Writer of fiction, mum of three, appreciative drinker of all the wines (but only the nice coffee).

I grew up in Dartmouth, Devon where I caught an actual ferry to school and learned the skill of getting up, dressed, breakfasted and out of the door in under 30 minutes*.  I then went to Royal Holloway University where I met my best friend, future husband and got my BA in English and Creative Writing. Upon returning to Devon in 2008, I lucked upon a job as a local newspaper reporter and thus launched a wholly unexpected career in journalism. A couple of years later I went to Cardiff University to study a PGDip in Broadcast Journalism. After that I dabbled in radio before landing a job at a b2b trades magazine in Maidstone, Kent. 

After finding myself unexpectedly knocked up in my mid-twenties I gave birth to my first daughter in September 2013 and, for a while, my writing career took a swerve into the mum-blog stratosphere. Whilst on maternity leave I also took the opportunity to try my hand at fiction writing and spent the next few years grappling on and off with a young adult novel which, despite many re-drafts, several literary agents quite liking it (but sadly not quite liking it enough) and earning a place on the 2016 Mslexia Children’s Novel Competition long-list, sadly never made it to publication. My partner and I got engaged, moved house and had possibly the wettest wedding known to the Westcountry before our second daughter was born in the summer of 2017. Our son arrived in April 2019 and I stopped trying to juggle motherhood with my job as a now-freelance journalist and embraced the lifestyle of the Stay At Home Mum Who Sometimes Tries To Write Fiction.

My debut novel, The Girl with the Green Eyes, book one of soft sci-fi trilogy Take Her Back, was long-listed for The Bridport Prize in 2020. It was published by Bad Press Ink on November 5, 2021, featured on Times Radio with Mariella Frostrup and even became an Amazon bestseller for a short time. Its follow up, The Child Left in the Dark, was published in 2022. The third book in the trilogy is due to be published in Spring 2024.

In September 2022 I hung up my stay-at-home-mum hat, de-lurked from the Mumsnet forums and took a job as a content SEO editor specialising in pregnancy care and child play guides and articles. 

*I could absolutely, 100% still achieve this if I didn’t have so many offspring underfoot and wasn’t a raging coffee snob who requires freshly ground beans every morning.