I was born by the sea in Cheshire, North-West England, a quaint little corner of the world that folks might know thanks to a certain grinning cat. My village was only a street long, filled with Victorian cottages and encased in woodland. I was brought up around a log fire, on a steady diet of fairy tales and a huge collection of books.
When I was twelve, I completed my first novel. It sucked. A lot. But it sowed the seeds of a distant dream. In a childhood which was both beautiful and dark, words were an anchor. I needed to make sense of the tangle of thoughts in my head; breathe life into the fantasies I saw. Writing was a way for me to both escape the world and make sense of it. I attended the University of Chester - not to read English, but to study Animal Behaviour. I love nature just as much as creating, so I specialised in marine and polar ethology and ecology, worked with over 80 species of animals - everything from rabbits to rhinos - and eventually gained a masters degree in Wildlife Conservation. All the while, I carried on scribbling my stories. One of my lecturers remarked, "You're a tenacious little thing, aren't you?" Yes, I am. The same week I graduated with my BSc (Hons), my debut novel Blindsighted Wanderer was published. Then I jumped on a plane and headed to Finland. It marked the beginning of my winters inside the Arctic Circle, once again surrounded by woods and huddled around a log fire, in another village barely a street long. It became my second home: a place which seemed to be woven from magic and myth. I spent the next few years between there and England, always writing, always creating. Now, my life is a wonderful balance of all the things I love the most. I spin novels and short stories, write calligraphy for heritage books, and give talks on the history of fairy tales. Thanks to a photographic memory, I'm also a traditional storyteller, with over 1000 performances under my belt, in front of such names as Ed Byrne, Colleen Rooney and James McAvoy. On top of that, I'm a 2nd Dan black belt in Shotokan karate, and I helped to break a Guinness World Record on the world's biggest catwalk. My path has certainly been interesting so far, with its share of both light and dark. But it's my path, and I choose to own it. It's not always made it easy to fit in, but that's never bothered me. I still see the world with a sense of childlike wonder and hope I never lose that. So I'll carry on creating, exploring reality through a lens of fantasy, expressing myself in the silent language of words and stories. And now, I can share that vision with you: with everyone who doesn't fit the mould, who finds magic and adventure in every question they ask. |