About Me

Background

I have always wanted to write. At school my favourite subject was English, and Creative Writing in particular. However, when I dared to start making noises about pursuing a career as a writer, I was quickly and decisively dissuaded from pursuing this dream, and guided towards a more sensible career.

And so … I ended up in healthcare. (You can’t get more sensible than that.)

Initially, I trained and worked as a nurse and, subsequently, as a Public Health Specialist both in a university department and a health authority. Much later, fuelled by divorce-related financial concerns, I moved to the pharmaceutical industry. It was from here, in 2018, that I finally left the world of full-time, sensible, well-paid employment and decided to try and make a go of it. Better late than never …

Writing

Don’t get me wrong, I never stopped writing. As a student nurse I had a case study published in the Nursing Times. When I worked in academic public health, I published the results of my research, both as a University of Birmingham report, and as an article in Thorax, the Journal of the British Thoracic Society.

During my pharmaceutical career, I wrote a wide and extensive range of reports, project proposals, funding applications and training courses amongst other things.

The dream first began to materialise in 2015 when, during a career break, I met some fellow aspiring writers at different stages of their careers. Together, we formed a small local writers group. I began to write fiction in earnest and started the Writers Bureau Comprehensive Creative Writing Course, which I completed in 2018.

I recently published Trident Edge, the sequel to my first novel, Wait for Me and I have also co-authored a biography called My Rachel.

Moving on …

At the end of 2018, the opportunity to write full-time presented itself to me, and I grabbed it with both hands. I plan to continue to pursue my creative writing aspirations, but to support myself financially through content and copy writing. I completed the Writers Bureau Copywriting Course in March 2019.

I worked as a commercial writer until 2023 when I decided to retire from this and focus on my creative writing.

I love writing; I love putting words together to form sentences, paragraphs, chapters and ultimately stories, be they creative fiction, business proposals, or blog posts. I love the feeling when I find just the right words and get them into just the right order to give just the right meaning and evoke just the right response in the reader.