As a child I wrote stories, poems, and plays. I occasionally had them published locally and won prizes for them. This petered out as I tried my hand at various careers - but the love of words has never died. In 2008 I was working as a home-care assistant and through this was lucky enough to meet the late Dame Christine Cole-Catley - journalist, publisher, and author. At the time I just knew her as "The-lovely-lady-with-the-broken-leg". When I eventually twigged to her pedigree and plucked up the courage to show her some of my work. Chris, with her habitual kindness, agreed to critique my writing. Afterwards, at her recommendation, I attended master-classes with Graham Lay at the Michael King Writer's Centre. It was a useful and inspiring experience and since then I have never looked back .
History, biography, and historical fiction are my favourite genres. To me the most entertaining fiction is always thought-provoking drama against an historical background. Now, I read anything and everything - but I do still love historical novels. I grew up on my mother's Georgette Heyer, Anya Seton, and Catherine Gaskin; and my father's C.S Forrester, Zane Grey, and Leon Uris. These days my list of 'favourite' novelists encompasses many genres, countries, cultures, and styles. By no means least are the rich collective of voices to be found within Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific.
Cultural and spiritual displacement are themes which interest me and how the individual can use these to the good. I am also interested in how spirituality affects one's relationship to the environment. There is a lot of talk about reducing carbon emissions and picking up plastic off the ground. But there is not enough complementary dialogue at grassroots level on how mass numbers of individuals have come to abdicate their spiritual involvement with each other and with nature, giving their allegiance to organised religions and corporations. In most cases, the thorough integration of spiritual awareness makes harming the environment reprehensible; so I find the mass-detachment interesting as a phenomenom.
"The Witch of the Pacific" is my first novel and was published as an e-book in May 2018. It best described as a 'fantas-torical' fairy-tale and combines my love of history, mythology, ghost-stories, and adventure. It is the first in a trilogy.
My recently completed play 'Four Sisters at Sunset" recounts the last days of the Romanov sisters in captivity. I am currently workibg on an autobiographical collection of poems. I have also recently started combining daily 4-line inspirational poems with my own photographs on Instagram. I intend to publish these as a book in 2020