Newsletter

Hi Everyone, Happy Christmas, almost! That magical, mystical, happy—oh yes—night divine! Well, many things come at this special time, and yes, it is associated with gifts, some even Great Ones, when ‘the dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more’. So in this final month of 2025, I offer you a small […]

Hi Everyone, Yes, it’s November and it’s Thanksgiving, a traditional time for gratitude and celebrating your harvest, whatever that may be—corn, barley, the completion of a 120,000 word manuscript of a new novel, or a 17.76% cumulative rate of return on your portfolio, even if NASDAQ and the S&P500 did better! The point, obviously, is

Hi Everyone, Perfect. Google’s English dictionary provided by Oxford Languages defines the first instance of the adjective ‘perfect’ as ‘having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, characteristics; as good as it is possible to be’. Well, that’s a tricky one for me as I have always been told that perfection is out of reach,

Hi Everyone, In the last few months I have been reading The Women, a vibrant novel by Kristin Hannah. I admire Kristin’s writing; I find her novels commercial, engaging and sincere, always teasing out a woman’s story that resonates, from whatever tale, whatever decade! I wasn’t sure about The Women to start with, though; not

Hi Everyone, Deadheading? When I bought my home, I inherited a lovely garden—roses, hollyhocks, lavender, ivy—forty years of growth. As I took possession in a November, I wasn’t truly aware of what might arise from that dark tangled mess of wet leaves, vines, grasses and topiary trees. Although saying that, I had had a peek

Hi Everyone, Okay, so The Fair Incognito, my work-in-progress, is done – or better said, “I’m done.” I may or may not have met my aspiration. I am told the finish line when writing a novel is a bit like delivering a baby: she’s out and she’s not going back to perfect anything. Yet, in

Hi Everyone, I suppose like everyone else, I am well aware of the news accounts of the impending doom and gloom (Fake News, Runaway Warfare) or the spectacular rise (Enhancement of Human Capabilities) of Artificial Intelligence (AI). While I haven’t jumped straight into a full understanding, especially of its implications for authors, which is critical,

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