THE MAGIC OF SHORT STORIES
What a wonderful challenge, to fit a whole world into one single droplet. Well, that’s my aim. I love the short fiction genre for the way it requires us writers to create micro worlds from bigger ideas. I’m always writing or thinking of writing, and I enter several competitions every year, a compulsive habit that has so far won me a shortlist spot on the Bath Short Story Award 2025. The process provides me with essential discipline and purpose.

LIFE BEFORE FICTION
I was a lifestyle writer, C for consumer, working across travel, retail, heritage, education, health, beauty, property and wellbeing websites. I created:
• new words for websites
• edits on existing content
• single pages (profile pages, bios, product pages)
• interior design stories, case studies, and testimonials
• blogs and articles.

LIFE BEFORE WRITING
I may have always thought of myself as a writer, but my career didn’t begin in that camp. On leaving my North London comprehensive, I enrolled on a Fine Art degree in printmaking up north (when Lawson was ‘Pearce’ and the fishermen had not long pulled in their nets). I soon realised I’d be a much better journalist than printmaker, so every summer I found internships on magazines back home in London, eventually taking a job as a typist in a features agency. That was my roundabout route into magazine journalism. Where there’s a will…

WHERE HAVE I WORKED?
I’ve freelanced for many years; the following companies contributed in a major way to my early career trajectory:
• Bristol United Press
• Emap Elan (Slimming Magazine)
• BBC Worldwide (BBC Good Homes Magazine)
• Publicis Blueprint (Asda Magazine)
• John Brown Publishing (John Lewis Edition Magazine)
In 2018, I set up online as a content writer, offering editing and fresh web pages. More details on my LinkedIn page.

SINGAPORE 2012-2017
From 2012 to 2017, I lived and freelanced in Singapore, landing a job as an editor on an events website. I was also a tour guide at The Peranakan Museum, and wrote a travel blog at partlycloudy.co.uk. You can find some of the posts here.

WHAT ELSE?
• I’ve completed various writing courses at the Open University and Curtis Brown Creative, and more recently bagged a Distinction on an MA in Creative Writing. Being an older student is brilliant, so if you get the chance, go for it.
• Like a lot of people, I love travel and exploration. Favourites? Malaysian food stalls, deserted Australian beaches, lunch in Lisbon with best friends – and so much more. Couldn’t do Race Across the World, though...
• Bring me a whisk, and I’ll whip up a cake. Nothing fancy, just a big, oozy Victoria Sponge with jam and cream.
• I love a good sing: loudly at home alone, or with family in Cornish pubs, or at parties that are foolish enough to have karaoke kits, or just in the shower (sorry, neighbours).
• I’m surrounded by family and friends: one husband, one son, one dad, one sister, one brother-outlaw, two cats, many cousins, aunts and uncles, friends who are now family. Lucky, aren’t I?
• There is so much to come, and I’m here for all of it, charting everything one word at a time.