About the Author

Hello, lovely readers! I have to come clean and admit that I’m an undercover author. T H Rivers is a pen name and I rather scarily wear a mask as my public persona instead of showing my face for reasons that will become obvious once you start reading the novels as they’re loosely based on my own experiences. 

The good news is, I’m not writing from a prison cell and I’m not on the run from the police. But I do have a stalker, a secret past lover and close family members who all feature vividly in the books and none of them would relish the idea of me revealing who I am. Well, except my stalker of course, who’s still out there waiting for me to pop my head above the parapet…

And did I mention it’s saucy? Yup, I don’t hold back in that department because I began writing in a stream of consciousness which rampaged right on through the sex scenes without me being able to rein it in. (Alright, I enjoyed it to be honest, and you might too.)  

Despite my once paralyzing fear of criticism, I’m going ahead and publishing because a) with all the competition out there I’m fairly confident no-one will actually read it, and b) I wish I’d read a fun, candid and ultimately uplifting series like this when I was going through the highs and lows of my past life unaware that I was a flag-flying member of the Borderline Personality Disorder tribe. (Hi, guys!) 

I began writing my story after reaching a catastrophic rock-bottom moment. As I gently picked up the pieces, it seemed a good idea to get what had gone wrong down on paper as a cathartic exercise. The idea was that humour would be my best medicine when exploring the workings of a seriously mixed up mind – mine. And as it turned out, it was. 

Having spent a good deal of my childhood banished to my room, not because I was naughty but because Daddy believed children should be neither seen nor heard, I did a lot of dreaming. And since I wasn’t allowed to read books I told stories to my dolly instead. Tilly. Hence my cunning pseudonym.

My writing career began when I was about eight years old, (cowboy adventures in the Wild West) and I kept happily composing through my teens (moving on to slave romances in ancient Rome.) My only audience was still Tilly the dolly. In my early twenties I met my ‘handsome prince’ and married him. He had a good old laugh at my attempts at writing, so I stopped.

After a middle age meltdown my search for a happy-ever-after took a nose-dive. That’s when I decided to sit down and weave the alarming events in what had, up until then, been a fairly unremarkable life, into a fictional setting. 

I discovered a lot about myself in the process. I realised that my parents had unintentionally screwed me up big time. Yup, it’s that old childhood trauma chestnut. Not that I blame them. Turns out they were pretty screwed up by their own childhoods. So was my husband. And let’s not get started on my mother-in-law…

I’d never heard of personality disorders ten years ago and if I had known I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to read about them. Fantasy all the way for me.

I’d spent my life in denial. I’d kept my ostrich head firmly buried in the sand. Until everything collapsed around my ears.

The more I wrote, the more I became interested in my sex addiction, love addiction, dog addiction – you name it – and started reading gripping novels about women like me who twisted themselves into pretzels to please others. But all these books, though meticulously researched and professionally written never quite rang true. It seemed to me that the authors didn’t know on a cellular level just how deeply fear can be embedded in the subconscious mind and lead us (well, me) to do things no normal person would consider.  

I didn’t set out to write a rom-com/murder mystery about a woman on a life-long quest for The One to complete her, but that’s how it’s turning out. Peering inside my own head has been a little disturbing at times but ultimately inspiring.

And so here it is. Step inside the quaint village of Churchford and the muddled life of Murderer Maddie Bale. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts, so sign up for my newsletter and get in touch with me. 

I should add that the names, setting and characters are fictional. But the emotions and some of the events are real. Feel free to ask me which ones.