Newsletter

Hi Everyone, In researching my novel-in-progress, The Fair Incognito, I hit a snag: were my main characters, Jean-Jacques and Lucy Bakewell Audubon, merely two riches-to-rags n’er-do-wells as is often suggested who just couldn’t keep shop on the American frontier, resulting in a bankrupted Jean-Jacques having to sail downstream to New Orleans to create The Birds of America, […]

Hi Everyone, I am not sure where I first heard the saying “Never underestimate the faith of your childhood,” but in recent months that motto has not let me go. The first time I heard it, I thought of Catholicism, the “faith” or denomination of my childhood. I had a lovely Irish Catholic mother, whose

Hi Everyone, So where does story come from? Looking back on my work, novel number one, Off-Island, came from a desire to reach out to other women, perhaps men, who had been through the abortion experience and to offer a healing journey, neither Pro-Life or Pro-Choice, but a point of departure for discussion. With novel

Hi Everyone, It’s February! And of course that means Happy Valentine’s Day and (for me) Happy Birthday as well! In celebration of this month of Love and Romance, I am pleased to share a joyful scene of young love from The Fair Incognito, my work in progress, which hopefully in the next few months will

Hi Everyone, Happy (of course) New Year! 2025! I wish I had high-flying plans for this new year, but the truth is I don’t. I love the close of a year so much that I actually find it rather difficult to start the new one. I relish that time of the year when, with lights

Hi Everyone, The end of the year: December! Hardly seems time yet to do a review of 2024. But by coincidence my Oxford Black n’ Red notebook ran out today, the first of December. Before tossing it in the recycling bin, I gave it a thumb through, starting with the three professional goals I had

Hi Everyone, I recently heard someone use the expression ‘information from nowhere.’ What she seemed to be saying was that sometimes (and this was, she felt, her particular quirk) information about a person, place or thing would arrive uninvited, apropos of no event and relatively free-floating. From that single sliver of info she would invent

Hi Everyone, While many people class my novel Geraniums as historical fiction, I do not. Set in the 1960s and ’70s, I tag it modern-day, as those were years I lived through. History was within easy reach. Today I am writing what I think of as true historical fiction, a story set in the decade between 1819

Hi Everyone, When was the last time you bought a lottery ticket? Growing up in my family home, games of chance were verboten, forbidden, evil and a slippery slope to who knows were. Hell, I assume. Who hadn’t heard the comparison to fortune tellers, tarot cards, astrology? Or the tale of the three girls who went to

Hi Everyone, The back seat. Some say it eventually hits every parent, mums and dads alike, but while some go with the flow, I understand others go kicking and screaming into that dark night, some even scheming to never let go. For me, I think “it” is as natural as leaves turning, holding shade in