I started to write stories when I needed to look busy at work! My job involved sending out press releases, editing an in-house magazine and writing articles for technical journals. I found it remarkably easy but challenging; researching data from colleagues and writing to a deadline for magazines. I needed to be in the office until five thirty, but with nothing to do I began my first novel. I became hooked on the characters I had created. I was always a people-watcher, so they invented themselves from an amalgam of fellow passengers on the London Underground I travelled, or the Doctor’s surgery waiting room; anywhere where there was someone to look at and make up a life-story about.

Now that I write all the time, the work ethic of deadlines has given me the discipline to get on and write and not just to stare at a blank page (which is what authors are supposed to do in an agony of creative writing blocks.). I get up each morning wondering what my characters are going to do next, for they will sometimes react to situations in a way which is quite shockingly opposed to my own judgement and beliefs. I remain absorbed at my desk until the hunger of my small Dachshund drags me back to real life in rural Lincolnshire.