Piggins                                                    

'Piggin' is a collection of ornaments, mugs, calendars, jigsaws, and lots of other cool things. They are designed by a chap called David Corbridge and Piggins make up part of Collectable World Studios Ltd. The visitors centre is now in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent (Staffordshire), so it's a bit of a trek for most people!

I can't remember when I got into pigs, I started by buying a calendar I think, and it's grown from there. I like most pig related objects and would love a real one but it's not possible at the moment  (but one day it will!!).

Hopefully I will be putting pictures on here soon, including one of the birthday cake I got for my  21st, a pig of course!

Books

My favourite authors are:

Jeffrey Deaver, Richard Laymon, Dean Koontz, Kathy Reichs, Manda Scott, Patricia Cornwell

Jeffrey Deaver  - "Deaver wrote his first book — which consisted of two entire chapters — when he was eleven, and he's been writing ever since. An award-winning poet and journalist, he has also written and performed his own songs around the country. After receiving a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Missouri, Deaver worked as a magazine writer, then, to gain the background needed to become a legal correspondent for The New York Times or Wall Street Journal, he enrolled at Fordham Law School. After graduation he decided to practice law for a time and worked for several years as an attorney for a large Wall Street firm. It was during his long commute to and from the office that he began writing the type of fiction he enjoyed reading: suspense novels. In 1990 he started to write full time". (Biography taken from Jeffrey Deaver's official website).

Titles to date:

Richard Laymon - A biography is available here

Titles to date:

Wrote many more stories than this list. There's a very good site that lists all of his work. Web link

Dean Koontz - "Dean Koontz was born and raised in Pennsylvania. He graduated from Shippensburg State College (now Shippensburg University), and his first job after graduation was with the Appalachian Poverty Program, where he was expected to counsel and tutor underprivileged children on a one-to-one basis. His first day on the job, he discovered that the previous occupier of his position had been beaten up by the very kids he had been trying to help and had landed in the hospital for several weeks. The following year was filled with challenge but also tension, and Koontz was more highly motivated than ever to build a career as a writer. He wrote nights and weekends, which he continued to do after leaving the poverty program and going to work as an English teacher in a suburban school district outside Harrisburg. After a year and a half in that position, his wife, Gerda, made him an offer he couldn't refuse: "I'll support you for five years," she said, "and if you can't make it as a writer in that time, you'll never make it." By the end of those five years, Gerda had quit her job to run the business end of her husband's writing career. Dean and Gerda Koontz along with their dog, Trixie, live in southern California". (Biography taken from Dean Koontz' official website).

Titles to date:

As Dean Koontz writes in his own name and many others, it's easier to link to an existing site, listing his work here

Kathy Reichs - "Dr Kathleen Reichs is forensic anthropologist for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, State of North Carolina, and for the laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale for the province of Quebec. She is one of only fifty forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology and is on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. A professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dr Reichs is a native of Chicago, where she received her ph.D. at Northwestern. She now divides her time between Charlotte and Montreal and is a frequent expert witness in criminal trials". (Biography taken from Kathy Reichs' official website).   

Titles to date: 

Déjà Dead (1997)

Death Du Jour (1999)

Deadly Décisions (2000) 

Fatal Voyage (2001)

Grave Secrets (2002)

Bare Bones (2003)

Manda Scott - "Manda Scott spent the first decade of her professional life as a vet, moving from surgery to anaesthesia, to equine neonatal intensive care and back again. Then her first thriller, 'Hen's Teeth' (The Women's Press) was short listed for the Orange prize after which she discovered that writing could be just as rewarding as veterinary medicine, rarely involved shooting anything she really cared about and never required her to make life and death decisions at four o'clock in the morning. So now she now writes (almost) full time and spends the moments between climbing rocks and running the lurchers" (Biography taken from Manda Scott's official website).

Titles to date:

Hens Teeth (1996)

Night Mares (1998)

Stronger than Death (1999)

No Good Deed (2001)
Boudica: Dreaming the Eagle (2003)

Patricia Cornwell - "It is important to me to live in the world I write about," says Patricia Cornwell. "If I want a character to do or know something, I want to do or know the same thing." The award-winning former crime reporter for the Charlotte Observer spent six years working for the Virginia Chief Medical Examiner's Office and as a volunteer police officer before she wrote her first Dr. Kay Scarpetta novel, Postmortem. It received outstanding international acclaim and made her the only author ever to win five major mystery awards in a single year on both sides of the Atlantic for a first novel. Eleven subsequent Scarpetta novels became international bestsellers, together with Food to Die For and Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper- Case Closed. She is a graduate of Davidson College in North Carolina and she is also the author of three police procedural novels and A Time for Remembering, the biography of Ruth Graham, wife of the evangelist. She supports several institutions that are concerned with forensic research, victims' support, and animal rescue. (Taken from Patricia Cornwell's official website).

Titles to date: