I was particularly encouraged at junior and middle school to develop my response to ideas but my poor handwriting was often a hindrance to being understood. As a child I lived abroad for a few years so constantly moving house as well as country on occasion meant I saw many different landscapes from jungle to desert, went on ocean voyages and spoke local languages fluently, all inevitably feeding my avid reading and imagination!

I was also asthmatic as a child which meant I spent a lot of time in school libraries during PE lessons. Because I tended to be the only child in my class with this illness I spent a lot of time alone. This I think helped me to be more open with my mind so perhaps whatever is out there can pick up receptive children to manifest to compared with healthy children like my younger siblings who were my captive audience to what may have happened to me! These library opportunities gave me a chance to read more widely than I may have done otherwise.

I wrote my first manuscript at twenty-two when I was working in West Africa as an English teacher. It was never published however and today sits in a drawer at home. I somehow knew though that I would have another go at some stage in my life but never getting an extended opportunity to work on a manuscript with thoughts of publishing it meant my ideas remained just ideas.

That changed in lockdown in 2020 which gave me (paid!) time to work on a manuscript so I decided to write about the various paranormal experiences I have had throughout my life from a small child till a few months ago. I couldn’t understand why I was periodically lumbered with this ability to see or ‘sense’ something outside our normal bounds of reality so generally, I kept such experiences to myself for fear of ridicule. My family knew about some of them, indeed my younger siblings were involved in at least one.

However, turning them from real experiences into an entertaining manuscript that other people might be interested in or empathise with, was the skill lockdown gave me a chance to develop. Additionally, I added some family and friends’ paranormal experiences for variety. This is just the beginning of my writing career I hope as I have been working on the second volume of mostly fictional ghost stories as well as developing another genre I am interested in for future publication.

To get yourself a copy of True Ghost Stories Vol 1, here!