At fifteen I left school and went to work as a Co-op window dresser. By the time I reached 35, I had two clothing alteration and repair shops, seven staff, a small catering business, a party-plan business selling childrenswear and toys, a husband and two children. I hardly had time to think, yet I was delighted by my own success. Then a catastrophic event caught me off guard. For the first time, I asked myself: Why am I working myself to death?
At around this time, A Place in The Sun started on TV. It seemed so appealing to retire to a warm country, so I made a plan to retire at 45. After another ten years of hard work, my goal came to fruition. We sold everything and bought a lovely place on Crete. After such a hectic life, I found it impossible to just stop, lie on a sunbed all day, and drink cocktails in the evenings. I decided to teach myself something that I wanted to do but had never made the time before. I would treat the task like a part time job for a year, and commit to it for three hours a day, five days a week.
I learned to sail single-handedly, play guitar, self-sufficiency, scuba and free dive, paint, distil raki and make wine, use a computer, plaster and do stonewalling, photography, video, until after about ten years, I ran out of things I wanted to learn. I know, I thought, I’ll write a book. Being dyslexic, it was the most difficult thing I ever attempted! My computer had Word installed, which was my greatest friend. It had a spellcheck, which I managed to confuse, and had endless patience. For the first time in my life, I found myself able to put my thoughts down on (virtual) paper. What miracle was this? I cannot describe the joy it gave me. I wrote simple poems, short stories, letters to people, a journal of my adventures in Greece. I thrilled whenever anyone said, ‘Thanks for the letter, I really enjoyed it.’
Naively, I had every confidence in my blockbuster’s success, assuming I would easily find an agent and get published. Soon enough, I faced up to my first total failure since leaving school – no one was interested in that first novel.
The following year we moved to a remote mountain village where I happened upon a machine gun buried in my garden! I showed it to the locals and with tears in their eyes, the old village women told me such moving tales from WW2. I felt a duty to record these events, so I created a character who was an amalgamation of these brave women and told their stories. That I was living in the house where such tragedy happened only hyped up my own emotion, which poured onto the pages.
That manuscript became Island of Secrets, represented by my agent, Tina Betts, then my publisher, Bonnier Books UK. The team at Bonnier guided me into producing a moving novel based on brave women and historical events surrounding the machine gun. From that moment, I decided to write about injustice, forgotten wrongs, and empowered women. All my novels link the Greece islands with Britain and are based on real, if little known, events in Greek/British history.
My fifth novel, Summer in Greece, is out on 15th April. RMS Titanic’s sister ship, HMHS Britannic, was a luxury liner that sailed out of Belfast, heading for Greece to rescue soldiers wounded at Gallipoli in WW1. My novel is a story of tragedy and triumph – tears and laughter, and a drama that continues to this day.