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My father told wonderful bedtime stories, the stories he’d been told as a child, changing his voice for the different characters and instilling a sense of suspense as he built up to the ending.

In my first few years at school the teacher always ended the day sitting at the front of the class, the children gathered around her as she read us a story.

When I got to university as a mature student I remembered these early experiences of being enthralled as the stories unfolded. I studied a module dealing with the oral tradition of storytelling, from the Classics to the fairytales and folk tales which developed from them down the centuries. We were encouraged to write our own tales, using the techniques we’d learned, and I loved doing that. I went on to teach the module, when I’d completed my own studies—and it was then that I met a student who’d engaged in what to me seemed a twenty-first century issue.

I’d been an avid reader from a young age, caught up in my books. I remember crying with anger and sorrow over George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss at school, aged fourteen. I developed a taste for the social-problem novels of the nineteenth-century, and literary fiction became a favourite with me. Now I perceived a contemporary problem, that of this student and others in the same situation—of leaving university with a massive debt around their necks, and engaging in the sex trade in a bid to pay their expenses as they went along.

I’d been experimenting with writing, and this issue focussed me as I wrote my debut novel. Fairytales Don’t Come True follows a young female student who chooses this path, thinking she can cope—however, the reality is not what she expects. The novel was always intended to be a stand-alone, but I had an idea for a second book, and then a third—the six-book Criminal Conversation series grew from it, concerning social issues both old and new.

A chance remark in a conversation gave me the idea for the psychological suspense thriller, You Know What You Did, for which I later wrote a sequel, What Else Did You Do? I also branched out into poetry, encouraged by a social-media friend, and I’ve published four small collections.

I’d heard of authors who’d gone through years and multiple rejections before finding an agent and traditional publisher, and my own early attempts were similarly unsuccessful. Being in my mid-sixties I didn’t feel I had that long to search, so decided to self-publish. Although it’s hard going trying to market my books, I don’t regret it. It’s been a steep learning curve in the world of social media—something I wasn’t part of before I published Fairytales—and I’ve heard some horror stories about traditional publishers. On the independent route I’ve acquired training as a sub-editor, learned how to make my own advertising banners and videos as well as book covers, launched my own website and developed my writing skills. I’m in control of my own work, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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