CM Debell biography

After completing a degree in Theology, a six month trip to Australia ended up as a four year expedition around Australia, New Zealand and Asia. C.M. Debell has worked as a journalist since her return to the UK and now edits a successful trade publication.

"I was born in London in May 1978, the second of three children. My house was always full of books, of all types, and reading was a passion from a young age. I remember my mother reading The Hobbit to me and my older brother when we were little, and when a few years later I read the Lord of the Rings for the first time, I was hooked.

I have always been fascinated by books, and read anything I could get my hands on - the classics, historical fiction, adventure, fantasy, science fiction. I always wanted to write, and started countless projects over the years, but it wasn't until I left university that I started to write seriously. After completely a degree in Theology at Nottingham University, I travelled through Asia to Australia, and it was in Sydney that I began writing Silver Mage. I wrote it on borrowed laptops, in endless notebooks, everywhere I went for the next four years, carrying it from country to country on floppy disks.

When I returned to England in 2003 I took a job as a journalist on a trade magazine, and spent the next three years finishing the book at weekends and in the evenings. Rewriting and publishing it took another two, and holding the finished book in my hands is a wonderful feeling after so many years of work. I hope it will be one of many, and that one day full-time journalist will become full-time writer."