I'm a writer and freelance proofreader, and I live in the leafy Home Counties of England with my boyfriend and our Jack Russell terrier, Popple (below).

I’ve always been a voracious reader. When I was little my dad would take my sister and I to town every Saturday morning. We would help do the shopping and then he would take us to the library, where you could (and still can) take out 10 books at a time. My sister and I would delight in poring over the shelves for things we hadn’t read and maybe treat ourselves to a lip-balm from Boots and a packet of strawberry laces from the sweet shop, too. I still get nice fuzzy feelings when I think of the journey home, listening to Dave Lee Travis's "wack wack oops" snooker quiz on BBC Radio 1 with a bagful of books by my side.

I read many different kinds of books over the years, but Enid Blyton was always one of my staples. I enjoyed the Famous Five stories (particularly the one where they stay in a yellow gypsy caravan), but my favourites were the Magic Faraway Tree books, the St Clare’s school stories, Hollow Tree House, and--rather controversial these days--The Three Golliwogs. I was also a big fan of Joyce Lankester Brisley’s Milly Molly Mandy books and my all-time favourite children’s book was, and still is, Elizabeth Goudge’s The Little White Horse.

I was about 8 when I first began to write; tales of adventure that usually revolved around me and my friends getting lost in the woods with a knapsack of food and a mystery to solve. I didn’t know it then, but I was already doing what many fledgling writers do--emulating my favourite authors! When I was 12, I entered WH Smith's Young Writers Competition, with a story about a wizard who lived on Atlantis. I lost the piece many years ago, but its theme was an explanation of the mystery of the disappearing island. (I think I blamed it on a band of fraudulent ne’er-do-wells who somehow managed to sell the island to a higher power. Hmm.)

I stopped writing for a while after that. Around this time the Point Horror book series was launched, and my friends and I were mad about them. We would discuss who had what book and tried to ensure that we each had different titles, so that between us we had a full library to swap and share. Not long after Point Horror took off, a new series, Point Romance, was launched, and I fell headfirst into that, too. After I’d entered my teen years, I started my grown-up fiction reading career with that classic title, Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews. I devoured the rest of the series, and not long afterwards I entered a bit of a gothic stage and mostly read Stephen King and Dean Koontz.

When I began to study English Literature for GCSE and A-Level I started to make my own selective reading choices in the bookshops. I widened my horizons, picking up books I’d never heard of to try something new. Then one day, a package of Mills & Boon books came through the door on a Reader Service promotion (with a free pen in a velvet pouch and, if I remember correctly, a dusky rose-coloured wine glass!). I can vividly remember reading one in the bath--a Christmas story--and shivering in the rapidly-chilling water over an hour later because I could not put that book down. Shamefully, I can’t remember the title or the author.

I began to write again. I flirted with poetry and wrote some short stories, then started a thriller about an American town dominated by an evil river. (It didn’t go very far.) Life intervened for a few years: I finished school, got a job, and though I continued to read, I stopped writing. The year I turned 21 I took the summer off work and bought myself a laptop. I surfed the net and thought about what I really wanted to do with my life. At that point another promotional package from Mills & Boon happened to drop through the door. I consumed the books in less than two days and went online to order more. I discovered eharlequin.com and joined the message boards. I scoured Amazon for books on how to write romance, and I started to do it: I wrote.

Since that summer I have worked on a number of different writing projects. Most of the early ones have not been published (and rightly so!), but you can find out more about the books I do have in circulation by clicking here.

Now I'm fortunate enough to be a full-time writer and proofreader. When I’m not busy doing either of those things, I enjoy reading, shopping, gossiping with friends, watching movies, visualizing a perfectly-decorated house, planning/taking short trips with my boyfriend, and being in my garden.