When my children were all at school and I had a little more time to myself I began to research my family tree, something I had always wanted to do. My maternal granny absconded, leaving her husband with four children when my mother was just eighteen months old and my mum never met her mother. As a child, this story intrigued me and I couldn’t wait to investigate. In carrying out research into my family tree I was drawn into the lives of other ancestors, and from census returns, parish registers, tombstones etc I was able to piece together what had happened to them. I've always been interested in the Victorian period and I felt some of the stories I had come across would make a good book. I have now written three historical fiction novels in a family saga called "Hartford Manor". It's a complete work of fiction but my family history research gave me some of the ideas. I started writing in the 1990s but was working full time with a family to care for so had little time to put to it. I published my first novel, The Mazzard Tree, in 2014 as an ebook but did nothing to promote it. It wasn't until after I retired in 2016 that I was able to pursue my writing career.
