About

I’ve been a writer of sorts for as long as I can remember.

I grew up the second oldest in an Irish family with six other siblings.  There is thirteen months between me and my older brother and fifteen years between myself and the youngest one.  That’s quite an age gap, but it meant that as one of the oldest, and as the oldest girl, I was always on the scene for birthday parties and sleep overs and other kid related events.  It was not unusual to find me holding down the fort with the kids while my parents kept the practical things ticking over.  More often than not, I wound up keeping guests entertained with my made up fantastical tales.

By the time I hit highschool, I was writing poetry, short stories and plays.  I also turned into a hard-core reader, often staying up until the wee hours of the night with a flashlight and whatever book I had my nose stuck into.  Once I found an author I liked, I tended to read as much of their work as I could possibly get.  I still do that today.  My book collection is ridiculously large.

I married at nineteen and had five children in eight years.  A lot of people thought that I was crazy, but my family is great and I wouldn’t change them for the world.

The year my youngest was born and the two years following his birth were terrible.  He was premature by nearly two months and we both almost died.  While he spent his first year of life in and out of the hospital, I went through a deep depression and some terrible health of my own.  Two surgeries in the space of a year and finally a hysterectomy.  I’ve always felt since then that I was meant to have all my children early so that I would  have this family, if I had waited, I might not have had any children at all.

That time being sick was awful, but it did get me writing again after years of running after babies and toddlers.  One day, I sent in a funny story to my local paper The Cambridge Times, and they ran it.  This kicked off nearly five years of being a regular contributor.

In 2006, a friend of mine suggested that I send in an article to The Toronto Sun, which was holding a contest for new columnists.  Wouldn’t you know it, I beat out over four hundred others and won it.  I wrote freelance for the Sun for a year.

Now those same friends of mine were telling me to try my hand at writing a novel.  I was completely daunted by the idea.  A whole novel?  That’s a really big deal!  But I started tinkering around with some ideas and it kept on evolving until it became a book.

In December 2009, my first novel “Autumn Violets” was released by Crackjaw Publishing.  I have since written a second, third and fourth book and am in the middle of my fifth.  I decided, after some amazing reader responses, to turn Autumn Violets into a series.  In the end, it will be four books, each following a character from the first and each named for a season and a flower.

My favourite authors still inspire me and on this journey of mine I have even been lucky enough to meet or talk to a few of them.  I hope that you will enjoy reading my work, reading my blog and supporting me on this journey of being a writer, which really is for me, a dream come true.

*Update: 2015

After living in southwestern Ontario for my whole life, I am now happily an East Coaster.  I live with my family in southern New Brunswick. My four books are all available on Amazon and I am working on books five and six.  Updates appear in blog posts as they happen.

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