I’ve dropped some flowers onto the blog recently, to make myself look a bit more innocent while I write dark stories.

Look at me, I’m not scary — I like flowers!

I have a theory — more of a hunch perhaps — that if you write dodgy stories, your readers will wonder if you’re a dodgy person. A friend of mine wrote a book recently, and was asked, ‘Is it biographical?’

It’s inevitable, and even if she says no, everyone will still wonder.

In the same way, there’s always one real-life reader who goes all squealy over published stories (I bet that was about me, look, the character’s got a cat that behaves like my dog, and we have the same shoe size, it’s me in disguise!) No, it’s not.

(Unless it is.)

So, yes, I am writing terrible, evil, creepy stories, and counterbalancing this with pretty flowers on the web. This one — above — is a clematis.

(In real life, it’s been chopped down.)