“His train of thought always took the scenic route. He moved back and forth in time, following associations and connections to their conclusions before returning to the matter in hand. Anyone trying to make a chronology of his life by using the auto-biographies would have a nervous breakdown.”

Leonard Woolf: A Life. Victoria Glendinning 2006.

Born in 1958 and brought up in Hammersmith, West London, I graduated from Brighton University in 1981. I lived in Australia for some time after getting my degree.

To support my writing – and sometimes to avoid writing – I have done many different jobs. The most memorable include: a factory producing plastic make-up display stands (that operated far beyond the realms of health and safety), an estate agents, an underground station newsagent in Sydney, and a Renault car dealership. When I decided I needed a permanant home a regular income I became a senior manager for one of the first Internet companies. For some time I was the only person I knew with an email address.

My first novel, Seven Miles From Sydney, came out in 1987 and was in the City Limits top ten best books for that year.  In 1990 I worked with the actress Sue Johnston on her semi-autobiographical book, Hold Onto The Messy Times. In 2005 an extract of A Kind Of Vanishing, then a work in progress, was included in The Brighton Book along with pieces by Jeanette Winterson, Melissa Benn, Nigella Lawson and Louis de Bernières.

In 2006 I did an MA in English Literature at Sussex University which I  found exciting; it opened up new ways of thinking.

I live in Lewes, East Sussex.

I am a member of the Crime Writers Association (www.thecwa.co.uk) and Mystery Women (www.mysterywomen.co.uk)