Hello to everyone on Goodreads. I've never blogged on this site until now and I hope this post will be the first of many. I'm relatively new to blogging, although in the past I worked as a journalist, mainly writing features about anything that caught my fancy.I was constantly on the lookout for new ideas or issues that I could turn into a magazine or newspaper feature. My mind was like a butterfly, darting from one subject to the next, finding angles, new perspectives, my views being challenged as I struggled through the why, where, when and how.

Then I started writing fiction. I'd wanted to write a novel for years but there never seemed to be a right time. I had a young family and a steady income and, somehow, the years slipped by while I was still talking up my dream. It was in danger of becoming a pipe dream when I made the decision to start my first book.

Suddenly, my busy world became very still, very silent. Just me, a room, a computer and my imagination. It was an insular world, peopled with fictitious characters who inhabited my thoughts, my working hours, even my dreams.

I loved working on my novels but my eyes seemed incapable of seeing beyond my imaginary worlds, my thoughts unable to stretch beyond the angst of my characters' lives.

That's how it's been for many years and how it probably would have remained if I had not discovered the pleasure of blogging. It's taken time to win me over but now I'm hooked. I'm once again discovering that my world is filled with the ordinary and the extraordinary living cheek by jowl - and just begging for a blog.