I have lived in the English Lake District for the past ten years. Before moving here I had various roles in education and wrote a number of books about my work in the UK, Canada and new Zealand.
Over the past twenty five years I’ve travelled and worked all round the world, but never found a landscape I love more than the western Lake District. Inspired by the landscape and its history, my dream of being a novelist is gradually becoming a reality. ‘Between the Mountains and the Sea’ describes this region, and is the setting for my trilogy of the same name. Part 1 ‘A Good Liar’ was published in 2012, part 2 ‘Forgiven’ in 2013 and the final part ‘Fallout’ in 2014. The first one took four years to write, with many bumps in the road, but lessons were learned and the second and third were each completed within a year.
The trilogy follows the life and loves of Jessie Whelan through the first half of the twentieth century, combining fictional characters with real places and events. People who live in this area and visitors too love these stories for their setting, their authenticity, their engaging characters and their pace. For my next book I’m turning to crime fiction, still based in the Lake District, and moving on into the 1970s. Hopefully, it will become another series with some links to the previous trilogy, so that readers will see the story of Jessie’s family move on.
Crime fiction is a whole new world: at present I’m immersed in more local research, and in forensic science as it was then, before computerisation and recent advances such as DNA. It’s astonishing how much and fast things have changed.
