A bit about me - I’ve always liked reading, in fact, I read obsessively. I’m the sort of reader that will read the cornflake packet six million times over breakfast, simply because it has words on it. I love a good believable fantasy – details are the key for me. George RR Martin's Fevre Dream, Tad Williams and Robin Hobb spring to mind. Having children of a certain age has also reminded me of other authors I’ve loved, Tamora Pierce, Diane Wynne Jones and Trudi Canavan are full of those tiny world building details.

 

I cut my reading teeth on the obligitary Tolkien in my early teens, moving on to Tad Williams, Micheal Moorcock, Harry Harrison and Katherine Kerr. Many of these are still on my bookshelf, coming down to be read again when I’m feeling nostalgic.

 

These days my reading list has shifted to other authors. Fiction-wise Neal Asher is fun, China Mieville and Lindsey Davis. I love a book that makes you pay attention. I’ll also read any interesting non-fiction subject. I have a brain that collects odd facts, I’m the one in the corner piping up in a quiet moment, “Did you know…?”

 

I’ve always preferred the adult end of paranormal fiction. Dracula caught the romantic streak in me at an early age, followed by Anne Rice’s Lestat books and Kit Whitfield’s shapeshifter novel Bareback (Benighted to those across the pond).

 

My hobbies when not reading books are dancing, motorcycling, playing my accordion and karate, although not all at the same time. And daydreaming. I’ll daydream in the bath, on the sofa, in bed at that time in the night when all decent folk are snoring and allow the images to pass over my brain. But I’ve never actually written them down, until the year when a vampire wouldn’t leave me in peace. I’m still dealing with the fallout...