I am a journalist: four words that sum up a working life of immense pleasure and variety onnewspapers and magazines in places as far-flung as the Westcountry, East Anglia, the South of England and the Far East. In recent years I have worked in a freelance capacity as a writer, editorial consultant and journalist. Happily, I can add ‘copy editor’ to that list.

Since 2000 I have written a weekly column under the name of Sally Hill, which takes a wry look at the complexities of life and my little universe. It has appeared in various publications and nowadays has a loyal following in the Blackmore Vale Magazine series (including the Fosse Way Magazine and Stour & Avon Magazine) which is distributed throughout Dorset, Somerset and parts of Wiltshire and Hampshire.

In May 2007 I took on the duties of copy editor for White Ladder Press, squeezing the work into small gaps whenever they appear in my very busy days (and even nights). It is wonderfully interesting work, turning a raw manuscript into something clean, tidy, free of factual and grammatical errors and ready for the printer. I enjoy it even more than I had imagined I would when I threw my hat into the ring for the job.

Having relinquished the editorship of View, the regional lifestyle magazine (five years as a launch editor was probably something of a publishing industry record), I hope to find more copy editing work as it not only fits in with my travelling life but plays to my strengths as a grammar and punctuation pedant and suits my fierce resolution that everything should be presented ‘just so’. Not for nothing did I labour for ten years as the tetchy, perfectionist and maddeningly intolerant chief sub-editor of a newspaper series.

By the time my third book, How to Split Up and Stay in One Piece, was published (April 2008) I had declined offers to write two further titles. Flattering, perhaps, and tempting, certainly, but I just couldn’t wait to enjoy a little time out from book-writing. It does take a toll, and three books in two years, alongside editing a monthly magazine and all the other freelance editing and writing, not to mention trying to be a domestic goddess in homes in two countries, was beginning to make me feel that life was getting a bit serious. Time to back-pedal a little, therefore, and so a fourth book, if there is to be one, must wait.

Meanwhile, I am tinkering around the edges of a novel. As a keen environmentalist and conservationist, however, I don’t imagine any trees will ever be felled in its cause. The fact it would never be published, should the beast ever be completed, is my generous contribution to the future of the planet. That and my diligent emptying and recycling of wine bottles, of course.

With my husband, David, a former regional newspaper editor now enjoying life as a freelance editor, writer and columnist, I divide my time between our home in a Dorset market town, a little farmhouse in rural Le Marche in central Italy, and an apartment by the sea in Puglia, southern Italy, which we let on a commercial basis and which we hope, one day, will prove to have been such a great investment that it provides us with a pension. www.casalimoneitaly.co.uk

Whether I am in England or Italy, I walk a lot, run a bit, read far too much, cook and garden just about enough and very much enjoy a broad range of music and friends.

I have a daughter, Claudia, and son, Tom, who both live and work in London.