Welcome to my blog, where I’ll be sharing musings about my work and the terrifying and thrilling rollercoaster ride* that is the writer’s experience of the publishing industry.

I’m going to start by answering a question I’m often asked.

Where do the stories come from?

Can I take you to the pub? This pub in Kelham Island in the middle of Sheffield.

Here I am, self-consciously posing outside it.

This painted line and the few words accompanying it were the inspiration for what turned out to be my debut novel The Ragged Valley. How had I, Sheffield born and bred, never heard of one of the biggest industrial disasters of the Victorian era, one that happened right on my doorstep?

The Dale Dyke reservoir burst some eight miles away from the high-water mark on this Kelham Island pub. It killed 250 townspeople.

This was the story I wanted to write or, rather, the event I knew I could base a saga on.

The seeds for the second in the series The Girl at Change Alley were sewn when I stumbled on accounts of the Sheffield Outrages perpetrated by a rogue union leader. It was while reading about the importance of unions in developing factory workers’ rights during that period that I came up with the idea for The Watchman’s Widow.

So the short answer is, researching other stuff delivers the nuggets of gold for a new story.

Please bookmark my blog and visit regularly.

*And I hate rollercoasters! What am I doing here?