I had a strange and wonderful childhood on a farm in Swaziland, Southern Africa, where I spent many hours ranging barefoot over the countryside, ripping my home-sewn dresses on barbed wire fences, trying to rodeo-ride bull calves, tracking guinea fowl, throwing knives at tree trunks, learning to use a slingshot, eating carrots straight out of the ground, gathering new-laid eggs, catching grass snakes, and trying to use glow worms as lanterns.

Luckily, both my parents were compulsive readers, devouring a steady diet of novels alongside their nightly whiskeys. The walls of our house were scaffold-like bookshelves crammed with everything from classics to horror. We read the way we breathed. As if our lives depended on it.

My first paycheck for writing fiction came when I landed a job as a staff writer for Living & Loving, a South African magazine about parenting—a subject about which I knew absolutely zip at the time. Since then I’ve worked as a journalist, copy editor, university lecturer, and creative writing teacher, but my first love has always been fiction-writing. I’ve lived all over the world despite the fact that I loathe moving house.

For the moment I’m happily settled in Connecticut, USA, with my husband, three children, and two elderly dogs. When I’m not writing I still read incessantly, telling my disgruntled family that I’m doing important market research. I also play tennis, drink tea, and daydream. I have a very long to-do list that features cleaning out the attic, going through all my photo albums, and purging my wardrobe of the many things I’ll never wear again. Most days I avoid this list by bolting to the library with my laptop and a head full of stories.

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