Nosy?

She was born in UK in the 1970s.

I arrived two months early. My mother has never let me forget it and to this day seems convinced that I arrived early and in the middle of a heatwave just to piss her off.

She had her revenge; my son did the same to me, albeit by coming late rather than early. He held on for two weeks to ensure that karma bit me on the arse in the heatwave of 2003. I know now why she won’t stop reminding me – it pissed me off, too.

She wrote her first book when she was 10.

In fairness, it wasn’t any good. A spiral notebook of – airquote – horror stories – end airquote – complete with spooky pencil and ink illustrations. That’s what too much Stephen King and James Herbert does to you. I moved onto romance when, at that heady, obstinate age of twelve, I decided that the Sweet Dream books I read were crap and never quite satisfying enough. My first teenage romance featured Tess and David in an American high school and involved a lot of tears and tantrums and misunderstandings.

So not much change there, then.

I recall ripping it up. My mother found the book – three sellotape-bound notebooks under my pillow – when we were on holiday. I distinctly remember it happening on holiday because it’s very hard to hide anything in a fucking caravan. Mortified, I fired off my usual tirade about MY PROPERTY and MY LIFE and HOW DARE SHE and ripped out all the pages. I know. How hardcore was I? That was bound to teach her a lesson – ripping up my work as her punishment.

I was a rather emotive, bite-off-my-nose-to-spit-my-face teenager. Stupid, too.

And was first published at 14.

I folded myself into fiction. By my early teens I was devoting hours a night to this obsession. At fourteen, I submitted my first short story (‘Tempted’, painstakingly typed into my dad’s Amstrad and printed in the dead of night so he wouldn’t know) to a UK publication called Loving and was HORRIFIED when I received a letter confirming that it had been accepted (I went cold at the thought of my parents reading it). I have a shockingly poor memory, but I’ll never forget that day; I’d picked up the letter before my parents came downstairs that morning, and held off from opening it until I reached school. My drama class was off to London for the day to watch Blood Brothers, and it was on the coach that I opened it.

I came home to an inquisition from my parents. While gone my mother had taken a phone call from the editor to a) confirm my age and b) check that my parents were happy to go ahead with the publication. I COULD HAVE DIED.

My parents were, obviously, thrilled. They bought me a massive, red Websters Thesaurus with a very heartfelt note inscribed inside the front cover. I still own it; it sits right in front of me on my desk.

She stopped writing when she discovered boys.

Pathetic, but true. Shortly after the aforementioned drama trip, I discovered ice hockey players. Writing was dropped in favour of cuddling lanky skaters and lukewarm alcohol on street-corners.

She’s not great at finishing stuff.

I’m an ideas person. I have thoughts and stories just whizzing around up there, but when it comes to the execution? I kind of suck. That’s why I had to reach thirty years old before I pulled my finger out of arse long enough to actually finish a book.

She has a thing about doctors.

It’s true. I can’t deny it. Doctors make me weak at the knees. Something about intelligence and white coats and bedside manners. Don’t try and talk me out of it – better people than you have tried and failed.

She is fluent in British Sign Language (BSL) and British Braille.

I’m passionate about accessibility and disability rights and learned BSL and Braille in my spare time to complement the day job. The best use of the former has undoubtedly been in nightclubs when my also-signing friend and I would communicate about (sometimes even rate) the guys in the bar while they remained oblivious. It was also useful to send drink orders to each other when the music was very loud.

She can speak French and Japanese. And a little Welsh.

Note that I didn’t say that I could speak them well. But I could get by in a French/Japanese/Welsh emergency.