Drama, passion, danger: my imagination really couldn't have gone any other way. Why? Because I grew up in a haunted Victorian house in a little Norfolk village. (And yes, I did see the ghost - there are lots of spooky stories about Mill House.) The ghost was that of a miller. Apparently, he murdered his wife in a jealous rage and threw her down the well, then died from septicaemia after he burned his hand on a bread oven.

True or false? Hmmm - when the land next to our house was developed, they found a well. I remember my parents whispering about the word 'skeleton' - and suddenly clamming up when they realised I wasn't asleep, I was eavesdropping! So maybe that was the miller's wife... I've written a book on researching a property's history, How To Research Your House, so you can guess what my case study was. And it was fascinating. (Did I find out the truth about the ghost? It's all in the book!)

I started reading at a precocious age, and one of the books that influenced me most was Wuthering Heights. (This is at the same time as I was devouring Elyne Mitchell's Silver Brumby series; and my mother also read me translations of Malory when I was very, very young. Drama, passion and danger again.) I persuaded my parents to give me a typewriter for my sixth birthday, because I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up: a writer. After I'd been to university to read English.

I started writing my first Mills & Boon when I was thirteen. My mother was horrified when she read it, until I confessed that I'd borrowed the love scenes from Sara Craven (who's a thoroughly nice woman and has since forgiven me for doing this!). My mum suggested that I should try again when I was a little bit older.

So. A speeded-up version of what happened next... University, specialising in Old English and Thomas Hardy. (Drama, passion and danger again. There's definitely a pattern there, vbg.) Fall in love, graduate, buy house in Norwich, get dog, get married to Gerard, have first book accepted (erotic romance, since you ask), lovely husband agrees I can go freelance, first Black Lace novel accepted, son Chris born, become a health journalist, daughter Chloë born. Life doesn't get much better than this.

And then, at the age of six weeks, Chloë spent her first Christmas in hospital with bronchiolitis. The only way I could cope was to pretend it was happening to someone else. Gerry had suggested for a while that I ought to write writing medical romances (combining my two interests of health journalism and writing romance). So I started writing my first M&B medical, A Baby of Her Own, at my baby's bedside. Chloë recovered. My agent loved the book. So did M&B. It was accepted on Chloë's first birthday and published on her second birthday - and Ottakar's gave me a fab launch party.

2006 saw me achieve a private ambition: to be shortlisted for a major award. Where the Heart Is was shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists' Association Romance Prize: probably my best-ever 40th birthday present!

And 2008 saw me achieve the next step: not only was I shortlisted again, but Breakfast at Giovanni's won the Romantic Novelists' Association Romance Prize 2008.

In Spring 2008, I'm currently writing my 34th title for M&B and planning the rest of the year's romances. I've also had several local history titles published under the name of Pamela Brooks, which have all hit the top of the local history bestsellers' chart.