Weatherdeck Books

Just kick off your shoes and step aboard

While not Sea Stories per se, all my novels have an element of the nautical in them. That's because I have lived a great part of my life on the green & crinkly. Write about what you know, right? 

I began writing novels in 2012, experimenting with various genres, but didn't find my direction until Rosie stepped into my head four years on. Even then, it took several iterations of her first story before I understood her - she's a complex and often a rather annoying young woman. But eventually we came to an understanding, and in August 2020 I published her first story, To Run Before the Sea. 

Rosie Winterbourne is twenty-seven when she steps onto the public stage, a leading seaman in the Royal Navy (yes, they call the women 'seamen' as well - it's a job thing, not a gender identity). While we find her headstrong and rash, she has, certainly as we meet her, a rather charming vulneribity laced with intelligence and humour. In short, my readers seem to have taken a shine to my enigmatic heroine - male and female readers alike. And, if I'm honest, that surprised me. In a good way, of course. There's nothing quite so gratifying to a novelist than to have your main protagonist win such admiration from strangers. 

And, of course, I was inspired to write a second and third story for Rosie. The Travel Agent is now finished and will go out - to all those lovely people who pre-ordered it - on 18th December - a Christmas read, especially for those who, like me, are constrained to stay mostly indoors during this nasty pandemic. 

For a writer of course, solitude is a necessity, but the involuntariness of the current restrictions is rather different - as if societal life is indefinitely withdrawn from us. It certainly feels unnatural. And I can't be the only novelist who is wondering just how this crisis and its effects on society is going to pan out in realist fiction set in the year 2020 and, probably, beyond. Will our heroes go around wearing facemasks and staying two-metres apart from the characters with whom they interact? The imagination quales. 

Anyway, that's enough rambling from me. There's plenty to get your teeth into on my website. So, take a look at my novels (only two on sale as yet, but WTS), read about me, if that interests you, ask me a question, and maybe sign up to my newsletters. Whatever floats it. Like and Share with your friends would be good. 

And when you leave, don't forget to pick up your shoes.