Blog

I often find that it’s when I take a break from writing that the ideas start to flow, and that’s definitely what happened with The Many Futures of Maddy Hart. A few years ago, I’d taken a couple of days off and gone to Nottingham alone to relax and read and do some...

In The House of Echoes my Tudor heroine is Anne Brandon, Baroness Grey. She has been forgotten by history but she was at the heart of the Tudor court at one of its most volatile periods. During her lifetime, Anne witnessed all six of Henry VIII’s wives be raised high...

Do you want to join The Fecking Fabulous Forties Club? NB: You don’t have to be in your forties – if you feel it looming large, or you’ve come out the other end and still standing, then come sit at our table. Bring wine. And paracetamol for the morning after....

This holiday, I recommended to my friend that she read a psychological thriller by a well-known author in the genre, who has written hit after hit. I am a big fan of theirs, and given how much I enjoyed the book, I thought she would have a similar response, but when...

Tam Barnett's brand-new twisty, darkly comic thriller How to Get Away with Murder is out now! Read it for just 99p! When Netflix released ‘Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes’ in 2019, I watched it by myself. It was well-told, it was revelatory, it was...

An Italian Island Secret by Victoria Springfield is an atmospheric and escapist novel about a long-held family secret on the island of Ischia. 🌞🇮🇹✨ Hollywood, Bollywood, Cannes and…Ischia. The island off the coast of Naples where An Italian Island Secret is set isn’t...

When I was in my late thirties, I had two young children and a demanding job as a cross-curriculum manager at a large further education college. Balancing work and motherhood meant I sometimes had to make sacrifices, and I spent a lot of time feeling guilty about...

The Ideas Patchwork It takes more than a single lightbulb moment to create a book. One idea can sustain a short story, but a novel of 80,000 words or more needs layers, sub plots and a breadth of characters and moments of action. The Man She Married inched its way...

Hello, I’m so excited to tell you about the Tudor characters in my new book, The House of Echoes. My Tudor protagonist is Anne Brandon, the daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk and stepdaughter of Princess Mary Tudor, the youngest sister of Henry VIII and the...