About Kelly Clayton

I was born in Scotland but have lived for most of my life in the beautiful Channel Island of Jersey. A tiny 9 miles by 5 miles, the island is home to 100,000 people. With sandy beaches, rocky inlets, pretty villages, rolling fields and a buzzing main town, Jersey provides plenty of inspiration. I live with my husband and our three cats in a house by the sea. Yes, three cats – however one of them just decided to move in with us and wouldn’t go away so that’s not really my fault! (His previous human carer signed him over to me – honest.)

I am an avid reader, and love a variety of genres.  Reading translated into a desire to write.

I have always written, scribbled down ideas, scenes and character sketches. As a teenager I wanted to be a journalist – or an archaeologist or an actress! However, life intervened and I ended up working in the finance industry as a professional trustee, which I love – but I was looking for a creative outlet as well. I started doing writing courses and jotting down story ideas and odd scenes here and there. The study drawers were overflowing with notebooks filled with scribblings, and my computer held various story outlines.

In the new year of 2012, I had a massive clear out of those study drawers. Out came all the writing and notes I’d gathered over the years and I thought “Get serious about this once and for all – otherwise you’ll never do it”. So, I did. I sorted through the story ideas and realised I had rough outlines for eight novels and had already written between 20,000 to 50,000 words on three of them. One of them became my debut novel, Blood In The Sand.

A very dear friend was ill and in the UK for a while; happily, she has is now back home and all is well. I promised to finish one of my stories for her. She has always loved a murder mystery and chose what became Blood In The Sand.

People ask me why I write in multiple genres, and the simple answer would be because I can. I love the freedom of being able to tell different types of stories and not being forced into genre-specific pigeon-holes.

I try and get up at 6 am and get in a few hours writing before I starting work at the day-job. Later, I write for a while at the kitchen table, usually whilst dinner is cooking. Depending what stage I am at in the writing process I try and stop writing after dinner, so that my husband and I can have the evening together. However, if I am on a deadline I just keep going.

I am one-third of The Blonde Plotters and you can learn more about us elsewhere on this site.