It’s publication day! Welcome A Polar Night’s Tale to the world!

It’s true! You can now buy my first book, A Polar Night’s Tale and you can do it right here! Please do, then come back and I’ll finish telling you all about it!

**BUY A POLAR NIGHT’S TALE IN PAPERBACK HERE AND AS AN EBOOK HERE!!**

Me, next to my Iceland geological map, holding up my book, A Polar Night's Tale which has its title in big white letters over a picture of a mountain on a blue day in Norway.

Alright, that’s done. So, the story of A Polar Night’s Tale starts back in 2015 when ITV showed a three-part travel series starring the ubiquitous Alexander Armstrong travelling around the Arctic. It was fine. I watched it. I liked it. But the series also came with a tie-in book which I also read. But as I read it, read about him travelling up the Nordic peninsula and heading west across the Arctic Circle, I began to think… I’ve done this journey. But I did on my own, without funding from a TV production company and without a team of producers, planners and fixers and if he can get a book out of it, so can I. So there and then – in row E of the Hammersmith Apollo waiting for the show to start – I began to write my own book.

Me in Rovaniemi, at a line painted on the ground declaring this to be the Arctic Circle. I'm wearing a purple jacket, a red and black stripy hat and my hair is chestnut and in its usual plaits.

That book poured out of me like it was just waiting for me to take the lid off the bottle. Starting in Helsinki, the misadventures on the way to the north of Finland, snowshoeing in Sweden, adventures in Tromsø, looking for the Northern Lights on Svalbard and luxuriating in hot water in Iceland while my hair froze in the cold air, it just crackled straight out of my fingers and onto the page. I had every edition printed in book form, discovering that was easier than trying to edit a digital document or printing that many pages on a home printer, I scribbled all over them in pink and orange ink, I changed title at least twice and by 2017, I had a book in my hand ready to be seen by the world. So I put it out into the world.

A very early edition, printed as a book because it's easier to scribble all over, which I have done, in bright pink pen.

And it wasn’t all that well received. The person at work who’d originally put the idea into my head by saying “You should write a book!” after reading the travel blogs/postcards from the road I used to write when I was away never said a word about it. Most people at work – and that was two different companies at the time – bought copies and no one ever mentioned it. And when I’d sold eleven copies, at least one of which was to myself, I gave up on it. It’s a good book; I could feel that and I had the validation of my good friend Tom and his mum but I guess I’d expected a little more.

But now, nearly a decade on, it’s time to try again. One of my goals for 2026 was to get publishing and make a bit of noise and start to tentatively refer to myself as “an indie author” out loud rather than just in my head. Add another string to my bow. So I’m launching it not only with a blog post but with Instagram posts on the subject all week and however much I’m quivering inside at the idea of doing it, I’m going to keep saying “I wrote a book, I think it’s pretty good and I want you to buy it” (well, fake it ’til you make it, right? And it is a good book!)

All dressed up for climbing on a glacier striped with volcanic ash, brandishing a climbing axe.

Because we have to be more transparent these days, especially since the Salt Path controversy: full disclosure. Although I’ve written this as a journey, the reality is that it knits together eight trips I took over five and a bit years. Everything happened, just not necessarily in that order. But that’s the point of a narrative – it would be more truthful to write it chronologically but it makes a better story to do geographically!

Me in a padded snowsuit kneeling on the floor playing with a very fluffy sled dog lying with his belly up for cuddles.

A word on why I chose to publish through Lulu rather than through Amazon/Kindle Direct Publishing. KDP would put it in front of more eyes, yes. But, quite frankly, I didn’t get on with their cover creation and Amazon leaves a little bit of a nasty taste in my mouth and I also get a few more pennies through Lulu. I switched on global distribution in 2017 which let it be sold through other bookshops and Amazon and I remember getting a statement saying I’d sold two copies on Amazon US and earned two British pennies from it. Two pence. So it’s staying on Lulu. It’s worth a little inconvenience to my potential audience to actually get a couple of pounds from each copy. For full transparency, I make £1.80 per ebook and £3.80 per paperback. It’s not going to be making me rich anytime soon but if you all buy a copy, maybe I’ll have enough pocket money to cover my own copy.

Me standing by the edge of a fjord in Norway at the dead of night. If you look closely, you can make out a faint line of Northern Lights over the lake.

Also, when I published it in 2017, I didn’t bother creating an ebook version but this time I have. I think self-publishing sells better through ebooks and an ebook can be a lot cheaper than a physical book and it just seemed silly not to bother, so ebook available here (I know I said that right at the beginning but this is self-promotion; no harm in reminding you while you’re thinking about ebooks!). Another reason I like publishing through Lulu is that right since the tiny, tiny first draft that I printed in 2016, these books have existed in pocketbook format which may not be standard but I like them and it makes them a lovely travel-friendly size.

So if you feel like reading about my adventures while you’re on your own adventures, or you’d just like to help me feel like this launch isn’t quite as much of a dismal failure as the attempt in 2017 was, please go and buy A Polar Night’s Tale – out now in paperback and ebook!