How I Got Here

You might call me an accidental writer. As a kid and a teen I liked to write, but I LOVED to read. It never occurred to me that an insignificant girl from small-town Ontario could become a writer. Writers were all extremely famous, brilliant and sophisticated, and I was pretty sure they all lived in England.

So I followed my love of books into the study of stories and literature at university and from there trained as an editor at a publishing company. I figured at least I’d still get to work with words, prose and stories. But it seemed that the more information I read for the books I was editing, the more interested I became in science and history — two subjects I had passionately disliked in school. Suddenly, everything was fascinating and I felt driven to share it.

For a number of years, I wrote non-fiction books. My very first one, however, involved a bit of a storyline. That taste of writing a fictional element stayed with me like a stubborn case of poison ivy demanding to be scratched. Finally, ten years (and many, many writing classes, seminars, workshops and retreats, and much soul-searching) later, I’ve published my first novel. I still have huge amounts to learn, but I hope my first novel is just one of others to come.