Sally is a Newbury girl through and through and was born in Wash Common. She moved with her family to Shaw in 1969 and has lived within the parish ever since. She was educated at the Winchcombe and Turnpike Schools and Newbury College, and can be found nowadays in the church office at St Mary's Shaw-cum-Donnington where she has worked as the Parish Administrator for many years.

Of her first novel ‘The Clearwater Diamond', Sally says:

I think I might be eligible for some sort of prize for the length of time it took me to write this book because I started it in 1977 when I was a student at Newbury College doing English Language at ‘O' Level. One of the homework assignments I was given was to write the opening page of a story, the page that would say ‘pick me up and buy me' to the person that was reading it in the bookshop, and having first been given the opening line, which was ‘She had no idea how long she had been sitting there...'  

I completed my work and I handed it in, and when it came back to me my tutor (whose name I forget in the mists of time unfortunately) asked to see me after the class, told me she'd loved it and suggested to me that I really should give writing a go. For many reasons my life took a different direction, but from time to time I wrote articles and things that seemed well enough received, and always in the back of my mind I had this nagging thought that I was missing an opportunity to take that advice. Now, after 30 years of beating about the bush, I am mightily proud to say I've finally done it, because this is, in reality, my completed homework assignment... all 410 pages of it...and I really hope she reads it one day!!