WRITING COURSE RECOMMENDATIONSAfter doing several workshops with Writing Events Bath, and with SCBWI (the Society for Children's Books Writers and Illustrators), I joined the Golden Egg Academy, where editors Imogen Cooper and Abi Kohlhoff helped knock my first novel into shape. I wrote a further two novels with guidance from an agent before taking a Write A Novel course with Faber Academy. All of these workshops and courses have really improved my understanding of story-telling and I'm incredibly grateful for the contacts I've made - both fellow writers and industry professionals - without whose support, I might well have hidden myself and my stories away.
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WHY WRITE?One day, as all my best stories began, I started writing. I wrote in secret. I thought about writing before I went to sleep; I thought about it when I woke up. Writing rapidly took over my life. I didn't plan the story, I just wrote until it came to a kind of end. It was messy and sprawling with too many adjectives which only a mother could love - which mine did when I very shyly asked her to read it. She encouraged me to carry on, so I did.
If you want to find out more about why I write, check out my Q&A blog below. 
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STORY EXCERPTSPlease click on any of the letters below to see samples of my writing.
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NOVEL WRITING COMPETITIONS
Searchlight 2023After the excitement of interest for my story The World Without, I had a dip in confidence when it didn't find a publishing home. But I can never stay away from writing for too long and took a mini course with the Golden Egg Academy, back to the place and people I feel at ease with. The key reminders, of what makes a good setting, a unique voice, a driving storyline, were drummed into me afresh by the inimitable Imogen Cooper. Inspired to let my imagination run wild, I gave myself permission to write something that doesn't strictly make sense - or at least, it only makes sense in the pages of this novel. I entered it into the Searchlight competition, thinking that if the premise didn't work as a novel opening, it probably would be best to think it was a tad too weird. So when I got the email telling me it had been longlisted out of over 700 entries, I was really very pleased! It will be included in an anthology as a special mention along with eleven other novel beginnings.
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SCBWI Undiscovered Voices 2021I was really very surprised and humbled to have my story The World Without be on the longlist of SCBWI's annual "Undiscovered Voices", a competition for unpublished and unagented children's fiction writers living in the UK and the EU. 270 writers entered and the thirty-one longlistees were whittled down to fourteen.
The stories were considered anonymously and selected by a distinguished panel of industry experts:
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Bath Children's Novel Award 2020My novel, The World Within, was shortlisted from an incredible 1,012 entries from 35 countries for the Bath Children's Novel Awards 2020! I received some brilliant, insightful feedback from the junior judges which has encouraged me to redraft it with the new title, Within.
“An ambitious and imaginative urban fantasy with an unusual collection of characters and distinctive setting.” I wrote the story in 2020 just as the first lockdown began. I’d fortuitously enrolled in an online Write A Novel course with the Faber Academy and began it with a vague idea of a trapdoor trapping people but with no idea why. The main character, Delilah, grew from seeing my own children’s fear of actually leaving the house during a new pandemic, while also being aware isolation in itself can be a dangerous thing. Writing is, for me, very freeing and therapeutic and I never needed it more than in that difficult year. I thought I was being quite rash entering it so quickly after writing it into the Bath Children’s Novel Award but I felt the story - and Delilah in particular - so closely connected to the year we’d all had, that I had to try. And now, of course, I am really glad I did!
I made a three-minute animation of the prologue of Within. To see it, click on the youtube link.
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SHORT STORY COMPETITIONS
Bath Short Story Award 2014When I wrote The Ghost Boy, I'd been reading a lot of Alice Munro - the best short story writer I've found so far. I entered the 2,200 word story into the Bath Short Story Award 2014 expecting nothing. It was a complete shock when it beat over a thousand other entries to win! The Ghost Boy is available to buy in digital format as part of the Bath Short Story Award 2014 Anthology, a collection of the top 20 short stories. As well as the story appearing in the anthology, I designed the cover using a detail from my collage painting, The Circus Acorns.
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“I am alone in my room between two worlds.”
Sylvia Plath
