The Personal Shopper

Carmen Reid

Carmen Reid was our Guest Editor in February 2011 - click here - to see the books that inspired her writing.

Carmen Reid was born and brought up in a chilly and windy corner of Scotland in the depths of the countryside.
 
This may explain her lifelong phobia of cows and abiding interest in cities, department stores, books, the cinema and newspapers.

Her parents still live on the organic farm she grew up on and she goes back regularly to eat the alarmingly healthy home-grown meals which probably turned her into a 6" lass.

She spent four teenage years at a girls' boarding school in Edinburgh (yes, just like the one in Secrets at St Jude's!) where she read her way through the school library. Favourite subjects: English, German, French and Spanish.

After school, she went to study English Literature at University College, London, though her fashion sense will remain "Edinburgh-with-an-edge" forever.

Being a student in London was fantastic - she even paid a few bills with modelling jobs. After uni, she went back to Scotland to work as a local newspaper reporter: a brilliant job for anyone planning a career as an author.

London kept calling and she was soon back working for news agencies then a national tabloid. She has interviewed many famous (and often unwilling) people but was especially dazzled by Hugh Grant (even better looking in real life!), Rupert Everett and Elle Macpherson.

Knowing deep down that she was supposed to be an author not a journo, she left her day job to have a baby and write her first novel. (Hey, and just a few sleepless, penniless years later it was published!)

Although there is a corner of her heart that will always belong to London (and she still knows all the streets like a cabbie) Carmen now lives in Glasgow, Scotland, with her husband, Thomas, her two lovely children, Jimmy the Jack Russell and the (now sadly) two goldfish. She writes full-time and is aiming to have four new books out in 2011.

Fortunately her hobbies include laundry, cooking, cleaning, arguing about whose turn it is to walk the dog, cleaning the fish tank, doing the school run... and so on.