Five and a half years ago, I had an idea for a story. It was so out-of-the-blue and exciting to me that I just started writing it down, and before I knew it, it had become long enough to turn into a novel. Part of what had precipitated this was attending a local creative writing class on a Thursday afternoon: I urge any aspiring writer to do something similar. It was just so interesting to be given different ways to look at the world, and then be encouraged to write down what I saw, or heard, or felt - and then have to brave reading it out in class (definitely a good prelude to the scary business of letting people read your novel).
So that creative frenzy became my first novel, One Step Too Far. I wrote it, largely at night, for my mum, who was unwell at the time and read it as I wrote it, and much of my grief and energy was eaten up by that book; and a few days after I finished it my mum died, and it was sudden and awful. I was so convinced that I would get a publishing deal (how innocent and optimistic I was back then!) that I bought the 2010 Writers' & Artists' Yearbook and sent the manuscript off to a handful of agents. And then I sat back and waited. And waited.