I'm a late bloomer. In 1986 I joined a group of five writers on the Sunshine Coast of B.C. (www.Quintessentialwriters.com) We are still together after all this time, writing and putting out new published works yearly. My first book, The Cadillac Kind, (Polestar), was published in 1996 after my retirement. It was serialized on CBC radio in 2000 and again in 2001. My second book, The Rat Trap Murders, (Nightwood Edition) came out in 2000. My third book, Scribes, (Caitlin Press) is now available. The official book launch was October 21st, 2011.
My husband and I live in Cariboo Country in the central interior of British Columbia where we have a large plot of land on which to raise our own veggies, fruit and chickens. We now home a rescue cat, Casper, and our big dog, Timber. Last year a neighbour's dog killed our chickens and a bunny. It took us 6 months to get over the loss and to adopt another flock. The summer of 2017 was disastrous for our area with fires raging through the forests. Homes were lost, land was scorched, animals killed in the blazes. Thick smoke obscured the province from the North to the Lower Mainland. Cariboo people still have a persistent cough.
I appeared at the 2012 Festival of the Written Arts in Sechelt, B.C. with my writing group. We presented the crowd with our stories about the beginnings of the Festival. They didn't realize the work that had gone into it thirty years ago.
On the upside, my writing group still meets in person when we can, otherwise we do our critiquing on Skype. We are all working on new books. Mine is called, The Countess of Tapanti. It is finished, but we need to give it a final scrub. I have a new novel, Sleeping With Strangers, being published by Oolichan Books in the Spring of 2018. That gives us time to search out an eye-catching cover and have an author photo taken.
