A long and winding road
The Call of the Indri (unpublished)
My first ‘completed’ novel, written back in the early 2000s. Other than the title, that I still love and fully intend to use, it was utter drivel. All I can remember about it is that it featured two best friends and their time in both New Zealand and Madagascar. I wrote it out of a desire to travel, so I sought to take myself off to far away places in fiction. I was so naïve that I even remember going through the thesaurus looking for alternative, more literary words to use.
Beyond (unpublished)
A novel that I wrote and apparently forgot about! I found a print-out in a bottom drawer and have scarcely any memory of it. I certainly don’t remember writing to The End, and I have no recollection of what the story is even about. It can’t be very riveting if even its author can’t remember a thing about it!
Danny Lightbown’s Peculiar Predicament (unpublished)
Although I didn’t realise it at the time, this was a YA (young adult) novel. It had a premise that I will likely revisit as a novel for adults, but in my original version, my point-of-view character was a ten-year-old boy, and I really don’t feel qualified to write from that perspective at this time.
Every Little Imagining (unpublished)
A novel written during the Covid pandemic about a woman who sees her supposedly dead husband in a crowd scene on TV. This book has promise and I plan to revisit it.
A Pregnant Pause (available here)
This novel, completed in 2022, is where I first imagined the possibility of my writing being out in the world and not languishing in a bottom drawer. This is about a woman who fakes a pregnancy in order to fraudulently receive maternity leave.
Published in February 2026.
Safia (working title only and still in progress)
This incomplete novel, about a woman who has temporary memory loss, was mostly written in 2023/24.
I’m about 70,000 words in, and despite being lured away to work on other things, I intend to come back and complete this book.
A Pregnant Pause Short Stories (soon to be published)
A collection of 12 short stories, all themed around the idea of a fake pregnancy, but in very different genres (there’s something for everyone: revenge, historical, humour, emotional, magical realism/body horror, and just plain weird). Two of them are adapted from the novel (The Ice cream Incident, and The Bee Sting Incident), while the remaining ten are entirely new.
Soon you’ll be able to sign up to my newsletter, and receive a digital copy of the first short story, ‘The Visit’, for free, straight to your inbox.
Rekindling (coming in 2026)
This novel in progress is about a woman in her twilight years, attempting to rekindle her stale marriage by booking a break to a remote Scottish cabin, and insisting upon a digital detox – no phones, TV, or Wi-Fi. But without these external distractions, do they even still like each other? And when things go horribly wrong, and they have no way of making contact with the outside world, what do they do?