Welcome to my author website. I have wanted to be a writer from the age of ten when I was awarded second prize in a story-writing competition in my home town of Nottingham. My journey to publication took a while, forty-seven years to be precise, but I’m delighted to say that after self-publishing my first four full-length novels, I signed a publishing deal in 2019 to write a series of three police-procedural crime thrillers for award-winning digital publisher, Bookouture. I signed a new contract with them to write two more books which saw me return to the genre of my Liberty Sands trilogy – novels filled with emotion, love, heartbreak and a little humour, and earlier this year I re-signed with them for two further two books in the same genre.
The first book in my latest Bookouture deal is The Dilemma. It’s due for publication on October 26th 2022 but is already available to pre-order following the cover reveal. I’m really looking forward to sharing Charlotte’s story with you.
Would you tell your best friend that her husband has cheated on her? Charlotte decides against it until circumstances force her to rethink her decision.
My Mother’s Secret , the first of my emotional women’s fiction books to publish with Bookouture on the 27th January 2021, touched a nerve with readers who described it as ‘a powerful, emotional and beautifully written book’ and ‘both heartwarming and heartbreaking.’ It’s available to order here in Kindle, paperback and audiobook.
The second in that deal, The Woman on the Beach achieved a #1 Best Seller banner in several categories and a top 20 position in the overall Amazon chart.
A totally gripping family drama with a heartbreaking twist.⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
If police procedural crime thrillers are more to your taste, do try the DCI Rachel Hart series, starting with Little Girl Missing, followed by What He Did and then Why She Died. They can be read as standalone novels, but there is an underlying thread running through the three books which makes more sense if read in sequence.
If you like a mix of thriller and romance then Alice in Theatreland could be the one for you, particularly if you have a love of the 1970s and a passion for West End shows.
As well as my full-length books, I have also written two Christmas novellas, Christmas at Carol’s and the sequel, Carol’s Singing, and a short story called… Time for a Short Story. If you would like a taste of my writing style you can download a free romance short story HERE-
Sign up to my NewsletterThese are all works of fiction with elements of people I know in the characters and some truth in the plots but if I hadn’t written my first book, a memoir entitled One Hundred Lengths of the Pool, published by Random House imprint, Preface Publishing, in March 2013, I may never have gone on holiday to Mauritius and had the inspiration for the first book in the Liberty Sands trilogy.
Just over two years after conceiving the idea, Life’s a Beach and Then was born on 18th May 2015. My goal was to have all three books in the trilogy released within in a twelve month period which I now realise was a little ambitious while also holding down a full-time job as a television presenter at QVC. If He Really Loved Me was published in November 2015, but I missed my own self-imposed deadline by eight days when It’s Never Too Late to Say was released on 26th May 2016. It was worth it not to rush the conclusion of the story. All of the books in the trilogy have received praise in the form of five star reviews but I realise these are opinions and one of the things I love about Amazon is the Look Inside feature which allows you to try before you buy, something I always do when experimenting with an author I haven’t read before.
Life ‘got in the way’ a bit after the final book in the trilogy, It’s Never Too Late to Say…, was published in June 2016 and it was almost two years before my next full-length novel, Alice in Theatreland, came out in April 2017. I did however manage to squeeze in an 8000 word short story, Time for a Short Story, in September 2016, my initial attempt at writing something more concise, which I must say was very well received as it has an overall star rating of 4.8 out of 5 for which I am very grateful.
Christmas at Carol’s, published as an ebook in December 2017, by which time I was already working on Little Girl Missing, and was the first time I have written in the first person. I really enjoyed ‘being ‘ Carol while I was writing, so much so that I followed it up with a sequel the following Christmas called Carol’s Singing. At a busy time of year, I appreciate that not everyone has time to sit and enjoy a full-length book and personally, I find myself having to re-read chapters if there has been a gap of more than a couple of days, making 20,000 word novellas a bit more manageable.
But if you’re looking for something shorter to try out my writing style, do download The Shadow of her Smile when you sign up for my monthly newsletter.