Whilst it’s true that I used writing to hide from ‘normal’ teenage life, it is not the reason I started. 

Music has always been a huge part of my life. Not only because it was my first hiding place, nothing clears my mind faster than uplifting tunes, it was (and still is) a huge passion of my dad’s. Catch him right and he’ll tell you all about his DJ years (mostly local youth club and school dances in 1970s Oxfordshire). 

Though it took me some years to realise it, as a child of the 80’s, CD players don’t really pre-date me all that much. My dad, an avid record collector, moved onto CDs as soon as his budget allowed, after which our house was often filled with my parents favourite music. I once found my dad by himself in the front room listening to a Moody Blues album in the dark – one of his favourite ways to drink in an album. 

I can remember dancing around the coffee table in the front room with first one then two sisters, making up scenarios to act out as my favourite TV characters based on how the music felt, happy or sad, uplifting or dark. I might be She-Ra running from Hordak to an O.M.D track one moment, an airhostess flying high to the Urban Cookie Collective, the next (what I originally wanted to be when I grew up).  

By the time I headed for secondary school, I had my own personal cassette player and a collection of mix tapes and singles. Though it baffled certain family members, I would listen to my cassettes at the same time as reading books. I didn’t find it distracting, more a soundtrack the author hadn’t chosen. 

Getting lost in music has always been something I find incredibly easy to do, and it doesn’t matter whether I’m reading, writing, driving (I’m a car singer – helps retain focus), cooking or working. 

There was an unexpected benefit from this anti-social hobby. One of my favourite mix tapes from 1995 nudged my imagination so hard that I started to formulate a story by connecting the songs together. Each time I listened to it the images would build and the ‘what next?’ would get more detailed. 

It took me until 1997 (when I had moved on to building my own CD collection) to consider writing the ideas down – thinking I might one day forget them. I turned 14 that summer and by the time of my birthday I had a first draft of 100 A4 pages in my hands. 

I still remember telling my dad about my creation, stood in the kitchen washing and drying the dinner dishes between us. The way that conversation went opened my eyes to what the future could be like. All the books I’d ever read had had to come from somewhere, and I’d just taken my first step into joining a world of authors – people who had the fun of making stuff up for a living! 

My long-standing characters Lorna and her twin brother Kieran were born out of that summer and throughout my GCSE and A Level years I wrote them – and some characters that didn’t make it to my university years – many more adventures that will never see the light of day. 

Listening to music in the dark is something I also started doing in 1997 and can highly recommend.  

Ironically, as I complete this blog post, James Horner’s Titanic Suite is giving me rolls of nostalgia for that first year of my life as a writer. I love a good soundtrack, but that’s another story...