I'm one of those people who's always writing no matter where I am there's always a story forming in the back of my mind.
I tend to spend a lot of time walking with my dog, Hero, it helps clear my mind, help me focus and I find nature to be one of the greatest inspirations.
I'm a great movie lover so I see as many films as I can when I can. I also love British Drama so on cold winter nights I'll curl up in front of the TV when I can and indulged in something like Downton Abbey, Ripper Street, Call the Midwife and so on.
I also love the theatre and go whenever I can, I have a great admiration for live shows be it musical, drama, comedy or dance

I don't have as much time as I'd like at the moment to read, so I go a lot of recommendations from friends and fellow writers. Sometimes though if I'm in the mood for a particular genre I will search out the most tantalising description or review on my favourite retailers site.

I started writing in childhood, I sometimes wouldn't like the way fairy tales ended or not knowing what came next so I would make it up. The first story I actually remember sitting down and writing was a story about a soldier who was lost as he tried to make his way home to his fiancé. Unfortunately it was a story I never finished but I have used similar themes in books I've written since.

My process varies book to book. Some books I will plot out intimately before I start the first chapter, others will be a simple outline that I form chapters around. I find I write best as an organic process so I let each idea take it's own path.

I remember my favourite story was the Phantom of the Opera, I remember being told the story as a child and it was one of the first books I read on my own. It was such a tantalising book, to have sympathy for someone you should despise and to have doubts and pick faults in those characters represented as Hero and Heroine was intriguing to me and it's still a concept I play with.

I work with a brilliant cover designer and we have a set process, similar to an interview or sales pitch in a way, where I describe my book, the characters, the themes, what I envisage what has inspired me, what feelings I want to evoke in the reader. She takes away the information and draws out key themes and designs around those. We then take that as a starting point and build the image from there.