As a child Sheila Williams read and read - any books about anything. In the Fifties, her first story, The Canary, was published in the school magazine. She just missed out on free love and flower power in the Sixties but made up for it in the following decade when she became part of the self-sufficiency movement. She dragged her husband to a smallholding in the Yorkshire Dales, graduated to a farm and then a divorce. The Seventies and Eighties were productive writing times for Sheila, with many published articles, bits for BBC Radio, a column in a local newspaper and a two-minute slot every week on Indie radio. The Nineties saw her lured back into business and with her new partner set up a human resources and training consultancy. During this time she wrote extensively for professional journals.The new century brought a rash of changes in her life when she moved to the coast, bought and renovated a wreck of a cottage, closed down the consultancy and picked up her pen to resuscitate her writing career.

She wrote and published a self-help book, Time for Your Life, (available on Amazon) before starting the research and writing of Close to the Edge.Sheila now lives in South-West France where she has started yet another house renovation project and another book.To contact Sheila: Sheila@writeonthebeach.co.uk.