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A few biographical details to start with. I was born and brought up in London suburbs, and went to school in Croydon. I had my first book published while I was at school (you can find out more about this if you go to my Question & Answer section) and have been writing ever since. Once I had had a book published I immediately decided that I was A WRITER, I didn't need any more education, so instead of going to university I ran away from school saying that I was going to write books. This upset my headmistress very much. She told me that I was a foolish girl, and washed her hands of me. She was quite right, of course: I was foolish. It was three or four years before I had another book published, and in the meantime, just like anyone else, I had to earn my living. For a while I scrubbed floors, and waited tables, sold bread in Woolworth's, waltzed in and out of people's offices, did a bit of nursing, a bit of translating, a bit of cooking ... a bit of just about anything that didn't need any actual qualification. I then decided that it would be fun to go to drama school, so I took an audition for the Webber-Douglas, in London, went there for three years, met my partner, Leonard Gregory, who was a fellow student, and finally - at last! - managed to have another book published. We now live in South London, in a 300-year old house, with our family of rescued animals. We have 4 cats, and 7 dogs. Quite a handful!
Some of the handful! When I am not writing (or cleaning muddy pawprints off the kitchen floor, or putting dogs' toys away, or removing cats from the inside of food cupboards) I like best to listen to music, read books, and go for long walks through the fields. Well! I think that is probably more than enough autobiography. Thank you for visiting, and I hope you enjoy the rest of this website. BOOK NEWS My four Girlfriends books – Pink Knickers aren’t Cool, Girls are Groovy, Girls Stick Together and Boys are OK – are being reissued in May with lovely new bright covers. Later in the year, two more books – Just Sixteen and Love is for Ever – are also being reissued with new covers. You can see all these on my Books page. The biggest news is that after a year’s break I have another book coming from Harper Collins. This is Star Crazy Me, to be published in June. If you click on to Books you will see that Star Crazy Me has a new cover design, quite different from all my other HarperCollins books. This is going to be “the look” from now on. I hope you like it! Some of my readers will know that I was having problems finding a title for a book which I originally wanted to call Fudge Cassidy. My publishers didn’t like that and suggested Puppy Love. But I really hated that one, so now we have decided that it should be called Fortune Cookie, which I think is fun. This will be published in January 2009, and as soon as I have a cover picture I will put it on the website. Meanwhile, I have just finished a book called Love and Kisses and very soon I am going to start work on Boys R Us – a new Girlfriends book. Please keep reading, and also keep emailing! I really enjoy hearing from my readers.
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