I've been writing on and off since childhood. Horse stories were my favourite subject during summer holidays spent avoiding my annoying brother. I'd return home with the car half a ton heavier with all the filled up notepads! Who knows what happened to them, lost in the big relocation move, maybe lurking in someone's loft. I had wanted to be a journalist when I finished school and wrote all the time. My parents moved us, when I was 14, in a continental relocation from the island of Jersey, a British Crown independent island, to the South of France. Initially the Cote d'Azur to finish my education in an international school. Following that, two years in a French college in the mountains of the Var Monday to Friday, at the weekend a construction technician, helping convert our shed into a home. I left the Provence and returned to Jersey where I made it as far as the newsroom of a TV station - but as a Production Assistant. In charge of timings and working with the editor to put the news out live twice a day. It was enormous fun and I did continue to learn from the reporters that worked there. Filming took me around Europe, the farthest trip was the Falkland Islands. We were lucky to work with some amazing people, visiting all the sites, including a wildlife reserve hardly touched by humans. Children and work came first but I still scribbled in notepads. 'Think of what you know and something no one else has written about' all the great tipsters tell you. So I did. That's how Teenager En Provence came to be. A tale of said relocation to France and how we, as a family, fitted in. I wrote from the point of view of the teen I had been, so set against it to falling in love with the area. Now my children are grown I've taken a step further towards the dream of full time author. I've taken time out of work to write. Book one of the Wingfield Equestrian series is out now on amazon. RIVALRY IN RIDING BOOTS is all about life on a livery yard. Those that have been there will know it can be like a set of a soap opera. There's a lot of horses in it, but there's also a story line that will interest anyone who likes contemporary fiction.                

Distinction in London School of Journalism's distance learning 'Journalism and Travel writing' course, Feb 09