While I’m blessed with many friends in my ‘real’ life (including one who goes back to my high school years and often reads this blog), my author life means I also have many ‘virtual’ friends—people I’ve connected with via social media who, at the click of a mouse,...
Last week, I finished writing the sequel to The Wishing Tree in Irish Falls. For those of you who have read the first book in this series, the sequel is Annie’s sister Tara’s story. It will be my fifth published book (or eighth including the German editions of my...
As many of you know, I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico last week attending my first Women’s Fiction Writers Association (WFWA) retreat. Held annually, it offers independent writing time, but also includes workshops, discussion and working groups, and social events to...
One of my favourite series of books, loved in childhood and which I still return to as ‘comfort reads’ as an adult, is the Little House stories by American author Laura Ingalls Wilder. Those books taught me about resilience, cheerfulness in the face of difficulties,...
When I was at school, the first writing assignment after the long summer holiday was usually about what I learned on vacation. While I never enjoyed that exercise—the dullness of distilling those magical eight weeks on a sole sheet of lined paper to a prescribed...
