As a child, I used to love creating stories about magical animals who could talk and went on the most amazing adventures. I submitted writing into competitions and was fortunate to place in the top three in a few.
Growing up, I changed my writing genre from fantasy to crime, following my enjoyment of TV detective dramas and films. I used to love watching Agatha Cristies with my Nana and we would detect who we thought the killer was. I wrote my first ‘book’ when I was sixteen. It was based on a serial killer who pursued a group of holidaying teenagers. Needless to say it never went past the printed page, although I may still have a copy of it somewhere!
In my late twenties, I contemplated writing a book to publish, and by this time, human nature fascinated me. I was then and am still intrigued by the decisions people make and their motivations, sometimes the decisions people make without considering the consequences.
I committed and wrote the first twenty thousand words and then I sent my manuscript to publishing houses and agents. But the rejection letters flowed, or publishing houses and agents ignored my submissions, and then my dad, my hero, was diagnosed with cancer and, to be honest, everything else became insignificant.
After my dad passed away, I tried to go back to writing, but my confidence was at rock bottom. If everyone was rejecting my work, I had to face it, I just wasn’t very good.
In the words of a well-known boy-band after that, life was a bit of rollercoaster. It took a few wrong turns and a lot of therapy, but eventually I changed what was wrong in my life and things started to look up.
Nine years ago, I met Paul and meeting him rejuvenated me, I started writing again. Little excerpts at first, then I received positive feedback on some of my work and this reignited my self confidence. Maybe I could try again and I decided to revisit my dream of writing books.
But this time I researched the methods of publishing books in the 21st Century and decided that after my experiences I was going to follow in other successful writer’s footsteps and take the journey through self publishing.
Join me here for samples of my writing, articles on things of interest that inspire my writing, tales on my challenging journey through self-publishing (it’s certainly not the easy option!), short stories available for you to buy and news of my book releases.
