A Little Bit About Me

So who am I? That is a good question!

A little history:

I have always wanted to be a writer. Even as a child I was drawn to it. I studied Creative Writing (and History) at the University of Bath Spa and it only reinforced my love of books and writing, although I did go down a different route to begin with.

I ended up taking a Masters in Medieval History at Edinburgh University and then followed that with a Masters of Library and Information Science from San Jose State University where I took my love of books to a whole new level! Being surrounded by books and writing academic papers and research was definitely interesting, but I learnt pretty quickly that academia (at least the path I was on) was not for me. I will say that being a school librarian would be my dream job though!

I ended up working in the currency industry where I had a wide range of jobs, including writing marketing copy, writing for industry publications, and also organising events. It was fun to see the writing skills I could put to use there, but it wasn't where my heart was.

During the last 10 years I started writing picture books (a common story as it coincided with my first child being born) and fell in love with the medium and process. I wrote a few stories, one of which was hybrid-published back in 2023. Mirror Me was my first foray into children's publishing and although I wouldn't hybrid-publish again (I will write a future post about it), I learnt so much through the process and found out that I really knew nothing and had to start from the ground up in a new industry.

And now:

I started devoting myself fully to writing at the beginning of 2024 and have only scratched the surface of the industry, what I want to do, and how I can achieve it. I am currently querying a few picture books (PB) and have recently taken the dive into chapter books (CB). I am a part of several critique groups and an active member of SCBWI and Julie Hedlund's 12x12 Picture Book Challenge. My writing comes in ebbs and flows (currently in an ebb!) and I have recently discovered I am not a fan of editing longer forms of writing (my poor CB is languishing).

And that is pretty much me (well, the writing part anyway) in a nutshell!