Many editors are passionate readers. But good editors are writers too — because they know the pain of facing a blank page, wrestling a book into shape, or rewriting a sentence sixteen times just to get the rhythm right. I know what I’m asking authors to do when I edit for them, because I’ve done it myself, numerous times.
I write dryly funny, emotionally charged crime stories. My work sits at the darker end of the spectrum and is usually filled with layers of deception, complex relationships and gallows humour.
My Short Stories
The Artist, a 2026 Derringer Award finalist for Best Short Story, follows a charming young pickpocket working the streets of London. But his extraordinary talent for the lift conceals an even more extraordinary secret. This story, originally published in Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers (Superior Shores Press, Canada, 2025), was selected as a finalist from nearly 500 submissions to the Short Mystery Fiction Society. [Read it here]
Earlier work includes another short storyThe Ring, published in Sweet As (2014), a collection of contemporary New Zealand short fiction, and a 2013 novel extract published in Turbine, Victoria University’s literary journal.
My Novels in Progress
Charlie Rae was Never Here (Book One in the Series – coming in early 2027)
In this darkly funny and emotionally piercing crime thriller, former con artist Charlie Rae is stuck in a deal with British financial intelligence. Bored out of her skull and desperate to be free, Charlie’s already working the angles when a last-minute invite arrives.
Her old partner-in-crime Emma wants her as maid of honour at her high-profile, three-day Cotswolds wedding. But Charlie and Emma haven’t spoken in five years, and there’s a good reason for that. Charlie deletes the invite. Then her new handler sends her anyway: a missing London accountant is on the guest list, and nobody knows why. Crack it, and she could wangle her way to freedom – it’s worth a shot.
At a wedding full of wellness influencers, politicians and crypto bros, the bride – who is lying about almost everything – is also in a panic about a menacing late addition to the guest list and needs Charlie to get him off her back.
So now she’s got two bosses, three days and four jobs:
Maid of honour
Reluctant spy
Bride’s fixer
Amateur sleuth
The laughs are real. So are the dinner, the dancing and the multiple, multiple layers of deception.
Then there are the bodies no one’s talking about.
The last laugh in this book, however, is the one that will break your heart.
It’s meant to.