ABOUT ME
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For as long as I can remember, I have loved books and I still have some of my treasured books from my childhood. I remember buying a paperback copy of Winnie-the-Pooh in 1977 from Woolworths in St Annes. My nanna gave me some pocket money and said I could buy whatever I wanted, so I headed straight for the book department.
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In junior school, I devoured all of Enid Blyton’s books, as well as classics such as One Hundred and One Dalmations, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden was the first book that made me cry! I loved it and read it numerous times.
My older sister had very bad asthma, so my books kept me occupied during her long stays in hospital.
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In my teenage years, I progressed to Judy Blume books, which we passed around our friendship group like treasure, devouring and consuming her words.
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I went to an old-fashioned girl’s grammar school, which gave me my love of classic fiction. My English Literature teacher was a delightful lady akin to Miss Jean Brodie. I remember dissecting Wuthering Heights and it annoyed me that the teacher picked out individual words and analysed them. I remember asking her whether she thought that authors really spent as much time considering each word as we were spending discussing them. She told me that they absolutely did. I didn't believe her at the time, but now I know she was right!
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I am so thankful to my English teacher for making me fall in love with Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy. When we read The Mayor of Casterbridge, she encouraged us to buy our own copy, which I still have, full of my fourteen year old pencilled scribbles.
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When my children were born, I wanted them to love books as much as I did, so every year at Christmas, from their first Christmas to when they were sixteen, I bought them a special edition of a children’s classic, with the aim that they would then have sixteen beautiful books, which they could keep.
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When we moved to our small cottage in Garstang in 2020, I made the difficult decision to downsize my book collection. But I am pleased to say that it is slowly and surely growing back!
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WHERE IT ALL STARTED
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My writing journey began during the pandemic in 2020. The cafe that I ran at the time, with my husband, Darrell, was closed and every day during the lockdown, I posted a recipe on my Facebook page, which I promised had been tried and tested many times in the cafe, and were super easy to bake. My aim was to ease the boredom and give families something to do together.
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I was amazed at how popular the recipes became and how much people loved them. Most of all, the great feedback proved to me that the bakes were turning out well, which gave me the confidence and the inspiration to put a recipe book together.
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My love of writing was then ignited and I began writing novels.
Just Breathe is my debut novel and is a contemporary novel for adults. They say that when you write a novel, you should write what you know. I don’t know whether this is particularly good advice and I would like to think that authors who write about serial killers are not writing from experience. However, I did heed that advice, to a certain extent, as my main character is a lawyer. However, unlike my protagonist, Charlotte, I would never consider going back to the legal profession. In my twenties, I started my career doing criminal law and used to love the buzz of the court room and visiting clients in prison, but it was when I reached my mid-thirties that I began to really dislike the job. By then I was working for a big law firm defending fraudulent road accidents, so our clients were insurance companies. Targets were increased and wages were kept low and I didn’t enjoy my job one little bit. However, I had a large mortgage and small children, so I didn’t have the luxury of walking out.
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The office was like Charlotte’s London office in the book, large open plan with dozens of people who worked silently, head down, all day. In my team, on the odd occasion when we stopped for breath, we used to have conversations about what we would do if we had a change of career and could do our ideal, stress-free job. I used to say that I’d like to run a café. When that dream eventually came true for me, my friend Eleanor, who is still a lawyer, told me that she sees me as ‘the one that got away’. This is a title that I am proud to own! So in that respect I am like Charlotte. But in every other respect, I am not like her at all.
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Charlotte manages to escape her stressful job and moves to Warkworth, a village on the Northumberland coast. If any of you have visited Warkworth, or are lucky enough to live there, I hope you will agree that I have done it justice and that you can appreciate why a person would choose to live there.
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Forever Hold Your Peace is my second book and has a little more drama than Just Breathe. I wouldn't call it a crime drama, but it doesn't fall into the category of chick-lit. I would love you to read it and see for yourself.
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My third book, Unexpected Storm, is the sequel to Just Breathe and follows the lives of Charlotte and Linda. In all honesty, I thought Just Breathe finished the story off quite nicely, but a few people asked for the sequel and some Amazon reviews mentioned one. So it got me thinking about what might happen next. Read it and find out.
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My latest book is a thriller called The Brief, which is set in a barristers' chambers in Manchester. It has some lovely characters, that I hope you will like and some despicable characters, who are the baddies! I loved writing this book, as it reminded me of my legal days back in the courtroom. Although, I've got to say that I never met a barrister like Alistair!
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Caroline x