About Liz
I’ve done a ton of different jobs since leaving school, but have finally ended up doing what I’ve always want to do and become a full-time writer, publishing two books and working on my third.
I started out training as a classical dancer, which was a wonderful obsessive world for an introvert/extrovert like me – but I had a back injury and had to quit. So, I learnt to touch type and worked as a temp secretary across London for all sorts of different companies, from energy firms to clerical insurance to the British Library, while simultaneously going to night classes at the wonderful City Lit, to get into university at age 23.
Image copyright: Ben Wilkin
I left university with an English degree and zero idea of what I wanted to do, so worked as a cocktail waitress, as a nude model for art classes and in a stationery shop. I had a stab at acting, but was truly terrible – though I did have a small part in one episode of Lovejoy as a con-woman. I started doing stand-up open spots in comedy clubs and gradually got paid work. For ten years, I performed stand-up up and down the country. (Cheeky, irrepressible, witty, perceptive, refreshing, fun, charming, good-humouredly raunchy and bubbling with effervescence – unforgettable. The Scotsman.) I also worked as a voice over artist on ads like Persil, Organics and Kellogg’s: ‘It’s not too heavy, and it’s not too light, it’s – Just Right – new from Kellogg’s.
I started doing bits of freelance script reading and eventually got a job at the BBC as an assistant script editor in Radio Drama. I worked my way up to being a Producer and produced a huge range of plays, comedies, book adaptations and book readings. When I had my son, I went freelance in radio production. But I really wanted to stop producing other people’s work and write my own, so I took the plunge and did the excellent 6-month novel writing course at the Faber Academy Jan 2019 and started a book. It was tough and all those occasions when I’d blithely swiped red lines through writers’ work when I was a producer, came back to me! Later that year I did NaNoWriMo 2019 – a brilliant online initiative where writers across the world all try to write 50,000 words in the month of November. I took my initial idea and bashed out a full rough draft. When coronavirus hit, I wasn’t working and thought it was ‘now or never’ to complete my book. I did some excellent short online writing courses at Curtis Brown Creative, and every week I showed bits of my writing to a small band of writers who had stayed together from my Faber course, as we met up in our weekly Zoom calls. And eventually I had a manuscript. My debut novel The Daughter came out in the UK in 2022 with my wonderful publisher Allison & Busby in May 2022 and was also sold to publishers in Serbia (Vulkan), Germany (Goldmann) and Norway (Vigmostad & Bjorke). I had a launch at Waterstones and appeared at Scotland’s ‘Bloody Scotland’ crime writing festival, at Burgh House in London and at local library events.
I left university with an English degree and zero idea of what I wanted to do, so worked as a cocktail waitress, as a nude model for art classes and in a stationery shop. I had a stab at acting, but was truly terrible – though I did have a small part in one episode of Lovejoy as a con-woman. I started doing stand-up open spots in comedy clubs and gradually got paid work. For ten years, I performed stand-up up and down the country. (Cheeky, irrepressible, witty, perceptive, refreshing, fun, charming, good-humouredly raunchy and bubbling with effervescence – unforgettable. The Scotsman.) I also worked as a voice over artist on ads like Persil, Organics and Kellogg’s: ‘It’s not too heavy, and it’s not too light, it’s – Just Right – new from Kellogg’s.
I started doing bits of freelance script reading and eventually got a job at the BBC as an assistant script editor in Radio Drama. I worked my way up to being a Producer and produced a huge range of plays, comedies, book adaptations and book readings. When I had my son, I went freelance in radio production. But I really wanted to stop producing other people’s work and write my own, so I took the plunge and did the excellent 6-month novel writing course at the Faber Academy Jan 2019 and started a book. It was tough and all those occasions when I’d blithely swiped red lines through writers’ work when I was a producer, came back to me! Later that year I did NaNoWriMo 2019 – a brilliant online initiative where writers across the world all try to write 50,000 words in the month of November. I took my initial idea and bashed out a full rough draft. When coronavirus hit, I wasn’t working and thought it was ‘now or never’ to complete my book. I did some excellent short online writing courses at Curtis Brown Creative, and every week I showed bits of my writing to a small band of writers who had stayed together from my Faber course, as we met up in our weekly Zoom calls. And eventually I had a manuscript. My debut novel The Daughter came out in the UK in 2022 with my wonderful publisher Allison & Busby in May 2022 and was also sold to publishers in Serbia (Vulkan), Germany (Goldmann) and Norway (Vigmostad & Bjorke). I had a launch at Waterstones and appeared at Scotland’s ‘Bloody Scotland’ crime writing festival, at Burgh House in London and at local library events.
My first novel was set in North London and I was ‘writing about what I know’. For my second novel I decided to leave my comfort zone and research a subject and place that were totally alien to me. I explored the phenomenon of unusually late heart attack survival in freezing temperatures and visited the slate islands off the west coast of Scotland. My second novel The Saved comes out in the UK in Jan 2024 and has already sold in Germany (Goldmann).
I’m currently writing my third book.