About Jane

I write novels for children and young people, and also flash and short fiction. What we have in common is my first published novel. I live on Exmoor, between the sea and the high moors, surrounded by fields and woodland, in much the sort of place I dreamed of as a child. I’ve also lived in London, twice, the flat land of Cambridgeshire, and the hills of Derbyshire, and had different careers before being a writer.

When I was a child I used to read my favourite books, usually about horses and the countryside, over and over again. And when I wasn’t reading, I was telling myself stories as I played. Always dreaming about horses, and hoping one day I’d have my own. 

I didn’t enjoy going to school partly because it stopped me doing those two things I liked best. But I loved learning, especially about animals and plants, so biology became my favourite school subject. School homework interfered with horses, however, as I’d managed by then to be spending a lot of time looking after and riding other people’s ponies and horses. Naturally, I studied sciences when I went to university, and that was in London – quite a contrast for the hayseed from Herefordshire.

During a decade in Cambridge, where I’d become a school teacher, I’d also started writing, and the range was wide; journals, poems, essays, mostly stored in a cupboard. For I had a second dream. 

I moved to Derbyshire for two decades, where I worked in other jobs and where one of my dreams came true; I had my own horses. London called me back though, this time for another decade, and I was a headteacher in East London until I retired. 

Now the second dream has come true, and I’m writing. And of all the forms of writing, it’s writing fiction for children and young people that inspires me the most. I’m glad about that.