So many authors, so many genres! I would say top of the list would be writers like Taylor Jenkins Reid, Jojo Moyes, Amanda Prowse, Elizabeth Day, Marian Keyes and Lisa Jewell. But honestly, there are so many fabulous authors out there, it would be impossible to name every book and writer I have enjoyed reading. There is a blog post I wrote about books by some of the authors I’ve named above. You can read that here.

That’s definitely my primary focus now, but I have written feature articles for magazines and short stories for magazines like Woman and Woman’s Weekly. I still write a little commercially – blog posts, website content, product descriptions, etc.

Three dogs – Sir Bernard, Pi, and our newest addition, Blue. Two Herdwick sheep, Uncle Bulgaria and Shorty. Also, six chickens. They are all called Yoko Ono and they are very feisty. So feisty, in fact, that the dogs are quite wary of them. So am I come to that.

NEWSFLASH! We now have two more sheep, Tommy and Timmy, a.k.a Satan. Don’t ask.

Ideas can spring from anywhere, especially if you are prepared to constantly ask ‘what if’. Any news article or even an anecdote overheard can be a gold mine because you can take the gist of the story and expand it, exaggerate it, set it somewhere else, bring in new characters and create an entirely new tale. The flip side of this is, of course, that it can lead to crushing anxiety because in real life, ‘what-ifs’ can take you down a dark rabbit hole.

Tea! Gallons of it. Although I do have the occasional coffee.

I’m still refining that, and I’m not sure that task will ever finish. My characters are very important, so the first thing I do is try to get under their skin. I’ll think about their upbringings, their bad habits and their good deeds. I work out what keeps them awake at night and I’ll write pages and pages about their innermost thoughts until I can be sure I know exactly how each of them would react under any circumstance. Then I outline the story (I’ll already have that in my head) and set the characters free and watch them navigate their way around the problems they face.

Definitely character driven. I’m fascinated by how every event in our lives, every person we have interacted with, can influence who we are. I love to see how people adapt and change and find strength when they dig deep. I think my books appeal to people who like to engage with a character (even the ones who are not so nice!) and go on a journey with them, watch them develop and make mistakes. Ultimately, I write heartwarming books where the characters learn, adapt, find their strength and become stronger, happier people in the process.

Working on Wild Flower, the final book in the Mackenzie series. There are some surprises: heartache, joy, and secrets finally revealed. Sign up to the newsletter to be the first to hear the release date (around May 26). It’ll be worth the wait!