Fiction

My fiction is the absolute antithesis to my nonfiction.  Academic history and government report writing are all about facts and sober analysis, but my fiction is about the unexpected, the slightly-or-totally unreal and the fantastic. 

The girl with the green fingered heart

This novel is best described as historical magical realism.  Set in Somerset in 1972, my novel is a story of friendship, kindness and love, and how we cope with adversity, with a substantial horticultural twist.  The book’s premise is that the roses in a neglected Victorian era garden are as alive, sentient and passionate as we are.  A young botanist fallen on hard times ends up housesitting there and is taken on a journey of emotional discovery (and plant sentience) that she could never have anticipated. 

 City of Pearls

Inspired by a dream, this is a classic heroine-on-a-quest tale, set in a mythical world that actually took its geography from the cracked paint at the shallow end of the AIS’s twenty five metre pool.  Individual settings are inspired by places I’ve lived in, studied or visited. 

When Ziera Quanta’s mother dies, she inherits a fortune but life in the tiny mining village of Yellow Town is anything but fulfilling. After an encounter with a strange book that she didn’t order, Ziera sets off to find out if there is more to life on The Islands and more importantly beyond them. Does the City of Pearls really exist?  Or is it just a myth told to entertain small children? At Last Stop, Ziera meets a retired mermaid who helps her to escape her island prison, and discovers new worlds beyond the seas.