Initially my published work was concerned with ceramics but soon after the beginning of the new millennium I closed my pottery and began to build doll houses.  The first became the inspiration for 'Phoenix House' a novel for younger readers base on a island threatened by flood.  As the house took shape so the story grew and I found myself exploring the problems of child carers, and growth though grief and loss.  As the second house developed so I entered into the lives of a new set of characters and soon I was writing The Dragonfly, a novel for older readers.  It has a more complicated plot concerned with the problems of inherited responsibility, illegal immigration and exploitation of frail and elderly people.  I am now building my third doll house, a fisherman's cottage which has prompted research into the eighteenth century wine trade and wrecks on the Chesil Beach.  Already the characters in the cottage are becoming real people who inhabit my mind and share their lives with me in the small hours of the morning.