There are many small moments that make my day: Waking to sunshine coming through my window in the morning.The rain stopping as I am about to take Henry for a walk and allowing us to make a full circuit of the park and get back home before coming down again. Working in my garden when the day is warm—we’ve had a few of those lately. Drinking warm coffee laced with lactose free cream, and eating Wasa crispbread (Ryvita) with thick slices of Brie—something I don’t do often. And lying in bed reading—something I do every night and morning. 

But in the last few days, I’ve had some very special moments: I picked up my copy of the 2026 Whatcom Writes Anthology, Family: Formed, Found, and Chosen, which includes one of my stories, “A Special Event.”

EXCERPT

  It was October 1989, and I was turning forty. My divorce had finally been finalized. I had bought a small house on Messon Street near Hackney Marshes in London the year before, after the division of the family property. My grandparents, who raised me, had passed away. My birth mother was still alive, but she refused to come for a visit. I had four siblings—either living too far away or estranged. What I considered my family were my three children, aged between nine and fourteen, and a small circle of college friends, neighbors, and an incredible young man who was a good catalyst in my life, but now lived in the United States.

*

What made this day so special was my three children deciding to add a deeper dimension to it. My daughter, Sarah, secretly contacted my friends—handwriting notes or phoning—to ask them to arrive half an hour early and bring flowers. She also planned to bake a chocolate cake with one egg for every year of my life.

*

  The Friday evening before the party, and again on Saturday morning, I made food: cocktail sausages with cheese and pineapple on toothpicks stuck into half a grapefruit—an hors d’oeuvre popular at the time—sausages wrapped in bacon, a trifle, and my usual fruit flan with canned peaches, mandarins, and fresh kiwi—before I knew I was allergic to it. By four o’clock, I was done.

  “I’ll be down again in an hour,” I called, heading for a long bath. I filled the tub, turned on a Mozart concerto—a favorite from my time with Andy, a wonderful man who I remembered with joy, and sank into the bubbles. “Ah, blissful.”

  As I stepped out, wrapping a large towel around me, my youngest, David, tapped on the door.
“Mummy, are you nearly done? I want to show you something by the canal.”
“Do we have time? People will be arriving soon.”
“We’ll be back before then, I promise. Sarah and Richard will get everything ready.”

*

  A heavy mist rolled in across the marshes. “It’s getting chilly,” I said. “Shouldn’t we see what you wanted to show me?”
“Just a bit further,” he said. Then, moments later, “Okay—we can go back now.”

I eyed him suspiciously, but he gave nothing away. “All right then. I am getting cold, but I loved hearing about the frogs.”

When we reached the house, David ran ahead. As I stepped through the door, the room fell silent for a heartbeat—then erupted:

“SURPRISE!”

  I froze for a moment. The front room was full of people—friends, colleagues, and my three children, their faces glowing with pride. An enormous chocolate cake dominated the table, and everywhere—on the table, mantelpiece, even the floor—stood vases of flowers.

AND THEN, there was the morning I opened my computer to an email from Chanticleer Book Awards, and reading—Congratulations on Untethered cover  advancing to the prestigious FINALIST level of the Chanticleer Int’l Book Awards (CIBAs) in the CCDA Non-Fiction Finalists for Non-Fiction Cover Design, a division of the CIBAs! The Chanticleer Cover Design Awards recognize emerging new talent and outstanding cover.  

What an honor and joy to read those words!

OTHER NEWS

Walking with Henry

After a few days of sunshine in my little part of the Pacific Northwest, trees are bursting into bloom. Everywhere I walk, the native shrub Indian plum white tips glow against a background of new green leaves. The Blireiana plum, with its double pink blossom petals, is already in bloom along some of our streets. The cornus mas tree at the college, and especially the heron rookery. I counted 19 birds on and around nests the other day.

In my Garden

As I walk by, the fragrance of yellow witch hazel fills my nose, and the ‘Jelena’ glows red against a background of green. The hellebores are, of course, in full bloom, although I haven’t yet cut back all the leaves to expose the plant’s true beauty, and the white forsythia outside my front window.

Books

In January, I managed to read twelve books. Even I was surprised.

The best of them were Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks, a memoir about spending time alone on Flinders Island, off Tasmania, grieving the sudden death of her husband.

Another favorite was This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel, an LGBTQ+ novel about family and parenting. I found it beautiful—full of heart, struggle, identity, and acceptance. Both were five-star-plus reads for me.

My third favorite was a re-read of The Road to Corrain (1989) by Jill Ker Conway. I first read this book a long time ago. I enjoyed it then but didn’t make the deep connection I did this time, especially in relation to my grandparents clearing the land, and  raising a family in Australia. I marked so many pages with my little copper markers because I will, sometime soon, get around to writing a piece of creative fiction about their lives as pioneers in New South Wales, Australia, following the First World War.

My Writing Life

6 years ago I was in San Miguel, Mexico visiting a dear friend. I signed up for the San Miguel Writing Conference. It was incredible, inspiring, and the true beginning of my writing career. 

Although I had been writing for years and had published a book of poems, Wild Child, in 2010, this experience felt different. I met Delia Owens, a featured presenter that year, whose novel Where the Crawdads Sing was published in 2018. I wanted to buy a signed copy, but the only ones left were in Spanish. I still have her book on my shelf, along with many others I bought at the time.

On the last day of the conference, I had a consultation with author Dinty W. Moore about my writing and a book that a group of four of us hoped to have published locally within a few months. He read three of my stories in the time allowed, said he had enjoyed them, and gave me a few suggestions on one, and answered questions I had on the process of editing and proof-reading. His quiet, positive encouragement instilled a new confidence in myself. 

My small writing group, started two years previously as a gathering place for like minded people from Bellingham at Home, now had a name—The Blue Bottles Writing Studio. Later that year, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we published our first book, The Blue Bottles Writing Studio: A Variety of Stories from Four Independent Authors.

Two years later, my first memoir about my childhood growing up in the Caribbean, Chosen, was published. Last year, I published Untethered: A Memoir, about my years in England where I discover family secrets that changed my life. 

All the above books can be found on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I love to have you read and review. It helps to reach other readers