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Rating retirement year one: not quite as planned
I still can’t believe I’ve been retired a whole year. The last day of July, last year, was my last day in the office. And while I really enjoyed my job and usually felt I was making a difference, I haven’t missed it for a single second. I knew it was time to make a change and if I hadn’t been in a position to retire, it would have meant looking for something new. On a trip to the UK that included Canterbury Cathedral. So this blog post should be about all the things I’ve accomplished in these past twelve… Read more…
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My terrible, horrible, no good, very bad book weekend
With apologies to Judith Viorst for the headline, even though I put on a happy face, being an indie author isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. Don’t get me wrong – some days it is amazing. I am continually gobsmacked that people want to read the stories I make up in my head and when they invite me to speak at book clubs or want to take photos together with one of my books, I’m on cloud nine and couldn’t be more grateful. But it’s also a tough slog sometimes. I haven’t cracked the Amazon code yet, so… Read more…
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How much change can one person take?!
They say when you retire that you shouldn’t make big life decisions. You know, ride it out a while and see where things settle. Yeah, that wasn’t what I did. In January 2025, I announced at work that I would retire at the end of July. It was not a secret that I was planning to go soon and my boss asked for lots of time so there’d be a good period of overlap with my successor (that’s another story!). So that started the countdown clock. In May, I got engaged to the handsome ginger-haired man I’d been seeing. His… Read more…
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When the words get stuck
Someone asked me once if I had a routine of writing, or if the words just came when they came. I’ve done both – and neither, over the years. When I started writing my first novel, Another Glass of Tea, I had a full time job and it kept waking me up at 2 a.m. I tried to ignore it, but it kept happening. Eventually, I realized that when it happened, I had to get up and write. It could be 10 minutes, half an hour, or a marathon stretch that saw the circles under my eyes grow darker and the amount… Read more…
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For the love of reading: my favourite childhood reads
When one of my sons was small, he always had his nose in a book – in honesty, they both did. But this one had an overzealous phys ed teacher tell his older brother that he shouldn’t be reading so much at recess. Me? I figured if a six year old wanted to read Harry Potter at recess, I’d just let him. He’s still a voracious reader – much as his mother is, and it got me thinking recently about the books I loved in my childhood. I still have some of them, although I admit that others got donated when… Read more…
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Reflecting on the beginning, five years on
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.… Read more…
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Ups and downs of being an indie author
I’m always thrilled when a real reader searches me out and leaves a review, comments on my blog, sends a message through my website or occasionally emails me directly about possibly appearing at their book club. It’s a huge boost of confidence that my novels resonate. So I look forward to opening my email every morning. In the last two weeks alone, I’ve had emails from two major publishing houses expressing interest in my writing. Another, from former US first daughter Jenna Bush, extolled the brilliance of my books and wanted to feature one at her book club. On top… Read more…
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Life is fragile; handle with care
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the fragility of life. How we take it for granted and how we put things off until ‘later, when we have more time.’ In my circle of acquaintances, there have been four deaths in the past month. One was an elderly person who had been fighting an illness for a long time – a blessing some would say, that his is no longer suffering. But the others have all been lives snuffed out far before they should have been. A sudden illness, a tragic traffic accident, a mental health crisis. Families changed forever.… Read more…
