I was born in 1982 (no, really) in the north of England. When I was two, we moved to the south-east of England. Then for a bunch of time nothing happened, until the summer after my GCSEs when I was bored and sat down to write a story. Then I wrote another. Then another. Many, many terrible attempts later, I gave up and got a job at Stansted Airport, where I worked before, during and after 9/11, checking in passengers and baggage for a low-cost airline.After I quit, I came up with the idea for Sophie. If you want to know exactly how, you can read about it here. Since then, writing's been my main focus, although in the meantime I've done things I'm not proud of. My job history involve lots of sweeping and many instances of ignoring a ringing phone. I've been known to get up at 3.30am or work until 11pm. Now, of course, I take great pains to avoid all those things. Except for 11pm. I'm rather fond of that.My hobbies include researching my literary competition (reading lots of books), researching through a broad spectrum of media (watching films and TV), admiring the work of (drooling over) fine actors such as David Tennant, Richard Armitage and Hugh Jackman, and being used as a bed/scratch-post/chew-toy/human slave by my cats and dog.If you want to know more about the glamorous everyday life of an author, you can check out my blog, which is full of pictures of my furbabies and the men I fancy. I mean, whose work I admire. Ahem. I have a Yahoo group for news and updates, and if you're on Facebook then I'd love you to join my page.