"I mean, it really is like Cinderella." In a mixture of awe and wonder, that's the way Mariah Carey describes her career. It really does seem as if she's the heroine of a fairy tale. In a matter of a few quick years she's gone from a poor girl raised alone by her divorced mother on Long Island, New York, to one of the world's leading pop divas. Her story is both inspiring and inspirational. Her four albums have sold a total of over sixteen million copies in this country alone. Her first five singles all reached Number One on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, a feat never managed before by anyone-not event the Beatles or Elvis Presley. Among the many awards she's received are two Grammys. And, as if all that weren't quite enough, she married the man who discovered her, Tommy Mottola, the head of the company for which she records.
I'm the author of the Richard Nottingham books, historical mysteries set in Leeds in the 1730s and featuring Richard Nottingham, the Constable of the city, and his deputy, John Sedgwick. The books are about more than murder. They're about the people of Leeds and the way life was - which mean full of grinding poverty for all but the wealthy. They're also about families, Nottingham and his and Sedgwick, and the way relationships grow and change, as well as the politics, when there was one law for the rich, and another, much more brutal, for everyone else.
Why Leeds? It's where I was born and raised, and that puts a place in your bones. You know it the way you can never quite know anywhere else...
In addition to this I'm also a music journalist, reviewing for magazines and online outlets, something I've been doing since the mid 1990s, specializing these days in world and roots music.
