Writing contains my emotions. It lets me work through ideas and create characters who can be part of themes that are important to me, or which I want to explore. Without writing, mainly song lyrics, I don't think I'd have retained my sanity!!

A health visitor friend of mine told me that middle-class women are the most represented in suicide statistics. I sometimes thought it might be macabre writing 2 novels about suicide, but I figured that lots of people write about varying sorts of murderers so it would be fine. I also think that suicide is an under-discussed topic, so if people talked about The Tuesday Night Book Club, it might, in its own small way, add to the acceptability of mentioning this really important subject. Depression plays large in our society and I wanted to take a character through the vicissitudes of modern suburban life, looking at where her non-achievement of the standards she's been brought up to expect would lead her. I've been fascinated by the supernatural forever it seems, so i always have to have some element of the ghostly or other-worldly in my books. I was intrigued by the idea that people could unwittingly invite in harmful spirits, so Violet comes to realise that the demon of which she has visions, is sustaining her self-pity and enveigling her further and further into it. There needed to be lightness to the story, as a foil to the lows that Violet experiences, so we have her spirited daughter, her environmentally aware elderly neighbour and her holistically charged aunt.

I'd like The Tuesday Night Book Club to be the first in a series of novels that concentrate on Elsie. She's the daughter of Violet, the main character in TTNBC, and I have plans for her to develop perception of demonic influences. She already has a nonagenarian Christian neighbour, who is pretty-much her best friend, and Elsie's experiences at the end of TTNBC convince her of the reality of the fight that goes on in the supernatural realm.

Charles Dickens, Voltaire

God! Life is so busy I rely on prayer to motivate me and have me up and getting on with the washing, feeding the cat, kneading bread and planning my children's lessons. Ah, what a suburban housewife I sound...but I do object to surveys that have me down as such. Home educator fits the bill better.

Planning lessons for my children and writing out worksheets. Researching science, geography etc. Helping run a home ed group and working out how to excite children about science each week.
Writing songs to perform in local pubs and clubs. Rehearsing with my husband and other great bandmates.
Singing in choir.
Cooking all manner of curios to foist upon my children!

It was a story about angels while I was at school. I think I was about 9. I have a feeling they bounced about on clouds.

Be led by my unconscious to some extent. Stories seem to write themselves. I'll start out with a character who can hold ideas or emotions I need to work through. The story evolves around that person, what her history needs to have been to make her who she is etc. I think about what a reader might want, to make the story interesting and flowing.

Bible stories have had a huge influence on me. They were in the background of my wanting to work with offenders, which subsequently informed the 2 novels I've written.

I read all manner of things. I loved a book called "What Plants Know", all about whether plants can be said to have the same senses we have. Voltaire makes me laugh, with his satirical look at old French society. I read books about spiritual warfare and really enjoyed Robby Dawkins talk about his experiences turning round his Aurora through miracles.

Ha ha! No space for a desk! I write on park benches, in swimming pool waiting areas, on my bed, on the dining table, at the work surface while I cook dinner...

I grew up in South West London. It's an area of huge cultural diversity, which I hope gives me a broad understanding of all sorts of folk, which is an important feature of credible characters, methinks.

As a child I wrote stories and songs. Words are wonderful to me, and I especially like keeping words of antiquity alive.

As a home educating mum, I hadn't a hope of finding an agent or a publisher so it felt saner to self-publish through Smashwords, which had been recommended as supportive and ethical.