After more than two decades spent writing for children, I’m starting to write for adults – specifically, historical fiction. I have been shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize, the Exeter Short Story Prize, am a two-time Finalist in the Globe Soup Open Competition, and won the Globe Soup Flashback Prize. Thanks to funding from the Arts Council England, my first play was performed to sell-out audiences in Cornwall in 2025. Over the last four years, my bedtime stories for adults and children have helped the Sleepiest podcast group win multiple national and international awards. 

And the rest? I was born in Plymouth and grew up in Devon and Cornwall, and now I live between my cherry-red van who answers to Flo and my ancient but determined LandCruiser who occasionally remembers he is called Fred. Flo takes me around the UK and Europe, and Fred – based in Zimbabwe – helps me explore southern Africa. My husband works as an Exploration Geologist in remote corners of the world and joins me on his breaks; one day, we will find a place to settle down and fill it with an extraordinary number of dogs. In the meantime, I do a lot of housesitting in order to get enough canine cuddles to make it through the year.

I came away from Lancaster University with a First in English Literature following this up after the best part of a year in Argentina by heading to Oxford for a Master’s. I’d planned on switching from Literature to International Development but ended up getting lured into the lives of some eighteenth century female poets and instead, red-faced and flustered, squeaked my way through rolls of microfilm in the glaring silence of the Bodleian.

I taught in eSwatini back when it was still Swaziland, where a sacrificial goat was a school raffle prize and ceremonial spears were checked in at the supermarket. I lived on Nevis in the Caribbean for a while, an island where the bright tumbling bougainvillea competes for attention with the expats self-medicating with lithium. I have bribed a policeman in Romania with a pile of Bibles, run half-naked across a Hawaiian island in pursuit of a dog who had gleefully escaped the confines of the garden, and twice driven through the heart of the Central Kalahari – one of the last true wildernesses of the world.

During lockdown, at a time when we all sought a little more meaning in our lives, I created Books & Bicycles Press. The intention is to be as ethical as possible, with some of the books only available via indie bookshops and a single website: these books are as green as they come, using recycled paper and the Royal Mail and UK-based printing companies.

But perhaps it is best to introduce myself through some lines I’ve written, since everything that I write is, planned or otherwise, a part of me. On good days – when the sun shines and sleep hasn’t been elusive and there’s chocolate within easy reach – I’ll create the ridiculous. I’ll start stories with lines such as:

“The penguin sighed, picked up the herring and slapped it repeatedly against the rostrum.” (The Monochrome Animals Club)

Or someone such as Penelope Patterson-Pound will suddenly come to life and I’ll head off on an adventure with her, not having a clue what she has in mind until it appears on the page. It turns out she wanted to sail the world armed, of course, with endless bottles of Champagne.

“My lady, it’s terribly heavy,

Do you need all that booze on the boat?

The pink stuff of course keep for Sundays –

with the rest we will not stay afloat.”

Not to be put off by logic

Penelope said, “it will be fine!

And at least,” she added quite smartly,

“it’s bubbly, so lighter than wine.”

I like writing. I like vast open spaces – the sea reaching for a horizon that is forever away – as much as I like to close the last zip on my tiny tent’s door and fold myself away into a green-glazed cocoon. I like watching people. I like reading: the Modernists are an easy favourite, but I’ll make an exception for the likes of JG Ballard and his perfect dystopias. I like dogs and bicycles and ice-cream and sentences created in such a way they reach back to the ‘whisperings and the champagne and the stars’ of Scott Fitzgerald.

I see writing as an opportunity to bring a bit of levity into people’s lives, and a chance to share some of the worlds I have witnessed.

After decades of travelling and peering into the lives of others I have reached a few conclusions. First, that there is always common ground if only we dig deep enough. And second, that everywhere – even in the greyest corners of a broken world – there will always be an Avon lady.