I was born and brought up in Birmingham. As a teenager, I won a holiday to France, Spain and Portugal for writing essays and poetry in a newspaper competition. Despite this promising start in the literary world, I took scientific qualifications and spent more than thirty years as a manufacturing consultant, technical writer and small business owner, publishing a number of pharmaceutical text books and editing a technical journal along the way. I returned to creative writing in 2006 and since then, I have written short stories and poetry for competitions — and have had a few wins, several honourable mentions and some short-listing. I am also published in several anthologies.
Under the Chudleigh Phoenix Publications imprint, I have published four solo collections of short stories and co-authored another two. I also write and lecture on business skills for writers running their own small business. My debut novel, Gorgito’s Ice Rink, which was published in 2014, was Runner Up in Writing Magazine's 2015 Self-Published Book of the Year Awards. In August 2018, it received a Chill With A Book Award. My second novel, Counterfeit!, was published in 2016. It is the first in a series of international thrillers. It came third in the Literature Works 2015 First Page Writing Prize. The second in the series, Deception!, came out in September 2017, and Corruption! came a year later. The fourth and final part of the series will be published in September 2024. In the meantime, I have written the Coombesford Chronicles, a series of cosy crime, set in and English village.
Having left Birmingham to study in London, I lived for more than twenty years in Wilmington, Kent. In 2007, I moved to the South West of England, where I live with my husband, Michael, in a converted granary sited picturesquely on the banks of, and occasionally within the path of, a small stream. In 2012 I graduated from Exeter University with an MA in Creative Writing and closed down my technical consultancy in order to concentrate full-time on my writing.
I was editor of the Chudleigh Phoenix Community Magazine, a monthly online newsletter for fourteen years, finishing in 2023. I am a member of the Chudleigh Writers' Circle and was one of the organisers of the annual Chudleigh Literary Festival which ran from 2011 to 2019. I was Director of the Exeter Literary Festival for 2020 and 2021. I am also a member of Exeter Writers, South Hams Authors' Network, Teignmouth Writers and the Women in Publishing community in the US. I spend far too much time on Facebook and Twitter, but have met some wonderful members of the writing community as a result.
When I am not writing, I am a keen reader and singer. I also enjoy live theatre of any kind, share with my husband a love of fine dining, and am a real sucker for the kind of country house hotel where you can kick off your shoes and curl up with a book in front of a log fire.
I would like you to believe I am also a keen walker, enjoying the beauties of Dartmoor and the South Devon coastline—but, as a writer, I'm good at making things up.