So – did you always aspire to be a writer…?

In order to promote my new book Civvy Street, I was asked to write a piece for We Heart Writing on this very subject, so here is a taster of my words of wisdom. If you’d like to read the full article the link is at the bottom

I never intended to be a writer, I went to the sort of school (all girls) where we wrote essays on meaty subjects and any creativity was discouraged. We were to a kid, swots; it was that sort of school. When I left school I was completely unprepared for survival in the wild – Latin, history, English, chemistry etc really don’t prepare you for looking after yourself. For some reason I really didn’t want to go to university, so I knew I needed a job that would feed, house, clothe as well as pay me and the army ticked all the boxes. When I discovered the ratio of men to women was 500:1, bearing in mind I’d been to an all-girls school, it was a no brainer.