I spent over twenty years teaching children and teenagers with reading difficulties and special educational needs — first in mainstream classrooms, then in special school settings. It's where I learned what actually gets a reluctant reader to turn the page, and what makes them close the book for good.
Light and Shade Books grew out of that classroom experience. The name comes from the belief that the best stories — for any reader, of any age or ability — hold both at once: the hard, honest stuff and the moments of warmth and humour that make it bearable. Neither on its own tells the truth.
I write across formats: children's and YA fiction, adult fiction, and screenplays, several of which are now finding their way into novel form. My debut novel, The Seagulls Have Landed, is out now. I'm currently working on Taste Buddies, a four-part coming-of-age series adapted from my screenplay Good Cooks, Bad Cooks, following a teacher and her students on a school exchange across Europe.
When I'm not writing, I'm usually in the garden, several chapters behind on my own to-be-read pile, or thinking about the next book I wish had existed when I was teaching.