About
a little about me and A Lot About Why I Write
I have lived in Calgary now for over fifty years and love it. My family is scattered throughout southern Alberta and the central to western US, giving me the chance to make a lot of road trips west of the Mississippi. I often fly but the best trips to fire imagination are on the ground.
I've worked in retail, financial, and travel, and enjoyed each job, some more than others. I even took a bartending course, but only to learn how to make different drinks, never worked as one.
Though my writing has blossomed in the last twenty years, my heart has always belonged to reading, spawned by the Hardy Boys, culitivated by the classic science fiction of Burroughs and Heinlein, and the teen novels of L'Engle. I used the elements that drove me to love these authors to help me to develop a similar style, science fiction that is not filled with techonological terms and posits, but stories that feel that they could happen to anyone, not just members of a space agency or crew members on board a rocket ship.
The premise of my books began over twenty years ago as a joke about me telling a prospective SIL that I was from an all-female planet, coming to Earth only to procreate. I have four daughters, no sons. My first two grandchildren are girls, and then finally, a boy appeared, but by then, the tale had been spun, and he still thinks I'm either crazy or an alien.
Years later, my characters have become a big part of my life. My family and friends would argue and say they were the biggest part, but I have been known to put pen and paper down (more accurately, close the computer) to spend time with the Earthlings that call me mom, grandma, sister, and friend.
Originally, there was only one story, one manuscript. My first reader was so intrigued by the backstory, she asked me to write what happened leading up to that story. Then she wanted me to write what happened before that! That one manuscript turned out to be five books!
Writing the series backward left me with the ominous task of ensuring all books coincided with the others, so while it took me twenty-plus years before I could send them out into the world—on Amazon because, thanks to laptop publishers, everyone is now an author—I was basically writing the first five books at the same time. What had been brief interactions with my characters became full scenes and I learned far more about who they were and what was happening in that first lonely manuscript than I ever dreamed!
However, I started working on the sixth book before the final editing was done on the other five. This was unknown territory for me, as the other books had the storyline set up in that first story that became five books! But I'd never thought about what happened after that.
Book 6, The Crystal Way, shocked me when the storyline was done in thirteen months.
While at work on Feb 13, 2020, the idea hit me to pubish Book 6 on Valentine's Day since I was dedicating it to my late husband. The next day. Which I did, and washed my hands of the series, because I had tied up the loose ends. Or so I thought.
HA! the Muse said, laughing. Hold my Ambrosia!
Not even twenty-three hours later, I'm on a bus on a rural road in Alberta, in winter, not thinking about plots or characters or settings for the first time in forever, but simply reflecting that I'd never been on that road before in the time I've lived here—only 52 years—and possibly I thought about the hockey team on the bus and the game I would be seeing.
Out of the blue, "someone," aka the Muse, spoke to me, clear as day. Three powerful paragraphs which I wrote down immediately on my phone and texted them to that same dear friend for her thoughts. Her four letter coment did not surprise me.
Those three little paragraphs were so simple and yet so profound I studied them the next day. They raised all the right questions—who, what, when, where, why, and how. My friend wanted to know the answers, I wanted to know the answers, and, resigning to my fate, I knew that the only way I could find out the answers was to write the book. Those paragraphs still exist as the opening of Chapter 1, Book 7.
This book presented a few new challenges, as well.
Not only did I have to come up with an entirely new storyline with new villains and their problems, it was to be written in first person, because those crazy three opening chapters were in first person.
And it was first person from a MALE point of view. Sure, I knew the character, but first person makes you live inside their head. I grew to love the character in a whole new way.
This happened, as you saw by the above date, only a month before the world went into self isolation, so I was able to concentrate on this new and completely fresh story.
The first draft now was completed in less than a year. I knew, though, that there was at least one more book because there were things left undone, things to be accounted for.
Book 8 took less than a year because the Muse kept throwing ideas at me. Constantly, and not neccesarily in order.
Book 9 emerged in early January 2023, and was complete by mid September.
As you can imagine, I've been concentrating on writing these new stories (not including the research and notes and ideas) since the Muse spoke to me on that bus because the last three books are a whole new part of their lives than I ever considered.
Things clicked together, drawing memories from the very first books, and incorporating those with the new.
And that is why I haven't kept the website up.
I still have to learn how to set the site up.
I hope things will change now.
I'm self-editing, which is slower because I have to really watch that I'm saying what I actually want to say, but I have to remind myself that every book ever published still had typos.
I'm also trying to conquer marketing issues in the always advancing , always improving, media.
Your wishes have come true! A really great series with NINE books and you don't have to wait a year for the next book to come out!
The first six books are back up on Amazo; the last three will be out by the end of January, 2024.
And Caleb said, It is good.
I'm hooked on writing, and hooked on the storyline.