Elle M Keating enjoys painting pictures with words, often digging deep into genealogy and her Welsh heritage for inspiration.

Happily throwing her unaware characters into situations which often bring a tense, 'It's behind you!' quality to the reader experience, Elle's writing has been described as 'leading you up a lovely garden path, then slamming you straight into a wall when you least expect it.'

Elle has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Chichester. She is also a trained yoga, meditation, and breath-work teacher, an energy healer and a wellness coach.

When she's not working, she can be found walking her dogs with her husband. Far from her West London roots, she now enjoys country life, living off the beaten track in a tiny hamlet that no one’s ever heard of.’

‘So many writers inspire me. I have very eclectic tastes and discover new ones all the time. I adore Hilary Mantel's succinct prose and the way she drives straight to the heart of a character with just a few well-chosen words. Her Wolf Hall trilogy is sheer magic. I love big twists, such as the one Ian McEwan delivers in Atonement. I love the reflective introspection and flashbacks of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

Writing has been in my blood forever. My mother and grandmother both wrote, my uncle was a journalist and newspaper editor, my cousin writes, my aunt was a poet, my daughter is a songwriter. I grew up with the need to commit deep emotions into words. It's the Welsh in me.

I've been a copywriter, a PR consultant ,and the editor of a property newspaper. I've also written as a columnist for a local paper but always loved to write short stories and have written poetry since I was a child. I love to write because I 'see' everything I'm writing visually, almost cinematically, so I try to capture that with words.

My debut novel was not my first attempt. I tried to write - and illustrate - a novel when I was 10 years old: an historical novel about Anne Boleyn. (I was a bloodthirsty child and mainly wanted to write about executions). I can still remember the first line: 'Anne was pregnant again.'

Hilary Mantel would have been so proud.’