About Me

I pack my bags and spend two years in the East. It's REALLY GREAT!

Ahh, the little ego-centric portion of the website...

Well, where to begin? I won't bore you with all that early stuff, you want to get in medias re, don't you? Sorry, have to insert some backstory, if not for you, then for future biographers...

1989- Come out with a Third Class degree. Try to persuade myself a third from Imperial is worth AT LEAST the same as an Upper Second from any lesser university, like Oxford. Become an engineer. Very soon realise it's not feeding my artistic soul...

1994- Thanks to the recession I am unemployed. Pack my bags and become an economic refugee. Spend the next two years out in the East. It's REALLY GREAT!

1996- Against my better judgement, come back to Blighty. My worst fears are confirmed: I am going bald. Despair follows... Fast forward...

An expert suggests my story would be suitable for Bette Midler. Despair follows.

March 2004- Mid-life crisis HITS. What am I doing? I am an ARTIST! There must be more to life than designing ductwork systems! Sign up onto a screenwriting course...

October 2004- Pitch my story to a panel of experts. One suggests it may be suitable for Bette Midler. He does not mean this as a compliment. Despair follows...

October 2004- Friend tells me to try my hand at a straight story. I bash out Templar Chapter 1. The Premise is awesome. Nobody would think to write about a teenage 'kick-ass' heroine fighting the supernatural, or mix in the utterly obscure Knights Templar...

I discover Buffy ... despair follows.

November 2004- I discover Buffy. Despair follows... January 2005- I write and write and write...

March 2005- I discover The Da Vinci Code. Despair follows...

November 2005- TEMPLAR is finished (all 100,000 words of it)! Spend a lot of time lurking by the office photocopier after work (and they thought I was doing overtime...sorry!) and pack it off to my top ten carefully selected agents... The NEXT DAY (I kid you not) the rejections start to arrive...

I discover The Da Vinci Code. Despair follows ...

January 2006- An agent likes it! Send me the rest, she asks!

January 2006- No, she doesn't like it...but why not try Cornerstones?

February 2006-February 2007 back and forth it goes. Advice here, chapter swaps there, new story, another new story...Enter Cornerstones WOWFactor competition...

September 2007- Shortlisted! Almost there...

October 2007- SCBWI British Isles are doing an Undiscovered Voices competition. The judges are all serious players in publishing. What if..?

November 2007- SCBWI call. Congratulations, you've won! Lindsey of Puffin call me at home to congratulate me, my daughter hangs up on her. Sarah Davies enters my life...she signs me and tears the manuscript to shreds (in a Hard Love kind of way). (At this point, if this was a movie, we'd have a montage of me sweating by candlelight over a pile of pages, many more strewn over the floor, then at the keyboard, raging impotently against the storm-black sky, etc).

February 2008- The Devils' Kiss is lean and totally BAD-ASS. Go to the SCBWI Undiscovered Voices Launch Party. I could seriously get into this lifestyle...

March 2008- After a MAD MAD MAD two weeks Puffin and Hyperion take on The Devil's Kiss. There is MUCH REJOICING!