Welcome to this week’s blog hop. Today the topic is:

“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” – Flannery O’Connor. Authors have many reasons to write. Why do you write what you write?

It all started back in 1969 when at the age of 11 I won an inter-schools’ writing competition. To my surprise, the headmistress called me out in front of the school at assembly time and presented me with a certificate. I’d written about life at home with a budgerigar called Bombhead that my father had taught to curse on cue. The bird was never in its cage, and would flap around my grandmother’s head every time she visited and scare the bejaysus out of her.

I was lucky enough to attend that school and to be encouraged in creative writing. My mother was also a writer and I guess she handed down some of her talent to me. During my twenties and thirties I wrote poetry and the odd short story, but mostly I was too busy raising my sons to write much. It was only in my fifties after the boys had left home that I started writing and self-publishing for a hobby.

I write about what I know and what interests me. I love writing about human frailties; addictions and family dramas in particular, but I also enjoy reading and writing humorous stories and paranormal tales (the paranormal has been a lifelong interest of mine). I’ve been lucky enough to work in a hospital for 20 years, and have learned much about the human condition through typing thousands of clinic letters dictated by a myriad of consultants covering many different specialties. I think the most interesting letters I’ve ever typed were dictated by psychiatrists.

I’m a realist, and real life interests me, especially what makes us do what we do. I find human behaviour fascinating, and how most of it stems from the kind of childhoods people have had. I’ve incorporated this in ‘The Daughter-in-law Syndrome’, ‘Repent at Leisure’, ‘For the Sake of a Child’ and ‘Mind Games’. I’ve written paranormal novels (‘Finding David’ and ‘Partners in Time’) based on many years of attending demonstrations of clairvoyance, and novels based around work and leisure activities that I have personally taken part in (‘Examining Kitchen Cupboards’ and ‘The Pilates Class).

I write because I love doing it, and also in the hope that readers might enjoy my novels too!

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