Being invited down to Oxford University to meet the Dr Alex Middleton (he pinches quotes from my novels) and a number of his students. I have no fears in writing yet my written voice is more educated than the spoken version. I throw my novels out from behind the shrouded wall of obscurity. A place where I find comfort. Maybe one day ☺

Sandra,
Yep, I hear you. That is scary. But with time, I hope that the perfect home is just waiting for my our novel.

1. Writing a novel and it dying halfway through. The beginning is brilliant, the drive is there, the prose flows and I feel fantastic. So fantastic that I know I’m on a roll and foolishly send the first three chapters off to an agent, who likes it and asks for the rest. But I can’t write the second half. It’s died. Nothing will come out.

2. Doing a PhD in Creative writing and ATTENDING THE VIVA! Sitting outside a professor’s room, looking at my novel and critical commentary, and thinking that this is it, this will be the moment when they find out that I can’t write, that I am in fact a fake, and I just wasted six years and a shedload of money on doing this. Sitting in the room and having one of the examiners ask the one question I didn’t want them to ask . . . .

3. Getting my novel published. Yes, it may seem weird, but Inshallah (www.honno.co.uk) was published this year by a feminist press, fulfilling my lifelong ambition to be a novelist AND fulfilling my publisher preference. I opened the email at work, and leapt out of my chair and shouted! I couldn’t believe it. Suddenly it was real. Suddenly I had to shift my perspective, from wannabe novelist to the REAL THING. And then, people liked the book – and I’m writing another one, and all I can think is, oh no, this is nothing like the first, what if it’s not as good? What if I only have one book in me???

Pretty scary stuff!
Having said that, I love writing so much I just can’t stop.

I am a lecturer, academic writer, vegan and midwife, and of course, a novelist.