R. L. Royle

R. L. Royle lives in the Yorkshire valley of Calderdale, where everything is uphill both ways. She has a patient husband, two eye-rolling teenagers and a dog that looks like a lamb.

Royle had two fiction novels published when she was far too young to have anything published (you know how you wrote something deep and edgy when you were 17? Yeah, that, but public) and following that early dip into the industry, she became a freelance writer - using her newly married name, because she was a grown-up now - and she did that quite happily for a decade or so, while raising the nippers.

Although she still writes for the Happy News under her married name, a few years ago R. L. Royle quit the bulk of her freelancing gigs to work at the local high school because she had a mid-life crisis. She’s still there now, because it turns out teenagers can be very fun to work with*: not only does she get to keep up with the lingo, which gives her aura, but also, because she’s no longer writing for other people at a laptop all day, she’s able to take up writing fiction again without bursting into tears.

*not always