My historical novel, The Apothecary’s Daughter was published by Piatkus in August 2011. This was the culmination of my writer’s hopes and dreams of the past ten years.
I love to read. Losing myself in a good book has always allowed me to temporarily escape from the stresses and strains of modern life. Then, about ten years ago, I started to write my own stories and discovered yet another way of looking at the world. And this time it was (almost) under my own control.
At first I wrote only for my own pleasure. I had an idea I wanted to explore, a mystery story, and after three months I finished my first novel. I experienced a huge sense of achievement and became addicted to seeking out new ideas to spark my imagination.
Each novel took progressively longer as I learned more about the craft of writing. I joined writers’ groups and was overjoyed to learn that there were other people as obsessed by the whole writing thing as I was. I wrote seven novels before I found a publisher and still find it hard to believe that my dream has come true. It’s not all a bed of roses, however, and if you are an aspiring writer you may find it interesting to compare your writer’s journey to my own.