The Writing Side of Life
My third grade teacher was Mrs. Irwin. She told me I wrote very well, and told me I should consider becoming a writer. I think at the time I was reading a great deal (loved Enid Blyton books), and imitated what I read in her classroom. Whatever the reason, it began a lifelong love of writing in me. I went to university, and managed to earn a Master’s degree in English Literature because I wanted to become the best writer I could.
Life, however, didn’t cooperate. There weren’t many jobs for an unemployed student. In order to support myself, in 1993 I moved to South Korea to teach at a university. I loved it. The culture and people were so fascinating. However, working and a mix of culture shock and new challenges didn’t leave me much time for writing.
I recognized that as long as I worked, I wouldn’t find the time, or–and this was crucial for me as a woman–the mental space to write fiction. Marriage and work took all my emotional energy. As a result, I didn’t become a writer until I retired in 2014 and returned to Canada.
Over the years, however, I had kept my fingers busy. In 2012, I collaborated on a science fiction novel with a New Zealand colleague, Lyn McConchie. The novel is Queen of Iron Years. It won New Zealand’s Sir Julius Vogel award for best novel in 2013. Since then I have been writing two newspaper columns (“Smarter than Jack or Jill,” an exploration of animal intelligence, and “For the Love of Genre,” for reviews of Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Mystery novels) for the local rural newspaper.
At the same time, I wrote one Young Adult Fantasy novels, The Lake Dragons, available on Amazon, and an adult Steampunk novel, The Secrets of Time and Stone and its sequel (both not yet published). I have several other partially completed novels that I look forward to finishing. Soon.
I love writing, and I hope you enjoy what you see here. Also, stop by the visual art section of this website to see some of my paintings–my other creative passion.
Old bones. Old power. Ancient malice wearing a soldier’s face . . .
Anya only wanted one last summer swim in Kootenay Lake. Instead she woke with a dragon asleep on her legs.
Wend is young, orphaned, and the last of his clan. The great lake dragons have vanished into the high peaks, leaving only empty nests and this frightened hatchling, who speaks in pictures when they touch: soaring wings, abandoned eggs, and a darkness rising from the deep.
Anya’s Uncle Doug came home from the war in Afghanistan carrying more than scars: a staff that burns water and calls lightning, and something that was never human–an old, hungry thing wearing Doug’s skin.
To find the lost dragons, Anya must ride Wend into skies ruled by storm and stone, and confront the monster her uncle has become.
Some legends are kind.
Some are not.
The Lake Dragons excerpt
An ache, a fear of loneliness, throbbed in his chest.
After he’d hatched, and crawled out onto the shore, the elder dragons thoughts had reached him, welcomed him. Dragons can hear the wind’s voice. They can hear every one of their clan member’s thoughts. Dragonspeak. They used it to talk to each other, to share feelings and thoughts. To know each other.
When they heard him and flew down, Wend wasn’t strong enough to fly yet–his wings barely flapped in the air. But he could hear the adults. He’d swum higher up to the shore. They’d nudged the small dragon up into a large one’s mouth. Gently held there, firmly lodged between its enormous teeth, the adult carried him up to the caverns in the mountaintops. Wend had shivered in the thin air. He’d felt the snicker in the heart of the giant whose wings whooshed up and down in powerful waves, stronger than the lake’s little surges. It belched a kindly laugh, and that spread through Wend. Warmth quickly followed. He could feel it rise through the big dragon’s scales.
You will soon speak, it told him. And fly! And it had rolled in the air, holding Wend in place between its teeth. Wend had shivered, delighted. He wasn’t afraid then.
He’d barely watched as the land dropped away beneath them. Each powerful wing beat swept air over him and the cold wind crusted his eyes with tears. His heart beat like a developing storm. If they can fly like this, will I? Will my wings do this? The thought was thrilling. One day his wings would be just as powerful. He was eager to try them and flapped the small appendages with some effort.
Not yet! he was told, again with that calm rumble of laughter. You will. But right now the time has come to leave the water behind.
Food was plentiful in the lake: the fish schooled together, so full of food themselves they were easy to catch. Wend hadn’t wanted to leave the lake. But he also knew it was time. There were no other young dragons; just the guardian and that one had pushed him away. The last time he’d come close, it had shoved him aside. It had nipped at his feet until he’d swum to the surface, pulled himself out of the water. It lingered below the surface. Watching. Then, with a swoosh, it curled back around its charges. The force of its dive had pushed Wend further up and out onto the shore.
Queen of Iron Years excerpt
If Cean gave him the casket what would happen? He feared he knew. The idiot would force it open somehow, wrecking it, and find Cean’s story inside. Then he would either discard it or blackmail Cean.
And there was no time left. He needed to activate the time jumper and be gone before anyone else could turn up to prevent it.
Smith was contemptuous. To him, Cean was a weedy scientist bleating about “his” casket. He stepped forward to seize the treasure he’d long sought. Cean still tried to explain.
“You don’t understand. I had this made for me.” Smith didn’t hear him. “It belongs to me. It isn’t hers.”
Jonathan half-heard that.
Neither of them heard Fort’s outcry as he raced towards them.
“It belongs to whoever holds it,” Smith added in part to himself.
“But it’s mine!”
Cean had used the wrong word. Smith heard only the last one as their opposing obsessions clashed on that one point.
“Give it to me!” He pushed Cean contemptuously. “Come on!” He caught at a corner of the casket, wrenching it loose from Cean’s hands. Smith stepped back, the casket triumphantly in his hands. “Got it, by God! And it’s worth a bundle.”
. . . .
If Cean didn’t go now, he’d have failed. It would all have been for nothing. He’d never have a second chance at it. Boadicea and the Iceni would still be slaughtered, and the future would stay unchanged for them.
