I was born in Chiswick, London, and lived in the UK until aged seven.  At that point my family moved and I grew up by the sea on the Mediterranean peninsula of Gibraltar where I have a large extended family. The lifestyle there was very different – bilingual (Spanish/English), multicultural – on the border with Spain (and on a clear day you can see North Africa) and Roman Catholic.  I discovered that writing helped me adjust and it soon became a passion.  I wrote my first novel at age 11.
I enjoyed meeting my cousins and made good friends.  I also loved school and always got on well there.  I met my husband Eliott in Gibraltar and we married when I was 19.  At the same time I was awarded the prestigious ‘Gibraltar Scholarship’ for getting the highest grades in my year, which took care of all my higher education fees and expenses. With this, I returned to the UK to take an honours degree in Biology at King’s college London.  I followed this with an Msc in Information Science at the City University.

I took up jobs in industry - the first with British Telecom, and then with Unilever.  These helped pay the bills, but in the back of my mind there was always the conviction that I could keep writing, whatever job I was doing, and at every point in my life, and this I did. I wrote fantasy novels, historical novels, all sorts; I was looking for a comfortable place to write from – my ‘voice’.

In 1987 I gave up work to bring up my family. Before having children I believed that babies sleep a lot and I’d have lots of time to write. Mine didn’t even sleep much at night, never mind during the day, which sort of put paid to that plan. I did keep writing, as and when I could, though.
By 1994, I had four children.  It was at this point that my first-born - then aged 6 - was diagnosed as autistic. This was both a heartbreak and a relief.  It was initially hard to accept that assessment, yet Jon’s move to an appropriate day school where his special needs could be addressed made a huge difference to the family.

I was beginning to get the picture that life never really does ‘settle down’. Indeed, sometimes it is the most unsettling periods of our lives that can form the richest seams to mine for fiction-writing purposes. I have never written about autism, but I have used what I know to write about the incredible emotional wrench it can be to have a child with special needs; children like Jon stay always very close to the heart.  

After my twins were born in 1996 I took up the study of another lifetime fascination – astrology.  I discovered it was very similar to writing because they’re both about the same thing; they’re about characters, and what happens to them.
In 2005 I had a growing conviction that I must write a non-fiction book to express just that sentiment. I didn’t really want to be diverted from my fiction writing but the pull to write my zodiac book was so strong I couldn’t ignore it. In May 2005 I self-published ‘The Writer’s Guide to the Zodiac’ and for the first time, I had a book in the public domain.  This was a pivotal moment and I believe it paved the way for what was to come next.

When I wrote Pandora’s Box – because of its subject matter – I had no expectation that anyone would ever want to publish it. I wrote it in nine months, I wrote it ‘from the heart’ and I knew I was doing the right thing, just getting it down. I wrote the magic words ‘the end’ on the last day of 2006. Just two and half months later, Pandora’s Box had found a publisher and I had a three-book contract with Harper Collins.