Rosalie Warren

About me

I live in Coventry with my partner, Paul, and between us we have four grown-up children. I was born in West Yorkshire but spent most of my adult life so far in Scotland, living in Edinburgh for 22 years and Dundee for a further three.

I have an MA in Natural Sciences and Education from Cambridge (New Hall), an MSc in Artificial Intelligence from Edinburgh and a PhD, also from Edinburgh, in Cognitive Science. I've done a fair number of jobs in my time, including teaching and lecturing a variety of subjects at different levels. For instance, I have taught maths and chemistry to marine engineers, hairdressing science to trainee hair-stylists, maths and English as a home tutor and linguistics, computing and artificial intelligence to university students. I’ve also helped supervise a number of PhDs.

I’m fascinated by the way the human mind works, especially the way we create and process language, what happens when we sleep and how our memories operate (or sometimes don’t).

In spite of my training I'm less enamoured by computers, though I accept that they are a very useful tool. One way of understanding the human mind is to try to program a computer to do the kind of things we do. An incredibly challenging but very interesting enterprise. The more you do it, the greater your respect for the human brain (and indeed those of other species).

My alter-ego and her publications can be found here.

During periods of low activity on the more academic front I have run my own business as a gardener and pursued my dream to become a published writer.

I’ve been writing as long as I can remember. I completed my first novel at 15 but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I wrote it in red biro, which had completely faded after 20 years. No great loss to the world of literature, I suspect. But I had fun and it got me through a boring 6-week holiday from school. I wrote another novel in my twenties, during brief periods when my children were simultaneously asleep. I still have that one (and the publishers’ rejection letters) but can barely bring myself to look at it. Let’s say it was a learning experience.

In August 2006 I took early retirement from my post as university lecturer to – among other things – follow my writing dream. Since then I’ve been working hard – I've produced a number of short stories, some of which have been shortlisted in competitions. I’ve also, very recently, started writing poetry. And I have written two novels, temporarily put aside a third and am working on a fourth.

Through being shortlisted in the Earlyworks Press Science Fiction Challenge I was fortunate to meet Kay Green and the rest of the Earlyworks Press Writers’ Club, who have given me lots of much-needed encouragement and advice. A great bunch of people.