Early Life
Her writing began at an early age and was strongly influenced by Grimms' Fairy Tales and the tales of Charles Perrault, as well as local folklore and Norse mythology.
She was educated at Wakefield Girls High School, Barnsley Sixth Form College, and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where she studied Modern and Medieval Languages. After a single, unsuccessful year as an accountant, which she describes as "like being trapped in a Terry Gilliam movie", she trained as a teacher at Sheffield University, and for fifteen years she taught modern languages, mostly at Leeds Grammar School, a boys' independent school in Yorkshire. She also taught at Sheffield University, lecturing on aspects of French literature and film. During this period, she worked on a number of book projects, three of which (The Evil Seed, Sleep, Pale Sister and Chocolat) were published before she left teaching to become a full-time writer.
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