From Feedback to Fire — Why I Started Writing Queen’s Road
I never set out to be an author. I was a reader first, the kind who disappears into a story like it’s oxygen. Books gave me escape, comfort, questions, adventure, and sometimes just a little more hope than I started the day with. I always imagined I would admire stories from the outside, not build them from within.
And then I found RR Hayward ( The Boss)
His writing made me feel like I had stepped into something alive. The Undead world felt big, raw, human and brilliantly absurd at times. I didn’t just read those books. I lived in them for a while. And then came something remarkable: he opened that world to others. He offered writers the chance to create companion novels, promising to read them and give honest feedback. It wasn’t a competition, not really. It was an open door, an invitation to be brave.
I walked through that door with Queen’s Road in my hands.
My book didn’t quite sit within his universe. And that could have been the end of it. But instead, he gave me feedback so kind, so encouraging, that I couldn’t tuck the story away. He told me my writing was strong. He believed the book could have a life of its own, maybe even as a graphic novel. I held onto those words, and something shifted inside me.
If someone I admire that deeply could see potential in my writing, then maybe there was truth in it.
Maybe this wasn’t just an idea.
Maybe it was a beginning.
So I turned inward. I spent months shaping Queen’s Road into something rooted in my own world ,my family, my street, the place I call home. My partner, my children, my parents. They became the heartbeat of the story. For years we joked about how we’d survive a zombie apocalypse. Who would hold the line? Who would organised the chaos? Which neighbour would panic and which one would quietly save us all?
What once lived only in laughter and late-night “what ifs” became the foundation of a novel I love.
Book One is now with the editor. Book Two is already forming under my hands.
And at nearly fifty years old, I am doing something new, creative, terrifying and exhilarating, I am writing because the stories won’t leave me alone anymore.
And there’s more.
Alongside Queen’s Road, I’ve started writing short stories rooted in Caribbean, Jamaican and British-Jamaican folklore, threaded through with Somerset land and Somerset weather. Myth, folklore, family and belonging, all brought together with a quiet twist of the supernatural. Those stories are slowly becoming Rum, Salt and Shadow, a thriller-fantasy series with teeth and history and magic under the skin.
Two worlds.
Both mine.
Both full of heart and blood and roots.
I’m learning every day. I’m building as I go. And I’m sharing this journey because I know how rare and brave it is to begin something frightening and tender in the middle of your life, not at the beginning of it. This isn’t a neat dream. It’s work and risk and joy. It’s stepping into a world of my own making and hoping readers will come with me.
If you’re here, reading this, I hope you’ll stay.
Walk with me through Queen’s Road.
Dive with me into Rum, Salt and Shadow.
Grow with me, learn with me, create with me.
I don’t know exactly where this road will lead, but I know I’m meant to be on it.
And I’d love to have you beside me while I write the rest.
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