Veronica Cossanteli

Once upon a time, Veronica dreamt of being a palaeontologist. When it dawned on her that palaeontology had more to do with science than with keeping imaginary pet dinosaurs, she changed her mind and reverted to her other ambition: being a writer.

Sent to boarding school at eleven, horribly homesick, she took refuge in her scribbled stories. The tragic tale of a cave boy and his woolly rhinoceros elicited her first rejection slip at the age of thirteen.

Since then, Veronica has worked in a boarding kennels, a hotel, a very expensive chocolate shop and a junior school. She spent years wrestling with an epic novel about the Trojan War before realising that adult fiction was not where her heart lay. After a course on writing for children at City Lit, she was lucky enough to have an extract selected for SCWBI’s 2012 Undiscovered Voices Anthology. She now lives with assorted animals in Wiltshire, not far from Stonehenge, where there are otters in the chalk streams and plenty of prehistoric ghosts.