Heidi Edmundson grew up close to the sea surrounded by the legends of Northern Ireland’s spectacular Causeway Coast. As a child she lived in a guesthouse which creaked and groaned every winter with the gales coming off the Atlantic. All of this fuelled her vivid imagination. She was an avid reader, particularly myths and fairy tales. She also developed a love of detective stories especially Nancy Drew. This continued into adolescence when, one summer, she discovered a box full of Agatha Christie books with the original fontana covers. Her love of reading became a love of writing and she wanted to be a writer when she grew up.

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Heidi studied medicine in Dundee, Scotland and has worked as a doctor since 1994, predominantly for the NHS. She currently lives in London where she has been a consultant in Emergency Medicine for over fifteen years.  However, she never forgot her love of writing and started to attend a weekly writing group about ten years ago.

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Initially she only wrote for fun and did not intend to write anything for others to read. However, when the COVID pandemic began to take hold in Britain in March 2020 she was in Essaouira, Morocco on a creative writing holiday. During this time Morocco shut its borders, and she spent an anxious few days getting back to the UK. There she discovered that having a writing practice helped her manage the stressful situation.

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She continued to write daily when she got home to cope with the pressure of being a senior doctor working through the pandemic. She originally planned to only write a short story but surprised herself by discovering that she had a lot more to say and she enjoyed creating a crime to solve as much as reading about one.

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Her love of creativity has also influenced her work in the NHS. She is passionate about building positive workplace cultures and has developed a number of initiatives using fun and creativity to facilitate staff wellbeing.