With a Creative Writing degree from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Bridget McNulty set off to write her first novel, Strange Nervous Laughter. It was published in South Africa by Oshun Books (a division of Struik) in September 2007, and published in the USA by St Martin's Press in May 2009.

Since then she's received numerous emails asking her how to write a novel - so many, in fact, that she created an online novel-writing course: Now Novel (www.nownovel.com)