How I Found the Idea for My First Novel, The Good Mother

How a dorm room view and new motherhood helped me uncover the story that would become my award-winning debut novel.

It was 1997. I was 18 and standing in my dorm room at Durham University when I looked out the window and saw it: a grey stone rooftop with iron bars. H.M. Prison Durham, I later learned.

Something about it stuck with me.

The history.

The weight.

The question: What stories have lived behind those walls?

I didn’t know it then, but that moment would stay with me for nearly two decades—until it became the seed of my award-winning novel, The Good Mother.

A Dorm Room, A Prison Window, And A Letter Unwritten…

That single view in 1997 led me to volunteer applications, a rejected prison pen pal program, and eventually a high-stakes writing competition. But it wasn’t until I became a mother that the story truly came together.

Here’s how it unfolded—and how I went from writing online content to winning a three-book deal as a debut novelist.

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