About
Author photo: © James English
Meet Claire
Claire worked in hotel and catering, and for a wide range of companies in the UK, US and Hong Kong. Inspired by her father’s passion for stories, she is now a full-time writer.
She has completed four writing courses with Curtis Brown (5 months) and is always hungry for more! Her novels owe much to her years as a member of the Albuquerque Police Citizen’s Academy where her main focus was the impact of violence towards women.
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Active in Women in Philanthropy and empowering women and children. Albuquerque Citizens' Police Academy volunteer (Stand True for Blue) and News Reporter.
Claire now lives in Utah with her husband and son, and her cat, Edward.
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Awards:
New Mexico/Arizona Book Award for The Detective Temeke Crime Series
Page Turner Writing Award for No Good Lie
Award-Winning Finalist in the Fiction: Thriller/Adventure category of the 2019 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book Fest for Into The Silent Sea.
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Claire also belongs to the following writing organizations:
Sisters in Crime | International Thriller Writers (ITW) | Alliance of Independent Authors | Author’s Guild of America | Society of Authors
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On a personal note:
Reading has been a huge part of my life since childhood. The school library was always my safe place, where I could be found reading Hiawatha and Thomas Hardy when I should have been in class. My inspiration? My father, Philip Stibbe, pupil and friend of CS Lewis, who wrote Return Via Rangoon about his experiences as a platoon commander and subsequent capture in Rangoon by the Japanese. This was republished by Pen and Sword to commemorate the 80th Anniversary of the first Chindit expedition.
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Dad encouraged me to write from an early age. School holidays were spent on a picnic rug listening to him reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and writing family plays, which we performed, rather badly, to unsuspecting visitors. Not only was Dad a school master at Bradfield College, but he also stage directed the 1949 Greek Play Agamemnon, published in Television News by the BBC and where Miss Agatha Christie was one of the distinguished guests.
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My mother was an SRN nurse at Great Ormond Street hospital during the war. She instilled in me a strict work ethic, the will to persevere and to never give up hope. With her own set of remarkable friends, our house was full of actors, producers and writers, and where I was often included in play readings.
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I started my career in hotel and training at the Baytree Hotel in Burford, graduating to the Lygon Arms in Broadway. After working at a college in Cambridge, a Hong Kong marine consultancy was next on the map, including several years working in London for a Saudi Prince and two headhunting firms. I ended up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I lived and worked for 27 years.
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In 2008, I wrote a series set in the 18th Dynasty around a pharaoh and his beloved Commander. After graduating from the Albuquerque Citizen's Police Academy, came the Detective Temeke crime series, the first of which is my bestselling book to date.
After two psychological thrillers, I am now writing a three-book thriller series, the first of which, Play Him, Play Her, has been my all-time favourite to write.