Let me tell you a little bit about me as a YA novelist.

I’d been Writing as part of my job at a publishing company. I used to transcribe band interviews for music magazines and I also contributed to a Kraftwerk biography written by Tim Barr (ex editor of NME) which was published by Random House.

This was all well and good, but it wasn’t the stuff I really wanted to Write. For as long as I can remember I’d wanted to write fiction books. I just dreamt about it though, convincing myself that I didn’t have the time and anyway, that was for other people, those with different lives, one’s that didn’t mind being told they sucked at it.

I suppose I didn’t want to hear that I wasn’t good enough to make it as an author. Even though I knew I could write, well I thought I could. Perhaps I was deluded and actually I was crap.

Working For Myself

In 1999 my husband and I set up a web development company. He was the clever, designery type, I was the marketing expert…hmm…I am good at pretending to be good at things! Eventually however, I did become an expert in the field. I am now a digital media director of two companies.

Finding time to write for myself was becoming increasingly difficult, so I decided that writing for businesses was the way forward for me instead. That’s what I did and that’s what I still do to an extent. I have a select few clients that I write content for. A have two very big accounts and a few smaller ones.

But I hadn’t given up on writing fiction. Far from it. I wrote and wrote….I sent a few manuscripts off to agents. They were adult fiction manuscripts, at this point I hadn’t even considered writing books for teens. I had an almost, and I wonder what might have happened if I’d continued submitting queries. I was planning to carry on and then, well I’m not sure what happened really. It all happened so fast and now here I am.

Reality and LOA

I am a believer in creating your own reality. I have been for years, but the last couple have seen me really getting into the subject and making some huge changes in my life. I decided to write Wishful Thinking from a teenage girls perspective, in fiction form. Only for fun, I had no intention of making a career out of YA fiction.

I wrote a full novel in four weeks! It was so much fun and I completely forgot about the fact that is all came from believing in LOA. Then by chance someone in the industry read it and loved it. She said it was a goer. Fast forward a couple of weeks, I found myself an editor and a cover designer and there you go! My belief in LOA and letting go of control allowed me to be where I am today.

Time is a strange thing. It’s amazing to me that I got where I am so quickly. without too much effort really. The writing comes easy and the marketing, well I’m an expert remember?

My book is selling well in the UK and I’ve just started making some sales in the States and Canada. I think it’s realistic to set a time frame of 12 months to see your name truly recognised.

My next novel Lizzie French is Missing will be released later this year.

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