MY STORY
What makes any writer tell stories is never found on the inside cover of a novel. Biographical details are easy enough to find; dates of birth and family background, career choices all have a place in my narrative but it is the secret choices, hidden in the shadowy recesses of the psyche that inform a writer's output and these are not easily shared. If this sounds high falootin', I'm sorry.
It's a bit like the way a would be novelist can read ‘how to' books, attend lectures and listen to advice from other novelists but there is an elusive
bit that can never be taught. You learn the craft but the artistry comes from within.
Being a war baby places my childhood in the 40s and 50s, a time of austerity, harsh winters and rationing, a childhood without TV and luxuries. I sensed early on that I'd missed the party, those momentous events of World War 2. The morning after the night before sort of feeling has left me with a nostalgia for something I experienced only through the tales of others.
Then there was being brought up in exile with Scottish parents who yearned to be back over the border and a highland granny who hugged her own family secrets and took them to the grave.
My first love was dancing, ballet, tap, acrobatics, singing, performing and generally showing off. Coming from a strict religious background meant so far and no further down the primrose path of theatrical ambition so education came to the fore; a scholarship to grammer school and university. Much was expected and sacrifices were made to see I got every opportunity.
The only decent thing to come out of my university experience apart from a mediocre degree was my husband some lifelong friends. Somehow the swinging sixties and hippy seventies passed me by thanks to the large pram in the hall which carried four babies, below and to the side around the cathedral city of Lichfield until 1979.
Then we emigrated to the Yorkshire Dales to live the ‘Good Life' in an old farmhouse and found a new way of living off our witts, baking, catering, teaching, counseling and that's when the story telling began in earnest.
There came that seminal moment for any budding writer when I slammed down a novel and sighed. “I can do better than that!” The challenge had begun.
It's funny how your biggest failures can become the source of success. We bought a Café and made a dream come true but the dream turned into a nightmare and left me jaded and dispirited but not for long. Out of that experience came “Dancing at the Victory café”. I trued the nightmare into a golden day dream and it was published in 1995.
Now seven novels later, in the third age of life my writing life is as hectic as every but the hunger to translate experiences, observations, frustrations and joys into stories is still there pushing me every forward to new challenges. The climate is not kind to mid list authors, that precious endangered species found mostly in library editions these days but that is another story!