Your life may be perfectly all right, yet still leave you wondering whether something is missing. Sometimes new possibilities appear in unexpected places — a conversation, an invitation, an idea, even a gateway discovered while walking the dogs. We may not know where they lead. Perhaps the first step is simply noticing that they're there.

I was watching the England match last night when one of the commentators said that the players simply had to keep doing the right things, and eventually they would get a result. And, in the end, they did. It made me think that perhaps life ought to work in much the same way. If we keep doing the right things, surely we should eventually arrive somewhere close to the life we want. But how many of us manage to do that consistently?

I suppose it was inevitable that my writing would drift towards the mysterious and the romantic — I’ve always had a soft spot for both. Even when I was younger, I loved stories that sent a little shiver down the spine: old houses with secrets, echoes from the past, mysterious letters, and the feeling that something unseen might be standing just behind you. At the same time, I’ve always been drawn to love stories — not just the happy-ever-after kind, but the deep, complex ones