I was born in Vancouver, Canada to English parents. When I was an infant, they returned to the UK where I grew up in the South Devon coastal town of Torquay.
I completed a bachelor’s degree in Communication Studies at the University of Bournemouth in 1993. After four frustrating years of working in temporary journalism and retail jobs with no stable employment, I became an English language teacher and this pivoting point in my life had huge significance for my future writing . I have lived and worked in Korea, Japan, China, Macedonia, Canada and Saudi Arabia. These experiences educated and enriched me in a way that no mediocre liberal arts degree could. I hold both the Cambridge CELTA and DELTA qualifications and was for several years involved in formal English language assessment as an IELTS examiner.
Living overseas and learning the language of vastly different cultures have been central in developing my powers of observation, imagination and creativity.
In addition to writing, I read as widely as time allows (in addition to fiction, my interests are history, mythology and philosophy). So many magificent writers have inspired me over the years. Artists that have made a lasting impression, in terms of vision, style and metaphor include Edgar Allen Poe, Jorge Luis Borges, Friedrich Prokosch, Miguel Cervantes, Johnathan Swift, William Burroughs, Juvenal, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ferdinand Celine and Bret Easton Ellis.