The overbearing master...or how it all began.

Some people (having had their arms firmly twisted) have asked me how I came to write my first novel and how it got published. It still feels weird to talk about it ..like it has happened to someone else, but here goes.

I actually started writing when I was four, my first attempt to get published being a joke sent off by my mum to the Topper (yes - I'm that old). When I was nine, I won a runner's up prize in a Daily Mirror children's literary competition. Thanks to an inspirational English teacher at the local comprehensive, I later got a place to read English Language & Literature at Oxford. Special interests included Jane Austen and hot rum punch at The Turf Tavern.

After leaving uni worked (briefly) in a food factory, as a copywriter, a regional journalist and now runs a freelance copywriting business. The best part has been writing non-fiction articles including interviews with authors, actors and sportspeople.

I never dreamed of writing any fiction - far too difficult, I thought (it was and is) and very stressful (it was and isn't quite so much now).

In January 2005 I met up with a group of wonderful women on the BBC Drama message board, and became one of the members of an internet literary/writing site called C19. My first piece of fiction was a 'fanfic' called, imaginatively N&S 2005. It was a sexy, funny ( I hope) ‘modern’ take on the Mrs Gaskell’s North & South, without the multiple deaths and politics.

Which all gives me an excuse to post another gorgeous bloke. Mr 'Overbearing Master' himself, star of North & South ....Richard Armitage. (Sorry, Richard if you ever come across this but you have to shoulder some of the blame...and what broad shoulders they are.)