about me

January 2012: ALL EXPENSES PAID (Fact meets Fiction) is now only partly uploaded here.
To read the rest go to amazon.com or co.uk or .fr or .de
Available on kindle and paperback.

Brand new cover has arrived. Go see!
Thanks to simon-birch.co.uk
Well...seems authonomy doesn't want my new cover. Why won't it upload...? Ok, see it on Amazon!

Still writing, eating and sleeping. Sorry,not much time left for reading. It's all me, me, me ;-)

THANK YOU if you have backed either of my books. It is appreciated. You all helped me with my decision to self publish.

So, will you like either of my books? Here's a clue.

A friend once said. 'You write like Enid Blyton on speed.'
And my English teacher said. 'There is a fine line between genius and madness.'

You have been warned.

I was determined to be a writer ever since being asked to leave the Brownies for chalking on the benches! Had my first business at 19, married at 20, divorced at 30, ditched the 9-5 at 40 to work as a live-in carer, working in Europe, travelling to Australia and writing in between. Got a first in Media writing at 50, moved to France,where I recharge my batteries and write and eat and sleep. But still have to return to Blighty every 2 weeks to earn my rent, until I can write full time!

ALL EXPENSES PAID.
What some of you think of it so far...

Andyroo wrote:
Engaging, fun, unpredictable, fresh, original, silly, and just plain old enjoyable. Cracking idea and neatly executed. All I need is a deck chair and some sun and I'm sorted!

Freddie Omm:
brilliant pitch – sounds like it’ll be a fun read, and this soon proves right .


And if ALL EXPENSES PAID tickles your fancy, take a look at
MATURE, EDUCATED, HEALING HANDS, CAN TRAVEL.
Just freshly uploaded from my imagination!

In the meantime, I'm still passionate about my two screenplays.I've taken them down at the moment but please let me know if you want to read either of them.
Email me: helenducal@hotmail.com

I wrote KHAMAILEON for my dissertation in 2003. I started with the idea of something seemingly impossible and then worked back to discover how it could be done.
I thought about miscarriages of justice, false imprisonment, scientific evidence, whistleblowers, the power of money v justice and came up with : A maternity suit and even DNA could not help her. I was inspired by the case of Stanley Adams:Any woman duped into producing a son and heir: And a woman falsely accused of murdering her two sons. Since completing Khamaileon an American woman was told she was not the mother of her children. DNA said she wasn't. Fortunately the phenomenon of Chimera has become more widely known. To be one’s own twin. She had two sets of DNA!
SHELF LIFE first emerged as a comic strip, hence the graphic descriptions. I was presented with the idea couresty of my new mobile phone.It beeped: missed call. Date and time? 31.12.2048. 23.59.59. I kid you not. A missed call in the future, sender unknown! Of course, my expiry date! Then I thought, if I have one, so must everbody else. So just like DNA I decided it must already be within us, if only we knew where to look...
KHAMAILEON. SHELF LIFE. predictive fiction seems to be my genre.
Read on, enjoy and ponder, what’s next?

favourite books

Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
Therese Raquin by Emile Zola
The way I found her by Rose Tremain
Until I find you by John Irving.

Everything by Janet Evanovich, Kathy Reichs,Colette, Maggie Alderson,Paul Auster,Amelie Nothomb,Francoise Sagan,Maupassant,Alan Bennett,John Wyndham, Ray Bradbury,Dan Brown.

Almost everything by Stephen King, Val McDermid, Michael Crichton, John Grisham.

my websites

http://helenducal.wordpress.com     http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0053D5KNQ