About Gill Mather
I was a practising solicitor for several decades and at various times worked in most of the basic areas covered by general practice in England (crime, family, employment, civil litigation, wills, probate and property). I ran a small solicitor’s practice from my home near Colchester until 2020. I’m a member of several writers’ groups in Essex and Suffolk.
My love of reading led to writing informally on and off during the 1990s and 2000s but I thought the ‘day job’ didn’t allow time for me to write more seriously. In about 2013 I made a firm decision to find the time and started work on a romantic/crime novel set in a solicitors’ practice, ‘The Ardent Intern’. This turned into 5 novels in the same series, Colchester Law World charting the lives of different characters over about 10 years.
‘As The Clock Struck Ten’ followed, a novel involving a family’s difficulties about sexual boundaries whose lives take an unpleasant turn when a character decides to upset everything.
The next novel, ‘The Unreliable Placebo‘ is purely humorous and doesn’t involve crime. Instead it documents the path of a separated woman trying to sort out her life.
My novel ‘Class of ’97’, is a mystery with several powerful themes: obsession, nature –v- nurture, the human condition and how past events can spectacularly affect the present. I can guarantee that you won’t be able to predict the outcome of the past events or the ultimate position in which the main characters are left.
‘As The Clock Struck Ten‘, ‘The Unreliable Placebo‘ and ‘Class of ’97’ are now available as paperbacks. They can be obtained from the Amazon website.
My cosy crime series, The Roz Benedict Detective Novellas, features a Detective Inspector, Roz Benedict, who, after leaving the force, starts a detective agency with her friend and neighbour, Kate. The first novella in the series is called ‘Compromised’. All the books in the series are available on Amazon as ebooks and paperbacks and also under Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited scheme.
Having never seriously written historical fiction, in 2022 I decided to write a novel based on ‘Pride & Prejudice’, my favourite Jane Austen book. I wanted to make it as authentic as possible both regarding the Georgian/Regency period and the content of ‘Pride & Prejudice’, never realising quite how much research would be involved. My lifetime job as a solicitor helped with the plot. The result was a ‘Pride & Prejudice’ prequel entitled ‘Intrigue At Longbourn’. I was ready to publish it in June 2023, by which time I had almost finished a sequel ‘Menace At Pemberley’ which I published in July 2023 and which takes up the story of Lizzy and Darcy immediately after they are married.
It has been an immense pleasure and honour to be able to work with such an outstanding novel as ‘Pride & Prejudice’ which provides endless strings to develop into new plots and add a few new characters.
A further sequel, ‘Easter At Netherfield: Darcy’s Dice With Fate’, is currently in progress and should be published about the end of 2023/beginning of 2024. I quite frequently blog and post about the research I’ve done and continue to do, mainly on various Facebook groups connected with Jane Austen/‘Pride and Prejudice’ and these blogs also appear here in my website.
The series name of the ‘Pride & Prejudice’ derived novels is The Elizabeth Bennet Series and all the novels are available on Amazon as ebooks and paperbacks and also under Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited scheme.
I live in North Essex and have two grown up sons. The writers’ group Write Now! based near Bury St. Edmunds has proved so helpful over the years in getting me to the point where I can accept myself as an author, and not just someone who scribbles secretly in their spare time under cover of darkness. Being a solicitor has proved useful in coming up with ideas and backgrounds, but the main source of my work is the imagination, a place which knows no bounds and offers endless unexpected scenes, characters and settings. There’s no other place in the Universe like it!
‘I was not expecting the twists it took in the storyline. A pleasant surprise in a read that kept me engaged in the story. And then- an ending that took another curve that caught me off guard also. A great read I would certainly recommend.’