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I came to travel blogging by accident. When I went to work in Asia, so many people asked me to email them with updates and photographs that I could see myself spending hours every week keeping everyone up to date with my exploits. This was when the idea of starting a blog seemed very appealing – […]

Why do I write military stories? To experience life in a way I could never live it. I’ve led an ordinary life, but I love extraordinary stories. As a child, I read voraciously, everything from Enid Blyton to Douglas Adams, Charles Dickens to Margaret Atwood. That was in the days before the British education system

Have you ever noticed that no one needs to work in Star Trek? They do work, but it is more about finding their niche, their slot, their tribe, their aim in life and following that path. All of their decisions are backed up by the huge resources of their ship’s computer, able to answer their

In my last post, I got the ball rolling with what it’s like to read or watch a slow-burn romance. In this blog I take a look at my Top 5 Slow-Burn Romances. 1 The Princess of Babylon (1768) Voltaire A rich, fantastical global travel adventure set in ancient Egyptian times, with the Babylonian princess,

The Netflix adaptation of David Nicholls’ book One Day had 5.3 million views in the first four days, was one of ten most-watched shows globally during that first week, and scored 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. The twist ending is emotionally intense, and viewers shared film of themselves in floods of tears. The 2011 film had

Just for shits and giggles (not necessarily in that order), I searched online for “modern day megalomaniacs”. Mainly because the world appears to be overrun by power-crazed despots, a surfeit of money spilling from overstuffed trouser pockets as they run riot in the modern world. Unsurprisingly, the likes of Kim Jong-un (rhymes with wrong-un), and

I’m curious, will AI make us want to connect with each other more or less? I must make it clear, I am discussing this from having lived in the UK all of my life – I think that is important, as we often find it hard to communicate directly at the best of times. I

I love creating ghosts. And writing poems about ghosts has become my ‘thing’. The problem with my poems is that they’re very short and, in order to have a decent sized book, I have to write a lot of them. And that involves coming up with a lot of different ghosts and haunting settings.  Getting

This is a terrible confession, but it’s absolutely true. The main character in my murder mystery novel is called Polynesia Henman, and when people ask me how I came up with the name, I always look them in the eye, move a little closer and then whisper, ‘Now that’s a very interesting story.’  If they

Meeting up for a cup of tea and slice of cake with a group of fantastically creative women was all I wanted when I set up The Tea Set in 2017. Now, we’ve got a website, blogs, an anthology in the making, creative partnerships, members all over the UK, and we’re experimenting with AI.  Such