About Me
About Me
I’m a retired grandmother living in Aotearoa New Zealand, writing science fiction with my feet planted firmly on the ground and my imagination happily drifting among the stars. I was born and raised in England, and about thirty years ago I made the leap to New Zealand—one of those life decisions that quietly rewires you in the best way. Over time I’ve lived on both the North and South Islands, and each has left its fingerprints on me: the different light, the different weather moods, the way the landscape can feel like it’s speaking even when nobody’s saying a word.
What I love most here is the peace and quiet. Not the empty kind—more the steady kind. The kind that gives you space to think, to breathe, to notice. I love the outdoors, the big skies, the views that make you stop mid-step because your brain needs a second to catch up with your eyes. That sense of scale—of being small in a beautiful world—feeds directly into my writing.
I write speculative fiction, mostly science fiction with touches of fantasy, myth, folklore, humour, and philosophical mischief. My stories often begin with old wisdom—proverbs, whakataukī, sayings passed down through generations—and carry them into imagined futures of starships, alien worlds, failing colonies, strange machines, ancestral memory, and people trying very hard not to make a complete mess of things. Which, naturally, they often do.
My work sits somewhere between cosmic wonder and human consequence. I love the vast questions science fiction can ask: What happens when humanity leaves Earth? What do we take with us? What do we forget? What do we owe the dead, the living, and those still to come? But I’m just as interested in the smaller moments: a meal shared under pressure, a promise kept, a bad joke at exactly the wrong time, a tired person choosing kindness when selfishness would be easier.
The writers who have shaped my imagination include the grand-scale vision of Arthur C. Clarke, the deep futures and scientific sweep of Stephen Baxter, the rich worldbuilding and human sprawl of Peter F. Hamilton, the moral intelligence and tenderness of Ursula K. Le Guin, and the glorious sharp-edged humanity of Terry Pratchett. I admire stories that can look up at the universe without forgetting the person standing in the kitchen, wondering whether there’s enough tea, courage, or oxygen to get through the day.
My stories blend big-space wonder with stubbornly human heart. You’ll find survival and courage, yes, but also the everyday heroics: showing up, keeping promises, taking responsibility, choosing community over ego. I’m especially interested in the echoes of whakapapa carried into the future—how lineage, connection, memory, and obligation don’t vanish just because the setting is a starship or a station. The tech might change. The horizon might widen. But people are still people, and what we owe each other still matters.
If my work has a signature, it’s this: awe with backbone. Hope that’s practical. Humour that shows up when things get grim—because sometimes a laugh is a lifeline, and sometimes it’s the only sensible response to a universe that has clearly not read the safety manual. Underneath it all is a quiet belief that the future isn’t built by the loudest voices or the cleverest plans, but by the ones who keep turning up: for their whānau, for their crew, for their ancestors, and for the kind of world they want to leave behind.
If you like cosmic scale grounded in real emotion, found family, ancestral echoes, moral choices, strange worlds, old wisdom in new places, and futures that still remember where they came from, you’ll feel at home in my pages.
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