After a school career distinguished only by stupid amounts of GCSEs and A-Levels (there wasn't much else to do), I left the small Derbyshire village where our family had somehow fetched up, and travelled through Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Egypt before going to Manchester University for a degree in Middle Eastern studies. This left me, my careers advisor informed me, with two possible career paths - arms dealer or spy. Neither appealed, so I moved to Bath with my husband Dan (also a journalist) and found a third option - data entry in a cardboard box factory.

We then moved to London and I staggered through a succession of further horrific McJobs before deciding I wanted to write. I took out a huge loan, jacked in my job, and did the three-month journalism course at the London College of Printing (now the London College of Communications). Less than two weeks after leaving, I had a job on the health pages of Take a Break, the UK's biggest selling women's weekly, and I've never looked back. I now work from home as a freelance writer full-time.

In 2006 I had my son, Louis. Thanks to him, my writing has taken a new path. My personal experiences of post-traumatic stress disorder following birth, postnatal depression and bonding issues have convinced me that not enough is written about these issues. I am now a media spokesman for the Birth Trauma Association. My second son, Max, was born in 2009. Rather to my surprise, it was a wonderful experience.