Writing is pure escapism for me! It is a way for me to get away from the day to day, 'ordinary' world and to live through my characters and their lives. I find that my characters often live their own lives, you start writing according to a pre-determined plan only to find that what ends up on the page is totally different, it is amazing but I find that they do live and often make their own decisions!

I write for people to read my work and hope that I can entertain and delight people. I would like to think that my fans would laugh and cry in the same way I do when I read my stories. If I can engage with just one person then my job as an author has been a success.

At the moment I have a strange novel which mixes racing thriller and time travel/sci-fi. I am not sure if this is something that anyone other than me would like to read, but it will be interesting how the final story ends up, there is a long way to go yet!

Working mostly! Boring I know, but until I become the next Dan Brown (if only, certainly not at his level!) I have to spend many hours working in a local supermarket. The upside is that I work with an amazing group of people and meet customers all the time, I love to interact with people so this is a dream job.

Usually pretty randomly, I love to dip into a wide variety of books and my ereader has allowed me to carry many books with me at all times. There are times when I will want to search for something specific but generally I browse and see what I enjoy.

I plan, plan and plan again and then generally throw all of that away and just write. I will often have an idea of what the narrative arc looks like but I think the characters need the freedom to do what is best for them, I will write many versions of the story and tinker with it until it feels right, So, there is lots of writing, editing and tinkering, very little science.

Everything and anything. I read lots of books and always have, from chicklit to serious literature I think that to be an author you need to have a full appreciation of writing in all forms.

I have a Kobo eReader, I chose it because it allows me to read all types of ebooks without being tethered to any specific online store.

Word of mouth works well, I am a member of a number of forums and share my writing via these. Asking people to pre-review the work for you can be useful as you start to multiply your number of possible contacts.

It is a mess... Covered with everything from tools to empty plates, I suppose it is similar to my mind, cluttered and full of stuff!