I cleared an old laptop and I set up an email address for Nathan, the main teenage boy character in the novel. I set up social media and gaming site profiles for him and gave him typical interests such as football, gaming and good looking actresses - typical, innocent teen boy stuff. Then I sat back and waited.

She’s somebody I know unsettlingly intimately, and I’m probably so unsettled by her because I’m afraid to admit to myself how easy it would be to become her.

A cutting workplace thriller on toxic work relationships and what happens when you believe your workplace has become a crime scene.

A generational story that follows a line of Māori mothers and their daughters, navigating the world.

Another corker for cannibal-themed horror fans!

A masterclass in pace and storytelling, this is a novel that will force you into the main character’s shoes and have you spiralling into a moral grey area.

This is a raw and unflinching memoir of family, motherhood and a son’s struggles with mental ill health (bipolar disorder) and addiction.

The Strangling Fig is a gorgeously written ghost story that follows generations of women from the 1940s Partition of India through to 2000s America.

I think another good piece of advice, if you’re like me and hate the idea of a blank page, is to think of your next book idea before finishing your first. That way, you have something to dive into.

A friend asked me recently, “how does it feel to write about a version of the city that doesn’t exist anymore?”

Summer is a time that evokes childhood, beauty and freedom, but also becomes a setting to set a family’s tensions against, asking if they can ever break out of their own trappings.

But in following Mattie’s journey, I found some of the answers I was seeking every time I asked myself what if? I hope readers do too.

The story gives voice to some difficult themes and while it does offer them space, it never makes them the focus of the plot or the characters, never turning them into a caricature and instead fleshing them out past their troubles.

The story itself felt passionate about nature, the planet and the ocean, and all of that came across through the characters. It moved me greatly and I couldn’t stop thinking about it, long after I’d put it down.

I couldn’t tell where it was going to go; the ending was spectacularly hair raising, my teeth on edge.

This time last year I was eagerly awaiting the hardback release of my debut novel, The Game is Murder. It had been a long and strange journey to publication, and I had always seen the release day as a final destination, and the culmination of my efforts.

With a Rooney-esque penchant for frustrating communication styles, you'll like this book if you enjoy wanting to shake characters through the pages. Be prepared to unravel along with them.

Don’t worry, the action and jokes and vampires didn’t go away. It is, I hope, a page-turner, and still something I’d be delighted to pick up in a book shop. Fingers crossed you might be too.

Fast-paced and exciting, this book grabbed me from the first chapter. With a split narrative that explores the messy past between Juliette and Dominic, we as the readers join the dangerous world of Formula 1 driving.

Perhaps, though, it shouldn’t have done. A writer is a reader first, after all, and books, their existence, have been a major part of my life.