There’s nothing I like more than kicking of my shoes and curling up with a book. I get enormous pleasure from reading and I want people to share that pleasure when they read my books.

Most of all, I think, I’m a story-teller. I like taking a character and giving them a story and unfolding that for the reader. I enjoy figuring out why the character acts the way she does and thinking about the possible consequences of her actions.

All of my novels deal with the conflicting demands on us in our day-to-day lives and how we cope with them. I also like to look at unexpected events and how they can totally alter our perspective on things. The books deal with themes that interest me: family feuds (Caroline’s Sister); bereavement (How Will I Know?); broken friendships (Bad Behaviour); extended families (Someone Special) and lots more besides!

Regardless of the theme of the book, though, I always want to make the lives and stories of my characters interesting and entertaining. For me, they become as close as family and dear friends and I care deeply about what happens to them.

I hope you do too.

Happy reading!

Sheila

I’m writing about what I know here – at least, in a way! Britt, my heroine, is a writer. She had a successful career as a divorce lawyer before writing a book as therapy to get over her own divorce. Her assistant saw the manuscript and (unknown to Britt) sent it to a friend who...

As many of my readers already know I like writing about families. Someone Special is about an extended family and how all the various members of it get on (or don’t get on) with each other. Someone Special’s main character is Romy, who is forced to come home from her job as a forensic archaeologist....

Bad Behaviour is a book about friendship and about knowing what we want from life. It’s about those ‘if only’ or ‘what if’ times, when we wonder how our lives would have turned out if things had taken a different course. And it’s also about how sometimes the grass always seems greener for someone else....

Yours, Faithfully is another book where I can answer the question ‘where do you get your ideas from’. The idea for this book has been with me ever since I was about thirteen where a chance remark made me think about the situation Iona and Sally find themselves in and wonder what on earth it....

This is a story of love and loss and finding out whether or not there’s more than one ‘Mr Right’ for you. I wondered what it would be like to lose a person who has always been in your life and how easy it is to get back ‘out there’ after a personal tragedy....

Years and years ago I saw a poster which said “Parents, get your revenge. Live long enough to be a worry to your children”. I always liked the sound of that! I think as children we often think of our parents as people who should lead the sort of lives we want them to lead....

The theme of this book is love at first sight and whether it can last the pace. I think almost everyone has met someone that they fall madly in love with almost as soon as they see them but very few of them get married straight away, which is what happens to the lead characters....

Sisters are the theme of this book! I’ve two myself and though we’re all very different in many ways we know that there is a shared bond between us. I do mention in the acknowledgements that with a book about three sisters people will assume that this one must be autobiographical. But once again....

Whenever I saw an old boyfriend with a new girlfriend (even if I didn’t care about him any more) I always felt a bit aggrieved that he’d found someone else – which I know is silly but there you go! This book is about an ex-wife and a new wife. Even though she divorced her....

The idea for this book came about from reading so many articles about women’s biological clocks ticking and the choices between career and children. I wanted to write about a woman who really doesn’t hear hers ticking (I was fed up listening to arguments that women were desperate to have children but had to wait)....

Because of the Bridget Jones phenomenon, everyone seemed to think that women in their thirties were man-starved, incompetent, ditzy and frazzled. Ash, my heroine in this book, is anything but. If anything she’s far too cool and composed on the outside – although she does suffer from panic attacks which can be terrifying for her....

I wanted to write about a family feud. I wondered what would make two sisters not speak to each other for a long period of time and decided that it would have to be a man! I also wanted to write about how two very different people cope with unexpected events and a little bit....

At the time I was thinking about this book I seemed to be hearing about weddings every second day. So I thought I’d write about what happens when one is called off at short notice. I reckoned it would be totally traumatic because so much of everyone’s time is caught up in wedding preparations these....

This was my first published book (though the second I’d written with these characters). It’s about a very ordinary girl, Jane, who works in banking and marries a dealer. Since I was working in dealing at the time I was following the advice on writing about what you know. Jane thinks that her life will....

The number one question I’m asked by readers is ‘where do you get your ideas from?’ For this collection of short stories, I’m able to answer that! I was lucky enough to stay in a lovely hotel on a Caribbean island some time ago. It was an extremely popular wedding location and one evening I....

From the moment the Dart system became part of Dublin I dreamed about writing a collection of short stories centred around it. I think this is because I am basically a nosy person and love looking at the backs of people’s houses and wondering what kind of lives they’re living. And whenever passengers get on....

 My third collection of short stories is set in a small but luxurious family hotel over the Christmas period. Claire and Neil own the hotel and are worried because the recession it biting and bookings are down. If they don’t make a go of the important Christmas season, they might even lose the hotel....