Ten Things About Me
It’s ONE MONTH until my debut novel is available on ebook and audio (paperback lovers will have to wait until 17th June, sorry) - to celebrate, here are ten things you might like to know about me.
Two Metres From You is my first novel, but I’ve been a writer of other stuff for twenty years. Instruction manuals, TV ads, video scripts, Guardian TV liveblogs and many thousands of Powerpoint presentations. I was forty-six when I finally started writing a novel, which is a bit later than planned. But hey, better late than never.
The first seven years of my career were spent working as a secretary. I wasn’t very good at it, but it taught me to type really fast. Ten years later that proved to be an essential skill for liveblogging.
I started liveblogging for the Guardian in 2008, having blagged my way through the door with zero qualifications or experience – I was working in recruitment in Bristol at the time. I’ve written about Big Brother, I’m A Celebrity, The Apprentice, The X Factor, The Great British Bake Off, Strictly Come Dancing and The Eurovision Song Contest. These days I only do Strictly and Eurovision, and I’m still madly in love with both.
I’ve done my Eurovision liveblog from the host city three times – in 2016, 2017 and 2018. The event is two weeks of incredible party madness, I highly recommend.
I have two children, aged twenty-eight and twenty-one. Being a teenage single mum was the hardest and the best thing I’ve ever done.
I come from a big military family; everybody in my immediate family has spent their career serving the country one way or another. I went off and faffed around doing a million different jobs, which is why I now have Pension Fund Regret.
Before I found my Literary Agent, Caroline, not one person had read a single word of Two Metres From You. Even now the idea of sharing my work in progress with anyone terrifies me.
My boyfriend, Pip, is an incredibly talented designer, engineer and carpenter. He has the tidiest workshop in the world. We celebrate ten years together a week before Two Metres From You is published.
We have a Labrador called Mabel who is fifteen months old. She was only four months old when I started Two Metres From You, so she features heavily as the dog I imagined she’d be in five years’ time. A significant section of the book was written with her trying to put her head on my laptop.
I have two tattoos and am not bad at tennis.