When I was a little girl, I loved nothing better than reading and writing. If I didn't have my head in the book of a favourite author (like Roald Dahl or Enid Blyton), then I would be making a picture book of my own - or putting together some madcap variety show with my friends. I thought that I would be an author when I grew up.
But things didn't work out quite the way I thought they would and, although I am very happy to call myself an author now, it took until I was 41 to get my first book published. Before that I worked as a youth worker and then, later, as a teacher. It wasn't until I was made redundant from a lecturing job in my late thirties, that I finally began to take up writing again as an adult.
I didn't really know how to get started at first, so I thought I would enter a few writing competitions and see how I got on. I got shortlisted in a few, and even won one - and this gave me the confidence to keep going. During this time, through being shortlisted in their competitions, I was lucky enough to take part in some really good writer development activities with Essex Book Festival - and I began to think that maybe I could make this writing thing work after all.
At roughly the same time as I found out my audio drama - 'A Leap of Faith' - had won the 2014 Essex Book Festival 'Making Waves' competition, I signed up with my amazing agent - Jodie Hodges - and, just a few short weeks after that, I signed contracts with both Bloomsbury and Scholastic. As it said in the fortune cookie I cracked open at the time, I was finally 'on my way'.
Of course it hasn't all been plain sailing, and being an author is difficult. But it is only
difficult - not impossible.
You can still listen to 'A Leap of Faith' here -
Please don't try to fly though - at least not literally!