REALLY about the author (or Fran's ramblings!)
Frances lives in the Warwickshire, UK countryside with six dogs and an exceptionally vivid imagination. A lifelong reader, she discovered early that the only thing better than falling into a story is writing one, a fire once ignited isn't easily put out.Her rampant ADHD means her brain is always spinning new worlds, and romantasy has become the perfect home for all that creative chaos.
She's been creative for as long as she can remember; running a fashion label, being a furniture designer, an entrepreneur and now writing alongside running a small creative business out of a warehouse (that also contains a soft play she built just for her kids- because obviously!)Books have been her world for as long as she can remember. At nine years old, after a particularly dramatic argument, she decided to leave home, and packed half her bookshelf but no clothes or food.
Some things never change.
REALLY about the author
(or Fran's ramblings!)
Hey, I'm Fran.I've been a huge lifelong devourer of books (I think that would be my demon name!) ever since I can remember. I was the kind of nerdy kid who would read encyclopaedias for fun, and read under the covers to avoid bedtimes.My love of fantasy started with Terry Pratchett, which is a very good place to start. My mum read them to me when I was a small child and I'm still obsessed with all things fantastical and coloured with magic.I read my first romance after buying a random book on holiday in Hawaii (Kushiel's Legacy) about 25 years ago now, but I slept on the genre until around 2024 when BookTok got me hooked.I only started writing after discovering audiobooks. My husband kept catching me shouting at the characters and badgered me into writing my own. I still can't stand a dumb or childish heroine or the miscommunication trope!Even then, I'm not sure I'd have got it off the ground without the loss of Carol, my mother-in-law, in July 2025. A fantasy world is a great place to be when your outside world is crashing down around you... and I escaped hard. So much so I didn't want to come back down from it, and the words just poured out of me.I've only been writing for what feels like five minutes, so I don't really feel like I own the title of author (despite having written nearly a million words in six months!).
But I just know I'm an incredible dreamer. Being a writer, to me, is just translating those dreams to paper.My first book, Ash and Amber, which will most likely release as my fifth, took me three weeks to write. Astaris Book 1 followed in another three-to-four-week stint a month later. Those books weren't totally finished at that point, a painfully large amount of editing still needed to happen, but that's the basic process.Silver Riot was birthed from an Offspring concert we took our eldest to in October '25. I liked the idea of using lyrics and a concert venue in a romance novel, but keeping it British. I'd just been to a gig in London and had serious alt-girl nostalgia. The book is absolutely drenched in my memories of my time at uni in London, and El is kind of me... but also very not me at the same time. Sadly, I never knew a Jamie.I work at night mostly, because it's so quiet and no one demands anything of your time. My family thinks I'm part vampire since I regularly go to bed at four or five in the morning!A lot of the scenes in my books come from lucid dreaming, something I do as part of regulating my nervous system to calm myself to sleep. I take an idea and let my brain create the visual, then build it into a dream state as I drift off. I wake up and carry that dream state on, crafting new moments and plots that just feel right. My own personal Neverland. Some scenes arrive in my head fully formed and ready to write down. With maybe ten of those scenes and some plot ideas woven through them, I've got a fully formed book in next to no time.I keep 90% of it in my head and write very little down, then have a Word doc of notes and my phone's notes app to hold the rest. It's a weird process and possibly unique, but that's me.Like I said, I'm not a real author. I just write a lot of books.Ash and Amber (paranormal romance set in a place with a Victorian London vibe) is planned to be at least a trilogy.Astaris I panicked about, thinking I only had one and a half books' worth of ideas... but then I slept on it. Literally, obviously! And now I have four books completely planned, plotted, and partially written, with a hazy dream of a fifth waiting for the moment I actually manage a full night's sleep. I plan to get all four out in 2026, and a few of the Ash and Amber ones too.For those of you who have read any of Astaris and want to know the general direction:Book 1 is Kira's story.
Book 2 has Kira, Loris, and Orion forming the main story, with some new locations.
Book 3 focuses on Tarian's chaos in another kingdom, Orion's redemption, and Kira's struggles.
Book 4 is Echo and Orion travelling farther abroad.The best place to keep up with me is on TikTok and Instagram.I still read quicker than the average binge-reader and I've always got thoughts, so I'll pop those up alongside bits of me. I'm not naturally into posting, but I'm always happy to talk books, so fingers crossed this gets me over the hurdle! Don't be a stranger...
