About me and my relationship with Mary…. I have an honours degree in Sociology with a major in Literature and a Trinity College London Licentiate in Effective Communication.
My day job is as a social and market researcher. My projects involve understanding the behaviour and motivation of a wide range of people in many different contexts often conducting interviews and focus groups where dialogue is a major contributor to understanding. I've tried to make good use of that insight in my writing. I have previously only published short stories, poetry and academic papers on research. This is my first novel.
An underlying thread of Almost Invincible is Mary’s damaging relationship with her stepsister, Claire and this sparked my curiosity and snowballed into an obsessive four years research.
Amongst the volumes of extant information and many biographies, I glimpsed a Mary who was a teenage rebel, a grieving mother, a determined author and a long suffering lover of a man well ahead of his time. It made me want to tell her story.
The research has been extensive and the book is factually based, but tries to fill in the emotions, conversations, and some of the mysteries surrounding her life.
Finding Mary has taken me to many of the places which were important to her life, and to libraries around the world.
My writing journey