There is more than one author with this name in the database I was born in London, moving to Devon in 1994 (big mistake) then Leeds in August 2009. I divorced my fourth husband in 2005 and have been on my own ever since. At the age of thirty five, I’d done no writing since leaving school, apart from the odd letter (this was before the advent of emails!). It was my third husband, Gareth, who encouraged me to start a Writing School correspondence course. For one of the tasks I had to write an article. I wrote about the glass catfish shown in the photo. The tutor said it was good, so I sent it off and it was accepted by Aquarist and Pondkeeper. They bought the next one I sent them too, and the next. Soon I was writing for several UK magazines as well as Aquarium Fish (USA) and South African Fishkeeping. Gareth also persuaded me to study for a degree. With his support, I signed up to the Open University, gaining a B.Sc in biology and Psychology. Sadly, Gareth died in 1997 at the age of 46. When that happened, I didn’t want to write about, or even keep, tropical fish anymore, so I ran down my tanks and began to switch over to fiction. Since then I have sold hundreds of stories to various magazines including My Weekly, Take a Break, Woman’s Weekly, Yours, Woman, Best, Chat, Fiction Feast, The Weekly News and The People’s Friend. Short Story Success In 2008 I was given a column in Writers Forum, a great magazine for writers of all levels. The column is called SHORT STORY SUCCESS. Writing fiction kept me busy until 2010 when a long running problem with my mother finally exploded. Unable to write uplifting fiction when I’m depressed I switched back to non–fiction for a while, producing three guides for writers and an autobiography. In 2011, I started giving talks to groups and running the odd workshop but nothing I did made me feel any better and I sank into a deep and dark depression. If you want to know the gory details, it’s all on my blog (http://akacatherinehoward.blogspot.com). Luckily I’d already decided to go to Swanwick for the first time, because going there literally saved my life. They asked me to run a workshop on fillers – they’re those tiny pieces of writing, often with photos, that appear in most magazines including tips, readers’ letters, anecdotes, nostalgia, jokes and so on. The workshop was so well received I was asked to teach the short story course in 2012. Ever since then, I’ve been working through my problems. I’m delighted to say that I now feel much happier and more positive than I have ever done. So much so that when I went to the NAWG Festival I managed to do something I’d never dared to do before – I approached a publisher and pitched the idea for a book. The man was Chris Day of Filament Publishing and the book, THE WRITER’S TREASURY OF IDEAS is OUT NOW. These days I write all kinds of different things – non–fiction books, fillers, short stories, my column, as well as working on various novels. I also teach, give talks on various subjects and organise and judge short story competitions.