I was lucky to be born into a large happy family – not the best start for a writer. So I was not a lonely, only child who was constantly scribbling little stories in exercise books with red shiny covers and lined paper, bought from the village newsagents.
I read
Secret Seven books, dressed up as Davy Crocket, and went on dirt track races round our Lincolnshire farmyard on my bike with my brothers and sisters. As to career aspirations, I wanted to be a secretary so I could wear tight skirts and high heels.
I actually became a research psychologist, a social researcher, a full time mother and various combinations of these.
In 1996, I started to write creatively and became a regular contributor of first-person pieces to
The Times. I also had
features in the
Guardian,
Mslexia and
The Observer.
I met my co-author of the comic novel
Plotting for Beginners, at creative writing class. Jane and I began to email each other work to critique. But soon our correspondence became a daily one as we fell into the pattern of trying to make each other laugh with our descriptions of domestic and family trivia. The idea for
Plotting for Beginners developed from this.
My second novel -
Zuzu's Petals - is a romantic comedy with a serious heart. The love story is interwoven with the story of the heroine's grief over the death of her elderly father.
But I told you last year that I loved you (published in 2011) is the story of a mature marriage at a crossroads. The National Autistic Society named it as one of their favourite novels about autism.
Plotting for Grown-ups, the sequel to
Plotting for Beginners, written with Jane Linfoot, was published in 2013.
I have just completed an adaptation of
But I told you last year that I loved you for television.