Profile: Alex Martin

About This Author

The Twisted Vine, Alex Martin's debut novel, is based on personal experience of picking grapes in the 1980s. Harvesting vines is like harvesting words - hard work but satisfying. Alex Martin grew up in Wiltshire and its rich and ancient tapestry informs a lot of her novels. These include Daffodils, the first book in The Katherine Wheel Series, which is set during the First World War. Katy is ambitious but as a working class girl is never going to get anywhere, despite causing a scandal in the attempt. She, like others in her sleepy village, gets drawn into the global conflict and finds independence and unlikely friendships as well as trauma but her biggest discovery is that love is the most important thing of all. The sequel, Peace Lily finds her returned to Cheadle with all the petty restrictions that a small village can impose but, being Katy, she fights her way through in the most surprising way. The third book in the series, Speedwell, takes Katy into the exciting era of the 1920's when motor cars raced their way into the modern age and she's at the forefront of that change. A fourth and possibly final book, Woodbine and Ivy, is currently in production and will take the next generation into the turmoil of World War Two. In between writing these Alex Martin has written another, quite different, story. Also set in Wiltshire but hundreds of years earlier during the English Civil War, The Rose Trail is a timeslip tale. Two women, once rivals, are tormented by the ghost of that unhappy event. The only way their present day lives can be restored is to bring peace to this restless spirit from the past. The paperback is available from FeedaRead. All Alex Martin's books are available as ebooks on Amazon and you can read about her writing exploits on her blog at www.intheplottingshed.com where she can mostly be found, scribbling or tapping away in her garden shed, indulging her passion for words, as the wind and rain lash at her little refuge.