About
The Story Behind the Stories
I grew up in Zimbabwe and in my early twenties went traveling where I ended up living in a fishing village in Scotland, an Elizabethan hall in England, and on a yacht in Greece before coming to New Zealand.
Here I fell in love with both the country and a New Zealand man in a place often referred to as 'down-under' due to it's location in the world. I have remained here ever since, raising a family (and numerous cats) in an idyllic Northland bay.
Shortly after our arrival in the bay, I discovered an overgrown pioneer graveyard which inspired my first novel, Tides of Time, a YA time travel.
A glancing reference to Charlotte Badger – convict, pirate and NZ’s first known Englishwoman settler – in an historical text, resulted in my second novel, Forbidden Frontier.
My inspiration
Out of curiosity, I signed up a romance writers' conference where I took one look at the tongue-in-cheek pink balloon hearts festooning the walls and was hooked. Four romance – two contemporary and two historical adventure – followed.
Finding the untold tales of women's achievements throughout history.
However, pasts cannot be ignored. A Vice Chancellor’s Scholarship enabled me to do a PhD in Creative Writing where I wrote a novel, Trespast, retelling the problematic history of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe through the lives of three women, each representing groups largely written out of the country’s canon: women settlers, women guerillas and women who gave babies up for adoption.
I have a particular penchant for ‘first women’. Apart from Charlotte, I portrayed Rhodesia’s first woman settler, Countess Billie in Trespast. Currently I’m working on a biography of Auckland’s first woman doctor, Alice Woodward Horsley.
I taught for many years, mainly in tertiary and mainly in ESOL – language is a passion. I then became a tutor and HOD of NorthTec’s online writing diplomas in Applied Writing through which I met a wonderful range of emerging writers, a number of whom have gone on to publish their own novels.
Interests include reading (well, obviously) swimming, kayaking, yoga, singing, gardening, learning French and Spanish (rather badly!) and all things historical.
Alice with two nurses who helped during the 1900 plague outbreak.
