Reading was my first glimpse of magic. My mother read to me, which makes me very fortunate. On her knee as a baby, a toddler, a preschooler. I was allowed to point to the words, to sound them out, to close my eyes and breathe in the beauty of descriptions, characters, adventures.

I read everything I could get my hands on. Ingredients labels on cereals. Adverts in shop windows. And I’d pick up a pen and write wuwuwuwuwuwuwuwuwuwuwu on everything. Including the wall paper.

Of course that part didn’t go down too well. But I pretended I was writing.

And suddenly the magic became real.

As a child I read everything. Newspapers. Books – the Bible, a First Aid manual. Words were magnets that tugged at me. I struggled to find myself represented in a book but I read them anyway. The Famous Five. Anne of Green Gables. Little Women. I had no role models there, but I had characters, plot, action, emotion.That was fine.

I read Marvel Comics, boys’ comics, girls’ comics, whatever I could get my hands on. At seven, I read The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas. It made me cry. It kept me awake. It made me anxious and happy and in a turmoil.

As a teenager I read my mother’s books. She got them from the local library and whatever she loved, I read. Agatha Christie. Books about war, about love, about the past, about the future. Then I read Orwell, Shakespeare, Huxley, J. P. Donleavy. The Brontës – all of them. Austen. Dickens. DH Lawrence. Tolkien. Jilly Cooper. Plays. Poetry. Political books. History books. Books that I didn’t really understand. Books that I couldn’t put down. I even read The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.

I grew up and taught theatre and sometimes literature. I continued to read, to share books with others, to talk about books, which ones I loved, which ones transported me, which authors I admired.

And I realised I was in love with beautiful words, fascinating characters, fabulous plots, and I wanted to devour any story that would allow me to meet new people, to travel, to feel emotions, to change, just a little.

And my wuwuwuwuwu on paper became short stories. I won a prize at the age of eight for a story called The Deserted Village and another later for The Fairground. As I wrote, I lost myself in atmosphere, noises, places, smells, senses.

As a teenager, I wrote poems filled with angst and injustice and love and anger. I wrote sad stories, tragedies, then comedies. I wrote plays and monologues for actors, I wrote stories for children and teenagers who had no other stories to read because they didn’t feel represented. I wrote for anyone who wanted me to, for the pleasure of seeing the pleasure on their faces. It brought even more pleasure to my heart.

Then I became a published writer, and each day I still have to pinch myself that someone wants to read my scribbled wuwuwuwu.

I write in three genres. I write avidly, with a passion. And I still read the same way. I love books, the smell of them when they’re old. When they are new. When they are in a library. I love to read other writers’ work. I’m inspired by their brilliance. I’m moved by their stories, the characters the emotions, the wonderful locations.

My mum will never know I became a writer. That makes me sad, as she’d have been so pleased. Seeing a book with my name on the cover, and in the Kindle top ten, or with a Bestseller flag, or that I sold over a million copies and won an RNA award – she wouldn’t have believed it.

All because she sat me on her knee with a cup of tea in the other hand and read to me.

She’d have seen herself in my books. As Bronagh Doyle in Golden Girls on the Run. As Agnes in The Lady of the Loch. As The Wicked Lady and Morwenna Mutton and all the strong women in my novels. But I don’t think she’d have been surprised to see my name in print.

I wish she’d have read just one of them though. It’s all down to her that I read, that I write. And it’s because of all those wonderful authors and librarians and editors and publishers and readers who put their brave and bold and beautiful words out there.

So thank you, truly, from the bottom of my heart. xx