Author & Freelance Writer
(taking dictation from people who don't exist)
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Crossing the Line
longlisted for the 2010 Carnegie Medal!
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Welcome to my site!
Photo credit - Helen Giles
The 2009 Edinburgh International Book Festival - right after my Schools Programme event. So can you tell I had a good time?
Ah, that Edinburgh weather - it's always like this.
Take a look at my books, reviews and what's happening.
And contact me here.
I'd like to project a cool and gritty image to match the manga chick in the main picture, but here's a respectable photo instead... 
(And the rural reality: me with a Rayburn stove growing out of my ears, giving a small red dog a tummy rub.)
Photo credit: Les Hester
I'm based in the north-east highlands of Scotland, where I live with one husband, two children, one labrador (Cluny), two psychotic cats (Pebble and Dash, aka the Ghost and the Darkness) - and (owing to the cats), not as many rabbits as there used to be. Writing for a living is a lot of fun - like taking dictation from the cast of bolshie characters in my head. Alastair Campbell once said it was an ideal job for a control freak. His characters must be better behaved than mine, since mine spend their lives telling me what's going to happen next.
But I like it that I never know just how it's all going to end - not till the fat lady sings, the villain meets a suitably sticky end, and the boy gets the girl (or indeed the boy).
My first full-length novel Bad Faith was published by Strident in October 2008.
In April this year Bloomsbury published Crossing The Line.
Under th
e name Gabriella Poole, I write the Darke Academy horror series, in collaboration with the highly successful book packagers Hothouse.
The first in the series, Secret Lives, was published by Hodder in August.
The second instalment, Blood Ties, will appear in February 2010.
As well as full-length books, I write educational fiction for secondary Key Stage 3. Life Of The Party, Mind's Eye and Sea Fever have been published by Evans Brothers, as have short stories The Changeling, Rockface, Misty and The Kindest Cut (in their science fiction, crime, ghost and comedy short story collections).