Laurette was born in the UK, near Brontëland. Graduating from the University of Leicester with a degree in English, she taught in the USA, UK and France, where she now lives. Aged seven, her forays into fiction writing reveal her literary influences and distinctive style. ‘The Phantom Ghost Girl of Raven Castle’ begins: ‘‘Vicky Dare, the girl detective and her big Alsatian, Rex...”, then stops. ‘The Ruined Cottage’ is longer (“...it was a favourite haunt of mine and I never grew tired of it.”) In ‘The adventures of Carlotta’ “...she dashed to the door her face white with horror” while, surprisingly, in ‘The Secret at the Ball’ “...a secret compartment was revealed! There glittering lay the Lane jewels!” (She is a hoarder, incapable of parting with childhood notebooks.) Aged 10 she developed a passion for the theatre, and throughout her career wrote plays for students. ‘A Midsummer’s Nightmare’, where Shakespeare’s lovers get into time warps in the wood, meeting Dracula and Little Red Riding Hood, was a tricky favourite. Everyone wanted to play Dracula. She had to wield authority. (Those with pointed canines had an advantage).Later, unable to find a textbook suitable for adult ESL students, she wrote one for OUP. Beguiled by a work of French literary criticism about American writers in Paris, she translated it. (Hoarder, bossy, dilettante.) In 2014 the ghosts of Vicky Dare and Carlotta nudged her into a return to fiction. ‘Biarritz Passion, French Summer Novel#1’ was inspired by the French Basque country and its magic. (Go see!) An Amazon fan, she attempted self-publishing. After wrestling with formatting rules and sweating during the on-line tax interview, she finally hit the ‘submit’ button thus proving that even non-techies can do it. Book #2 in the series, ‘Hot Basque’, followed in 2015, but Book #3 somehow morphed into a Prequel: ‘The Passage of Desire’, chosen as one of the ‘Top Twenty Reads 2017’ by areadersreview blog. ‘Villa Julia’, #3 and last of the French Summer Series, is planned for release in autumn 2018.