Why I Write...

I began writing books for my children because there were very few young adult books when they were growing up. However, they were adults before the first book was published.

I wrote Flight across the Mekong because so little is known about the war in Laos, which as a neighbour of Vietnam, was very involved in the "Vietnam War." This story is based on our family's experiences in Laos in 1975 at the time of the communist takeover.

When we lived in Tehran, Iran, we were befriended by a Báha'i family and so years later I wrote An Iranian Mosaic based on this friendship.

I started doing research for Canada with Governor General Lisgar - 1868 many years ago because my great grandfather came to Ottawa with the Governor General in 1868 and then my family and I came a hundred years later. At first, I had intended to write a biography of the Governor General but it evolved into an historical novel about the Governor General and my family in Canada during the period of 1868-72.

Windsong on the Silver River takes place in the Ottawa Valley and downtown Ottawa. Windsong is based on a farm where we really wanted to live so we could have lots of horses but we stayed in Ottawa with just one dog and two cats. The cats are in this story. My partner, Bill, was Saulteaux from a First Nations community in Saskatchewan and he was a wonderful oral storyteller. Bill died while I was writing this story, but he left me the wonderful gift of many First Nations grandchildren. This is why I felt completely comfortable writing about Raven and the Two Moons Rez, however, this story is one hundred percent fiction as is the Two Moons Rez.

I know downtown Ottawa very well as I have been a volunteer at the soup kitchen for over 25 years. Lady, Bill's husky dog, who faithfully looked after me for so long and died peacefully in her sleep in August at the age of fifteen, is not in the story. Blue, the dog in the story, is what we in England call a "lurcher" - I suppose a country-wise dog of mixed parentage. I am still not sure whether the wolves in the story are spirits or real animals - perhaps they are both.

In March 2006 I realized my wish to return to some of the places where we had lived in Africa to feel the rythm of Africa again, to smell and see the grasslands, the wild life and to note the many changes. I returned to Upington in the Northern Cape after thirty years absence and to Lusaka, Zambia after forty. Of course, they had both grown considerably, but I found the houses that had been our homes and I felt at ease - I was in familiar places and the people were welcoming.

Although the first part of Molly's Story: Aftermath of War and Love is set in the United Kingdom, the action moves out to Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). This was the country we knew when my husband and I arrived in Lusaka a couple of weeks after independence in 1964. My husband was doing exploration work way out in the bush. I would often accompany him and his team to live under canvas far away from the city. I loved this sort of life. I have tried to give a picture of the countryside, the animals and the people as it was then in Molly's Story.

For information about my second African story, please check Previews.

Ottawa, July 2010