My Writing Timeline: Who I am and How I Got Here

  Hiya All,

I’ve been writing novels for 26 years now, which is slightly terrifying when I put it like that! Today I am just going to give you a brief overview of who I am and how I got to where I am today :)

2000 - 2005: My first five novels. 

I started writing my first novel, Forevermore, when I was 17 and finished it at around 19. Before then I had written a few short stories and even had one published in a  young writers anthology. Forevermore took me two years to write, more if you think about the planning stages but it has thus far remained unpublished (although I would return to it more than twenty years later with a full rework and a new title: Valashie). Valashie is a gritty and dark fae romance set over several historical timelines. It was fine for a first novel, but I didn't consider it "publishable" at the time, which, in hindsight, it probably (definitely) wasn't.

I followed what would become Valashie with The Lunatic at Thornham Heights, a dark gritty Victorian romance with a real "gothic" feel. This was also never published either as I've never been able to get it exactly "right" even though I still return to it from time to time and tweak. I think the issue with it is that it needs to be darker than it is - I had a tendency to pull back a bit "Oh so yes, he did kill that guy but it wasn't his fault". Now I am writing grittier Dark Romance, I think I could maybe one day make this work, but for now it remains just a manuscript on my laptop.

I then wrote The Man Who Painted a Fairy and The House Above the Waves concurrently over roughly a year. These were both Victorian romance too, although the Man Who Painted a Fairy fell more into the supernatural fiction category, or at least into the Gothic. Neither was published at the time: The Man Who Painted a Fairy would eventually be published in 2017, while The House Above the Waves wouldn’t be published until 2022. This was it, though, I knew I had found my passion.

My fifth novel was Ella’s Memoirs, a much more "modern" (at the time) werewolf romance novel which moved back and forth through time. This took me roughly a year to write and would eventually become my first published novel in 2014.

2005 – 2012: The Blood of the Poppies and the Victorian romance era. 

Throughout my twenties I continued writing, producing The Blood of the Poppies, which would eventually be published in 2014, shortly after Ella’s Memoirs.

I also wrote a run of Victorian romances: A Gilded Cage, A Rose Amongst the Barley, Morley at Twilight, Out in the Bluebells and So Long My Sorrow. None of these were published and probably won't ever be now as I have lost interest in the "Victorian gothic romance" genre.

2012 – 2014: Rewriting and preparing for publication. 

In 2012, I enrolled in uni and began to study too - Psychology (which I studied up to MSc) which honestly helped me hone my writing skills so much, if nothing else. I spent the next year or so going back through much of my existing catalogue and heavily rewriting and editing it with publication in mind. 

In 2013 I entered talks with an agent regarding the unpublished Valashie and Ella’s Memoirs manuscripts. It didn’t go particularly well as I felt I was constantly fighting for control. The agent I was with had a lot of ideas for my novels, and I didn't feel like any of them would actually enhance the reader's experience. By the end of 2013, we'd agreed that this wasn't going to work and parted company. Fortunately, I retained the copyright to Ella’s Memoirs, leaving me free to publish it myself. 

In 2014 I self-published Ella’s Memoirs through Amazon (with a new cover as the old one unfortunately the agent retained), this was my first published novel after roughly fourteen years of writing. Despite my naivety in the publishing world, and lack of marketing, Ella's Memoirs did surprisingly well, locally at least, and soon I was feeling the rush of meeting people who knew who I was, who had read the book and were asking for book two.

I published The Blood of the Poppies later that same year. Poppies isn't the sequel people were asking for (a weird little modern gothic werewolf story) but this too went down well and sold just shy of 300 copies. I started to think my dream of writing for a living was coming closer.

2014–2017: The Haverleigh novels. 

After publishing Ella’s Memoirs, I wrote the next two novels in this series (The Haverleigh Novels) back-to-back. The second was The Black Marshes, which I published in 2016. I also completed an original third Haverleigh novel, but decided it wasn’t the continuation I wanted, scrapped it without publishing it, and wrote a new third book instead. That became Donor, which I published in 2017 and republished as a new edition in 2019. Whilst these copies did sell to existing fans, already by this point, I felt the hype dying down! 

As an addition to this universe, many years later I returned to Haverleigh once more because my old fans wanted another instalment. I wrote and published the fourth novel, Silence of the Dawn, in 2022. I am still to this day asked for book five, however, I struggled with returning to the series. I'm a bit fatigued with both the genre and the characters so I am not sure I will ever finish it. That being said, the manuscript sits half-finished on my laptop so who knows. 

2017 – 2019: Reworking older novels and Ashlyn Asylum. 

During 2017 - 2019 I mainly worked on editing older novels. In 2017 I returned to The Man Who Painted a Fairy, which I had originally written many years earlier, heavily reworked and edited it, and finally published it. 

I also wrote a "true historical" novel called Ashlyn Asylum. This is one of those moments where my novels and my academia lined up, because Insane Asylums later led to my area of study with my PhD. I completed the novel but never published it. This is partially related to my PhD! I soon started to realise that my prior to PhD knowledge wasn't up to scratch, and huge edits were needed to make it historically accurate. There was also so much I wanted to add to the novel that I decided to expand the idea into a trilogy and split the scenes in the book to accommodate this. The larger project was eventually abandoned and the unfinished material remains on my hard drive still fragmented and strewn between three separate files with literally pages upon pages of notes I will probably never sift.

2019 – 2021: The fantasy era. 

In 2017 I started playing RP games like Dungeons and Dragons and became a bit obsessed with fantasy in general so obviously, this led to me wanting to write it. I was incredibly fatigued with Ashlyn Asylum so I shifted gears and moved over to fantasy instead. These were initially just for me and my D&D friends, but quickly became full novels which I realised had potential for an outside audience. I published The King’s Idiot, in 2019, then I quickly followed it with two sequels: The Queen’s Dragon and The Dragon’s Heir. All three novels had been published by the end of 2020 and I had found a new readership! Around this time (between Covid lockdowns) I started doing book signings at local comicons and events which really boosted my reach and pulled in new readers.

