I'm never quite sure about where I live. The isolation, the wind. It roars across the house some days, a constant thrum, lifting the chairs on the patio, tossing plastic pots, hissing through the gaps in the windows. But it's the dark at night I hadn't expected. How dense it was. I remember my first night, standing in the lane...

Living out in the sticks (as my sons often say), and on a hill (lovely view, the estate agents said), we catch the wind. The rain sweeps over the valley, the buzzards get blown off course and I've had to give up my office chair to allow the cat to remain undisturbed. The house is quiet but for the moan...

At home this Halloween? Why not snuggle up to a new short story, written and read by Sophie. Check out "Busby's Chair" - the ghost with a difference...

New Writing Course with Sophie Draper and Roz Watkins

How to Write a Gripping Commercial Novel

The autumn colours are tremendous this year. I look outside the window of my study through the sweeps of rain, and the hills are ablaze with reds and yellows. Autumn has always been my favourite time of year.

It feels quite surreal to now have two books out there in the big wide world.

I was recently invited to do a workshop on psychological thrillers. Which got me thinking about some of the main elements of the genre: close personal relationships, the betrayal of trust, emotional intensity, lies, unreliable narrators, deceptive memories, the "twist"... I could do a long list. But the one that jumped out the most was "lies".