Alis  grew up on a dairy farm in Ceredigion. Her inner introvert thought it would be a good idea to become a shepherd and, frankly, if she had she might have been published sooner.

As it was, three years reading English at Oxford revealed an extrovert streak and a social conscience and she has spent the subsequent three decades variously working in a burger restaurant, bringing up two sons, working with homeless people, and – having trained as a speech and langauge therapist – helping teachers and families to understand their autistic children. And writing. Always. Nonfiction (autism related), plays (commissioned for production in heritage locations) and, of course, novels.

Initially fascinated by the medieval period, Alis began her crime and mystery career at Pan Macmillan with Testament, a novel set in a fictitious medieval university city. Part of Testament’s narrative takes place in the fourteenth century and part in the twenty-first which taught Alis that she is far more passionate about writing historical fiction than contemporary.

So she fast-forwarded four centuries from fourteenth South East England to nineteenth century West Wales to write a book based on Wales’s best kept historical secret: the Rebecca Riots. And then she fell in love – both with nineteenth century west Wales and her characters – and the result is the Teifi Valley Coroner crime series featuring visually impaired investigator, Harry Probert-Lloyd, and his chippy assistant, John Davies.

She moved out of west Wales for her second series, though she took somebody from the area with her. The Oxford Mysteries which begin with A Bitter Remedy, feature Llangranog girl Rhiannon ‘Non’ Vaughan, a quirky, passionate, nonconforming young woman who goes to Oxford to take advantage of the lectures now becoming open to women and finds herself the victim of culture shock. As a way of fighting back, she inserts herself into the investigation of a murder alongside her friend and Jesus College don, Basil Rice, and this begins a partnership with sees them both confronting the seamier side of Oxford life, both town and gown. The third in the series, The Hunters Club will be published in October 2025 and is available to preorder from both Bookshop.org and Amazon, as well as all independent bookshops. (Links on The Oxford Mysteries tab, above)

Now living with her partner on the Welsh/English border, Alis is a Welsh speaker, collects rucksacks and can’t resist an interesting fact.

Fun fact: In 1977, Alis was the winner of the under 16s stockjudging competition at the Cardiganshire Federation of Young Farmers Rally. She loves cows…