So why did I start writing fiction so late in life?
Because I’m a slow starter, I guess 😂
I have always been a writer, but only of non-fiction for various business magazines, corporations and newspapers.
But incredibly, it turned out that people like my books.
Here’s a quick overview …
… of the brainwave I had during the 2020 pandemic.
Do you remember how at the beginning of the pandemic, few of us could work and none of us knew if we would live to see 2021? Well, my biggest regret was that I’d never got around to writing any of the books about a woman called Niki who’d lived in my head for about twenty years. (Since I was forty-ish, in fact, just as Niki McKnight is in the Gretna Green Gateway books.)
But truly I’m not Niki. If I had to pick the character that might be closest to me as a person, I’d probably point to Rhiannon!
Authorised exercise 🤦♀️
Do you also remember how in the UK we had ‘authorised daily exercise periods‘ during that first lockdown?
I spent mine walking my fluffy white Bichon around our tiny villages of Gretna Green and Springfield. She was super-stressed because she’s the most social dog in the world and knows everyone for about 3 miles around. Almost no-one knows me – I’m just Lucy’s mum. Which is actually a pretty great thing to be.
But during that first lockdown, people thought animals might spread the virus. So one day, as Forrest Gump might say … ‘For no particular reason’, everyone stopped giving Lucy her expected daily rations of love, fluff ruffles, admiration and affection.
Whoops :Sad puppy:
That didn’t go down well and my little one was unhappy and very confused about why no-one loved her anymore. So on our lonely walks I started telling her (in a low voice, c’mon, no-one wants to be the crazy lady, right?) about Niki. And her adventures. Her problems. How she was bullied. How her gran, who’d brought her up, died and left her a bunch of new and more interesting problems.
Then it got a bit … mad?
I showed Lucy the house where Niki now lived and the magical portal in Niki’s back garden that we called the Gateway. And the seven Celtic worlds it led to. Those might have been the ones that linked into the more interesting parts of local history – but they were heavily disguised and made far more interesting as every slightly crazy day passed.
Let’s fast forward a year
There was a vaccine, so the world got a bit more rational, but just as things were looking up here in the UK, we had yet another lockdown.
I took early retirement and then I got cross.
So I dumped my laptop on the kitchen table and wrote down all the stories I’d told Lucy. But this time I wrote for adults who needed a giggle and something fun, heart-warming and different. Rather than for stressed-out puppies.
And I plotted 10 books.
If you would like to see the series reading order. overview and more details of those books, click here
