BBC7

Cathy Cassidy always loved books and as soon as she could write was scribbling stories. She says: "I got told off early in the primary school for writing an eight page story - I think it was because my handwriting was so awful!" At 13 she was given a second hand typewriter and began to bash out short stories for her favourite teen magazine.

One day though she actually became the fiction editor on a teen magazine herself - Jackie. She's also been an art teacher and an agony aunt.

She says she was once a chocolate eating vegan who loved the idea of the traveller lifestyle but never managed to try it. This is a bit like Storm, a character in her first novel Dizzy.

Cathy followed her first novel, Dizzy with Indigo Blue, Driftwood and Scarlett.