British New Adult Fiction author of Hillside Academy, the 24-book romantic suspense and drama series. Volume 1, September, is available to buy on Amazon for ebook and paperback.
‘Do not try to become a person of success but try to become a person of value’ – Albert Einstein
The Story of Hillside Academy
Hillside Academy, the series as a whole, consists of 24 books and is romantic suspense and drama, focusing on the lives of eight teenagers at a prestigious – albeit fictional – boarding school in Ilfracombe, Devon. The book’s main themes are sexual violence, mental health, self-harm and childhood trauma, which are all essential narratives to me because they’ve been the themes of my life too. While I didn’t go to a wealthy boarding school on the Devonshire coast, I did attend what was once a respected grammar school and was surrounded daily by wealth. Though it was nothing like the wealth of HSA. I was also bullied mercilessly my entire time there. Another theme of HSA that’s incredibly important to me is body shaming, something I’ve dealt with time and time again on a regular basis as if my worth is all in my dress size. HSA is here to say it isn’t. It’s here to say that the bullies fade away like the seasons but the trauma remains.
I wrote HSA, initially, to try to capture some of the goodness I found as a teenager. I started writing these characters and this story when I was 10 years old (18 years ago). Back then, it was just a school and some kids. In a way, it’s still just a school and some kids. The school may be a boarding school but it’s just like all learning institutes. It has teachers, it has classrooms, it has bullies and it has friends. Friends are what kept me going through high school but I know for a lot of people that wasn’t possible. With HSA, it is. I wrote about my friends; the quirky, weird, hilarious, misfit friends that kept me sane. That kept me alive. And while my characters aren’t based entirely on my friends, their essence, their strength and loyalty, and their meaning, are true to HSA. And I’m hoping that the people who read my books find comfort in its pages. That if you’re reading this as an adult and hated school, you can make new memories with HSA. And if you happen to be reading it while you’re still at school, though I will say there is an 18+ disclaimer, it’ll be there to comfort you too.
HSA was written with nostalgia in mind. As a proud millennial, I wanted to write about my teenage experience in the 00s which was without social media as it i today. Which, when I found readers, was a surprisingly similar experience to the generations before me. We all did the same things and I realised it wasn’t just millennials who were my audience but anyone who had been a teenager and looked back on that time with glasses tinted with trauma.
Setting it in Ilfracombe and the surrounding area came naturally to me. I holidayed there repeatedly as a child and feel most at home in Ilfracombe. I can’t explain it. Ever since I saw that hill which overlooks the town, I saw a school perched on top. And people are so fascinated by it being set in Devon, especially my international readers who are so used to reading about London. Ilfracombe, Barnstaple and all the outlying villages feel like my old stomping grounds even though I didn’t grow up there. This area has given me all the inspiration I’ve needed to write 24 books and so much more.