"By Any Other Name"

Coming soon - my new novel By Any Other Name was inspired by a brief time I spent working in an old Victorian psychiatric hospital (now no longer in existence). At the time I worked there, it was a bright, cheery place but there were certain parts of it which gave me a feeling of being absolutely drained of energy and utterly depressed.

I arrived there in summertime and the weather was beautiful but as soon as I entered one particular part of the building, it was as though a century of unhappiness had left so strong an impression on the fabric of the building that the negative energy was almost overwhelming.

My new novel does not centre around this aspect - it is a mystery (unlike any of my other books) set in the late 1980s, wherein a young artist returns to her native town to uncover the truth about her mother who was rumoured to have committed suicide. As the story progresses, Maria (the artist) finds herself drawn into a web of hypocrisy and deception, while dealing with her own emotions and her lifelong attraction to a man she believes she hates...

I was equally inspired to write this story during a visit to Paris when, on entering a room in the Louvre, I was awe-struck by the size and beauty of a painting - La Jeune Martyre by Delaroche...

The book will be available very soon: