer/tutor/editor, the flip side of which is that until such time as Netflix snaps up film rights for my novel, I’ll likely continue to live in a 14ft caravan in a muddy field.