Later today, here in 2026, I’ll be heading for Oxford and the 33rd annual crime and mystery fiction weekend conference at my old college, St Hilda’s. I went to the very first one of these weekends in 1994, and I think I’ve missed five since then, due to unavoidable diary clashes.

1996 though. I’ve just realised why that particular weekend was particularly significant for me. I think it was the first time the weekend was given a particular theme, and the topic chosen was historical mysteries. I recall finding many aspects of various speakers’ papers were equally applicable to writing secondary world fantasy fiction. The pitfalls to avoid. The workarounds. If I can find the time, I’ll have a look for whatever notebook I used for jotting down key insights.

And I came home and binned The Definitive Blockbuster Fantasy Masterwork which I had been writing and rewriting for well over a decade by then. That wasn’t the story’s actual title, obviously, but that’s how I have come to refer to it with entirely justified mockery, when I talk about this clueless stage in my writing career. To return to St Hilda’s, I don’t recall any individual speaker that weekend said the one revelatory thing which gave me a ‘light bulb over the head’ moment. It was the cumulative effect which somehow made me realise my derivative, over-burdened novel was never, ever going to make it into print. The file of rejection slips I had amassed to that point were absolutely right.

I needed to start again with a fresh and original idea, and a blank page. I remember that feeling was as liberating as it was daunting. I was freed from the burden of trying to fix the unfixable with yet another round of rewrites! Hurrah! Okay, now what? What was no one else doing in fantasy fiction back then? What did I think I could do well, applying everything I had learned from listening to authors and working part-time for Ottakar’s for a couple of years? Because now I had a far better understanding of the challenges of writing a novel which was going to stand a realistic chance of publication.

Very quickly though, and far sooner than I expected, I came up with the idea of an independent female lead character, living on the edges of society and legality, supported by a network of friends, and not defined by her relationship with a man. This very much reflected the attitudes of the central characters in the long-standing D&D campaign I was running for friends at that time, which turned out to be a tremendous help.

So I wrote Livak’s story. I had that first draft done by the end of the year. After asking good friends and my husband for no-holds-barred feedback, I revised and polished the story mercilessly through the first half of 1997. Then I asked my friend Emma who was still working for Ottakar’s to read it with a bookseller’s critical eye. She reckoned it was good enough to pass onto a publisher’s sales rep for his thoughts. He sent it to the commissioning editor, who liked it enough to offer me the two book contract we signed in December 1997 – once he had confirmed that I was open to editorial feedback and rewrites. That was another lesson I had learned listening to speakers and chatting to writers informally at the St Hilda’s weekends.

The Thief’s Gamble was first published by Orbit in January 1999. In a very real sense though, my journey as a professional writer started in earnest at that conference at St Hilda’s in 1996, thirty years ago. I think I’ll raise a glass to that with friends there this weekend.