with Evonne Wareham
‘It’s not so much what I wish I’d known as what I wish I’d realised – that it would take me such a long time to become a traditionally published author. I think all aspiring novelists must secretly dream that their first efforts will be snapped up by publishers and become overnight successes, even if they don’t dare admit it. Sometimes, this does happen, but in my case success took a very long time to arrive.
‘What this taught me was perseverance – to keep writing and to keep submitting, to enter competitions and to attend courses and to keep learning: and, at the same time, to understand and to hone who I was as a writer. I have to accept some of the responsibility for that long journey. It took me a while to discover what I really enjoyed writing. After a lot of experimenting – I wrote sagas, family dramas and chick-lit – I discovered that everything I wrote had an element of crime in it. But I knew I didn’t want to give up writing romance, which is how I finally came to write romantic suspense. My latest novel is a romantic comedy, but it also features a light dusting of crime!