It’s hard to believe that it’s been five years this month since I truly began my journey as an author.

Cutting the cords!

Covid, with its travel restrictions and all its unknowns, had scuttled the planned sabbatical for 2020, but even with the pandemic still very much in play, I threw caution to the wind, listened to the whispers in my dreams and cut the cords to my work computer and phone. 

I still remember the rise in blood pressure when I closed my office door. People asked me if I was really leaving it all behind. Definitely, I was. I had six long months ahead without deadlines, without pushy bosses, without crises, and yes, without the adrenaline high that came with it all.

I took myself to a cute little cottage on Ontario’s Golden Lake for a long weekend – a bit of a palate cleanser, if you will – where I slept, wrote and unwound. I poured out onto paper the story that had been keeping me awake for months, for years, really. I gave myself permission to mourn the original sabbatical plan – the one with international travel, or writing along the shores of the Bosphorus Strait. But when I got home, the days stretched out of me and I wondered if I knew what I’d gotten myself into. 

Getting into the swing of things

Sure enough, I soon settled into a routine. Long walks along the ravine in the morning, writing in the midday and downtime – much needed downtime – after more than a decade on high alert every day. Books were read, naps were had, and as March turned into spring and then summer, my back garden received more attention than ever. But Covid was still real, and so there weren’t places to go, people to see or entertainment to be enjoyed.

The first four months were very productive and from them was born the first full draft of Another Glass of Tea. Fiona, Metin and their families became substitutes for the family I couldn’t visit. As I put the manuscript away, to let it breathe and give myself a chance to read it with fresher eyes, another story started invading my dreams and I began scribbling it down.

The miracle

In mid-July, Canada’s Covid cases were dropping and we were getting our second vaccines. The exact same thing was happening in Türkiye (still known internationally as Turkey at the time!) at the exact same time. Kismit. At the time, I needed two weeks to quarantine upon return to Canada. We expected it would be dropped, but I built it into the plan. Excluding those weeks, there were seven left. Was it possible to get  to experience the Bosphorus dream I had? I jumped and within days, I was sitting in the flat in my original dreams. Window? Check. Sheer curtains blowing in the breeze? Check. The sounds of seagulls and boat horns? Check. I was in heaven.

Oh, that view!

Now heaven was flawed. I couldn’t see all the friends I wanted to and in-public mask mandates made an already steamy Istanbul even steamier. But I still got to celebrate my birthday with baklava and a cheap Bosphorus ferry ride. More importantly, I got to work out a couple of kinks in my manuscript. No, you couldn’t see the wind farm from this village. Yes, they could have eaten that local delicacy in this village. No, it wasn’t possible to have travelled from A to B on a bus. When I wasn’t out exploring, the red pen was busy, slashing scenes and inventing new ones, more plausible than the first.

Beyond tea

It was in the evenings that Skipping Stones was conceived and where I was thrilled to learn that I had more than one story in me. Linney and Derek (he was called Tomas in the first few months of writing!) were fuzzier in my mind than Fiona and Metin, but they were becoming more real, and their journeys were more impactful. I was wasn’t ready when the day came when I had to pack everything up and travel home, my luggage several kilos heavier with Turkish delight, baklava and a wee bit of rakı, an anise-flavoured spirit.

As expected, the two week quarantine back home had been lifted while I was away, so those final weeks of sabbatical were a frenzy of friends, family and festive meals. Too soon, it was day one back at work, and while I was glad to see colleagues, I prioritized carving out time to get Another Glass of Tea over the finish line, working with editors and cover artists, and to continue Skipping Stones. The first was published in 2022 and the second in 2024, with appropriate fanfare.

Oddly, with the launch of Skipping Stones, I somehow lost that focus. My retirement in the second half of 2025 (yes, the sabbatical was sort of a practise for that!), is the only reason I have any hope of getting its sequel out the door this year. But as I settle into retirement, I’m amping up my game, and I hope it won’t be many more months before I introduce you to Charlotte – Charlie for short – and re-introduce you to Jake, Linney’s brother. Other favourite Skipping Stones characters are also demanding their fair share of ink as well, so it will be a true friends and family affair.

Until then, don’t forget to tell your own friends and family about my novels, and if you haven’t left an Amazon or Goodreads review yet, please consider doing so. Every review – even if it’s just a few words – makes a difference to indie authors like me, as they feed the algorithms that show our books to other potential readers.

Now, back to the writing!