Hello from new girl Rosalie Warren

Hi everyone - I'm Rosalie and it's great to be here. I love this blog and am delighted to be part of it. You people are all so inspiring and I'm hoping some of your talent, enthusiasm and expertise will rub off on me.

As it's unlikely that most of you will have heard of me (though I know a few of you - hello!), let me tell you a bit about myself. I'm a bit of a scattergun author, the kind who makes agents wring their hands in despair. Some would say I haven't yet found my niche, but I prefer to think that I'm not the kind of creature that is happy in a single niche - or at least, I'd rather explore a variety of them first, before making up my mind.

I've been making up stories since the age of four or five. I wrote my first full-length novel at 15 and had a near-miss with a publisher when I was in my late twenties, but foolishly took this to mean I should give up. So I studied for my PhD and became a university lecturer. This, together with my family, didn't leave much time for writing novels, and it wasn't until 2006, when I took early retirement because of ill health, that I turned back to writing.

In 2008 I found an excellent small publisher, Circaidy Gregory Press, for my novel Charity's Child, which, although it has a teenage protagonist, was marketed a book for adults. Since the book turned out to appeal to older teens as well as to grown-ups, we have decided to reissue it as an eBook, this time aimed at 14+. Publication is planned for next March.

My second novel to be published was Low Tide, Lunan Bay - a romantic suspense which found a home with Robert Hale in 2009. It's no longer in print and I'm considering republishing it as an eBook at some stage.

Earlier this year, my first novel for young teens, Coping with Chloe, was published by Phoenix Yard, and I'm now in discussions with them about a series for younger readers. I've had interest from another publisher in a further novel for young teens, which I hope will be the first of a series featuring youngsters who happen to have disabilities of various kinds.

And recently, the wonderful Coventry Writers' Group, to which I belong, brought out an anthology of poetry and short stories, all based on our home city. It's called Coventry Tales and we've been involved in several events in the last few weeks to publicise it. The response so far has been encouraging and we are hoping it'll be picked up by some Coventrians far from home, as well as anyone else with an interest in our city and its history. It's available both in paperback and Kindle form, so although I'm not strictly self-publishing here, it's close...

In my previous life I was a lecturer in computer science, but my real academic interests are cognitive science and artificial intelligence. I'm now trying to put some of that to work by writing a science-fiction novel for adults, set in 2104. If it fails to fit the bill of a publisher, I'll probably self-publish as an eBook - but I'm still in the middle of Draft 2, so it's a little early to say.

And finally (you'll see by now what I mean about the scattergun approach), I've written a novella called Mondays with Marguerite, about a feisty woman with Alzheimer's who develops a friendship with her great-granddaughter over a year of Monday afternoon visits. There's no way, I'm told, that any publisher would take this on, at 40000 words, so I've decided to bring it out as an eBook next year. I'm really looking forward to drawing on the experience and encouragement of people in this group as I go ahead with this venture.

But mostly, I'm just looking forward to getting to know you all. Thanks for having me on your wonderfully-named blog - I think this is going to be fun!

You can find out more about me and my books on my wesite at www.rosalie-warren.co.uk. I blog at rosalie-warren.blogspot.com, and I'm on Twitter @Ros_Warren.