About

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’ve published four solo collections of short stories and co-authored another two with my friend and fellow author, Sharon Cook. I also write and lecture on Author Business Foundations, business skills for writers running their own small business.

My debut novel, Gorgito’s Ice Rink, was published in 2014. My second novel, Counterfeit!, was published in 2016. It is the first in a series of thrillers set in the sometimes murky world of international pharmaceuticals. The second part of the series, Deception!, was published in summer 2017, and the third part, Corruption!, came out on September 2018. My Coombesford Chronicles, cozy crime set in a typical English village, began with Murder at Mountjoy Manor(2021), continued with Villainy at the Village Store (2022) and Calamity at Coombesford Church (2023). I am currently working on the fourth thriller, Retribution! and the fourth cozy, Silenced at the Summer Social. 

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 closed down my technical consultancy in order to concentrate full-time on my writing. In the same year, I graduated from Exeter University with an MA in Creative Writing

I am a member of Chudleigh Writers’ Circle; Exeter Writers; the Crime Writers Association and ALLi (Alliance of Independent Authors). Since 2020, I have been a member of the online Women In Publishing community. I also spend far too much time on Facebook, but have met some wonderful members of the writing community as a result of all this networking.

When I am not writing, I am a keen reader and singer (I have been a member of several local choirs over the years). 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 and swimmer, enjoying the beauties of Dartmoor and the South Devon coastline—but, as a writer, I’m good at making things up.