about me

"His train of thought always took the scenic route. He moved back and forth in time, following associations and connections to their conclusions before returning to the matter in hand. Anyone trying to make a chronology of his life by using the auto-biographies would have a nervous breakdown."

Leonard Woolf: A Life. Victoria Glendinning 2006.

Born in 1958 and brought up in Hammersmith, West London, I graduated from Brighton Polytechnic in 1981. I lived in Australia for some time after completing my degree.

To support my writing - and sometimes to avoid writing – I have worked in many different places, the most memorable of which include: a factory producing plastic make-up display stands (that operated far beyond the realms of health and safety), an estate agents, an underground station newsagent in Sydney, and a Renault car dealership. And when I decided I needed a mortgage and a full-time career, I became a senior manager for one of the first Internet companies and was the only person I knew with an email address.

My first novel, Seven Miles From Sydney, was published in 1987 and was in the City Limits top ten best books for that year. In 1990 I worked with the actress Sue Johnston on her semi-autobiographical book, Hold Onto The Messy Times. In 2005 an extract of A Kind Of Vanishing was included in The Brighton Book along with pieces by Jeanette Winterson, Nigella Lawson and Louis de Bernières.

In 2006 I graduated from the University of Sussex with an MA in English Literature and completed A Kind of Vanishing.

I now live in Lewes, East Sussex.

I am a member of the Crime Writers Association (www.thecwa.co.uk) and Mystery Women (www.mysterywomen.co.uk)