My first job was selling records in a well-known High Street Chemist chain. I was still at school and spent my earnings on records and clothes! After A'levels I worked for a computer bureau and became a programmer. I've always read a wide variety of books, I particularly loved history and art. I'd tried to combine A'level computer studies with history but it wasn't possible. With my husband working shifts I decided to study for an OU degree. Sensible thinking would have been to study something career-related; I opted for history, art, and literature. My first essays were hand-written and involved a lot of rewriting, eventually, we brought a computer. The ability to 'cut and paste' was life-changing!
After I graduated I began writing short stories; winning first prize in a writing competition with one, recommendations with other and even had one read on BBC Radio Gloucestershire. My early books were romantic fiction. They now exist only on my computer files.
'All that is truth will be revealed' is set in twelfth-century England. It centers on women who had coped on their own whilst their menfolk have been fighting the Crusades. At the time there were stories in the press of soldiers returning from the Middle East with post-traumatic stress syndrome. Human problems reoccur throughout history and the men who fought in the past would have witnessed, and been affected by, loss of friends and acts of extreme violence.
'Wanderlust and Stardust' is such a different novel I published it under the pseudonym, Selina Heed. It a delayed coming-of-age travel novel with the main character running away from her old life. Although I had written the beginning and end I delayed the middle, which is partly set in Japan, until after I had visited this country. For this reason, divided the book into three parts; Lost, Found, Returned so I could release the first part into Amazon's competition.
'French Reunion' was written after visiting Nice. Four university friends stay in a villa for a stag week twenty years after graduating.
The group is split by the arrival of Ellie, a young girl who appears to be traveling around Europe prior to starting university in the autumn. Awaking in the night Jean-Christophe sees Ellie floating in the pool, he rushes to save her. As the police try to determine whether her death was an accident, suicide or a murder their friendship is tested. How well do you really know someone?
I am still married and have two, adult, sons. Besides writing I love visiting other countries. So far, the furthest east I've been is to Japan, west, Miami. In between these, I've visited, in no particular order, parts to France, Italy and Spain, Hong Kong, Marrakech, Crete, Budapest, Prague, Holland, New York, Boston and many places in Britain. Still on my list are Ireland, Istanbul and more of the US.
