I was brought up in a village that has provided the background for two of my novels. When I was about ten, I wrote half an exercise book of poems and showed it to my English teacher at the grammar school I attended; she was not in the least bit impressed. After that, I scribbled stories going home on the bus and I wrote a few more when I was an undergraduate. Eventually, having given up teaching to write, I finished a novel for adults but no publisher was interested. So I gave up writing and had babies, which was just as difficult.. Eventually I returned to writing and began to be published.
I have taught in schools and colleges, been a ward orderly in a hospital, worked on a farm, delivered post. In between novels I've been a judge for a literary award, taught in a gaol, served in a bar, held writing residences, organised a literature festival, wasted a lot of time doing housework, and watched the babies grow into humorous children and companionable adults.
Nowadays, as a rest from the desk, I swim, walk, do gardening, go into a school weekly to help some children with reading, visit the theatre and cinema, study subjects that take my fancy. But I am not really satisfied unless I am working on a book, preferably very different from the previous one. One for adults, Flames, is a kind of tragedy; one, The Raven Waits, is about the terrible man-monster Grendel. Several for teenagers, like Enter Tom, are comedies; or, as Double Take, a thriller; or, as Foundling, a survival story set in the future in the Yorkshire Dales; or, as Escape, a book about incest that young people find so hard to discuss; or, also for young adults, Undercurrents, which tells what happens when a village submerged in a reservoir reappears during a drought.

Undercurrents offers a very clear example of how a book can start. There are a number of reservoirs near where I live and one, built in the 1960's, required flooding a small deserted village. During a long drought a few years ago, the water dropped so far that the remains of the village were visible. I found the sight very disturbing; out of it, came the idea for the book. Double Take started from a story an actor told me. I wrote Escape because I was angry, so many people have been damaged by sexual abuse. I decided to write The Raven Waits because I enjoyed the poem, Beowulf, keeping the heroic actions and loyalties but adding jealousies and intrigues for power. The comedies Enter Tom, Grow up Cupid and Moving In were written when my own children were growing up and gave me so much fun.