I went on to write several more fantasy novels: Strawberry Moon and Where the Black Water Flows, but neither was published as I wasn't happy with them - they were only ok and I am a perfectionist! By this point I was beginning to lose interest and creative momentum with the genre too.

 In late 2021 I wrote Shadow and Gold, an epic historical fantasy. This one I felt was better than the last two, mirroring popular fantasy such as Game of Thrones and The Witcher, but with that Grissea Fox romance twist. An early access reader described it as like GoT but written by Philippa Gregory lol. This novel was prepared for publication, but as I was hitting burnout I never sent it for editing and it remained unpublished. I just never got the final push to get it out for publication and when I reread it last year, I was kind of glad I didn't. The bare bones of a great story are there, but my genre fatigue shows.

2022 – 2023: The beginning of the modern era. 

By 2022 I was very fatigued with fantasy. I decided to return to my roots and refocus. I substantially reworked and published The House Above the Waves, making it the only one of my pure Victorian romances ever published, but the spark still wasn't there.

By the end of 2022 I was starting to really become disillusioned! My prior success seemed so long ago and with a lack of any real marketing skills I was finding it harder and harder to find new readers. Sales were low, and Covid had killed any in-person events, leaving me with an empty KDP account and no social media engagement outside of a handful of readers and friends who were still hanging on. I was also working on my PhD final thesis and working alongside that too in my role as a Mental Health Mentor at the uni.

I was tired. So tired, and I knew I needed change! 

I decided to try a new genre again first, as my jump over to Fantasy had refuelled me, at least for a while. In late 2022 I published The Murders at Foxhill Grove, which I now consider the beginning of my modern era. This was very dark and gritty, and started to draw in some of the darker parts of "real life". It was a murder mystery at heart but drew on themes such as domestic abuse and corrupt police systems. I didn’t promote Foxhill enough, though, and its original release flopped. In October 2023 I published The Manor Street Hauntings, continuing that new direction - dark, gritty, and psychological. This one did a little better because who can resist a good ghost story?

On 15 November 2023, after a few readers asked me for more in the Rostalis universe, I published Elfkind, a lamp-light fantasy set 500 years after the events of the main trilogy. I had high hopes, especially as I felt I was giving fan service, but the sales didn't reflect it at all and this can be considered another flop. 

Then I did that thing I always tell other authors not to do. I gave up. 

 Elfkind became my final publication before I deliberately stepped away from publishing.

Late 2023 – January 2026: The burnout era. 

For more than two years I deliberately published nothing, but I didn’t stop writing. Instead, I worked privately without the pressure of releasing anything. I substantially reworked the previously published The Murders at Foxhill Grove and The Manor Street Hauntings, and returned to the still-unpublished Valashie, my first novel, which is now intended for a future release. 

In early 2025, I also made a decision, I started to purposely concentrate on writing queer romance. I am enby myself, and I am a huge supporter of LGBTQIA+ issues. Suddenly, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world that I should be writing queer, trans, under-repped characters. Once I decided this, the words really began to flow again!

I wrote The Monster at Blakemore first - a queer coming of age horror - but deliberately kept it unpublished. A Bargain of Thorns came next: a filthy, spicy, BDSM vampire novel with a poly lead. The minute I started writing, I knew without a doubt that I had found a new niche. Dark spicy romance.  This was in rebellion, I think, to all the years I'd held back from the grit, from the spice, and had tried to make my books palatable for a traditional publishing route - just in case. Once I realised I am probably going to remain an indie author, all the walls came down quickly.

In mid 2025 I started The Ghosts We Carry, which would later be published in July 2026, and I also finished The Infernal Candidate, which would likewise be published in July 2026. Although I had disappeared from publishing, I was quietly building an entirely new body of work. A body of work I am still building up now.

2026: Rebrand, relaunch and the new era. 

And so, I was ready to come back! However, As I looked over my catalogue, I could see all the fragments of an author trying to find my path: Victorian Romance, to Romantasy, Vampires and werewolves, to steampunkesque lamp-light fantasy. It was all just a muddle! I decided to rebrand!

In January I changed my author name to my new legal name and relaunched my writing career, republishing The Murders at Foxhill Grove and The Manor Street Hauntings under my new name as both of those had the level of grit that my new brand required.

 In March I published The Monster at Blakemore, bringing out the first previously unreleased novel of the relaunch. I also published The Ghosts We Carry and The Infernal Candidate as a joint release in July 2026, while A Bargain of Thorns is scheduled for publication in December.  I returned to in-person signings and The Infernal Candidate is really gaining traction now, with the others just behind it.

As to the Future:

I have now written drafts of several more novels:  GhostSkin (Queer cyberpunk romance) and Satin and Smoke (A return to my werewolf led fiction, but now firmly in the dark romance category with a MM romance), both are currently unpublished and planned for release in 2027 as is A Bargain of Ashes - the sequel to A Bargain of Thorns. I also have 2 more WIP going at the mo, one of which is a full first draft, the other is halfway done. I am still loving writing, feeling passionate and ready to hit this again.
And somewhere amongst all of that, Valashie -  the novel I started at seventeen - is back in my editing pile after a complete rework. Twenty-six years later, apparently that story and I still aren't finished with each other.

I am also now, for the first time, really pushing myself to do this as a career. I am learning the ways of Instagram, marketing, and I even have a Tiktok! I'm meeting the writing community outside of my little bubble and pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone every which way! 
It's time for the books to shine!