I grew up in England, and knew by the age of seven I wasn’t the type to stay in one place forever. I’d watch the planes fly over my house and make up stories about where the people on them were going. I’d wonder when it would be my turn to fly away. Luckily, my family liked to travel. My sisters and I had seen a lot of Europe by the time we left the nest, mostly from the cramped backseat of Dad’s car over the top of Mum’s beehive hairdo.
Horses were my passport to the world. I trained at the famous Porlock Vale Equitation Centre, which led me to various locations around the world, including Europe, New Zealand, and the United States, eventually galloping me right into the arms of my American-born husband. Funnily enough, he wasn’t very good at staying in one place either. Apparently opposites don’t always attract.
Despite being an outdoorsy, energetic type growing up, I found time to read voraciously, leading one of my early teachers to question how someone who read so well could possibly spell so badly. I don’t know, it seemed rather easy to me. Mark Twain is tenuously attributed with the quote, “I don’t give a damn for a man who can only spell a word one way.” My teacher didn’t appreciate my knowledge of other authors, either. But armed with my lack of phoneme-to-grapheme prowess, I eventually headed to college, a wife and mother in a foreign land, to study linguistics, which turned into a master’s degree in speech-language pathology, which turned into time spent conducting autism research. Which led me to Spell Check, which led me to triple checking Spell Check.
My fiction writing theme is “Write Home.” I completely relate to my characters as they long for home, or long to escape home, or finally find home. The search for the place my soul can relax and breathe the deepest seems to have been a lifelong quest for me. Nothing changes. I continue to think about other places, just like that little girl who watched the planes fly overhead; still undecided as to geographical location and occupation. Well, maybe some things have changed. My speeling’s beter.
