My life - plus genies and hellhounds

In my last blog, I ruminated on the all-too-frequent advice to make your first novel autobiographical.  My conclusion (already obvious, I’m sure, to many) was that this is only possible if you’ve led a story-shaped life.  Better, and more practical, I suggested, to use the autobiographical experience as handy and time-saving research.

As if to illustrate this – even though it’s not my first novel – the setting of my new one, coming out very soon, might be familiar to those who know me.  I have indeed worked in a Catholic primary school – that much is autobiographical – but I must make it abundantly clear that I did not encounter a genie while doing so.  If only.

U WISH! (complete with Gen-Z spelling and exclamation mark) absolutely uses what I hope people will recognise as the daily experience of surviving with a too-cool-for-school Year 6 class but Golden Retrievers as malodorous hellhounds?  You’ll just have to read it to find out why it’s such a canine-heavy book cover.