A bit about me

Born and brought up in the heart of England, I had never lived anywhere else until I met Colin, my husband, and his job took us abroad. I originally trained in law but that didn’t travel as a career so through Belgium, Nigeria and Cyprus I taught English and started on some freelance journalism writing arts and restaurant reviews. Then, back in England at the millennium, we bought an old cider farm in Normandy for holidays, moving there permanently a few years later. I published my first novel ‘Nothing Like a Dream.’ A romantic comedy, it was inspired by a short stint I did when I was eighteen as an au pair for a rich and glamorous Parisian family. Now living the dream, Colin and I moved from our cider farm to a smaller but equally pretty house just over the border into Brittany. Here we were going to spend the rest of our days.

Then, without any warning, the mildly ironic title of that first novel suddenly became horribly true for us: Colin was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, early and rapid onset. In 2024 I brought him back to England where he was admitted to care. I bought a little flat ten minutes down the road from where I could visit him every day. But there were still long hours to fill on my own. I picked up the novel I had begun writing in France and that’s how ‘The Villa Matisse’ was born.

It may seem strange that a romantic comedy could be born out of such a dark time. Yet, romantic comedy is pure escapism and that’s what writing the ‘The Villa Matisse’ became for me; an escape from reality. I might not live there any longer but in my head I could go back to France and the good years. Recently, a kind reviewer wrote that reading ‘The Villa Matisse’ had helped her through a bad time. I’m so glad it did not only for her but because that’s exactly what ‘The Villa Matisse’ is about. It’s a place to go where there is light, laughter and, of course, love.

Well, there’s always going to be love in a romantic comedy, isn’t there? On that you can depend.