Aged eight, I considered a career in advertising and sent my pitch for a TV commercial to Pedigree Dog Food, Canada. This was it:
Great Dane dog sits at head of big dinning table. Butler brings in silver tray covered with cans of Chum dog food. Dogs voice booms, “Fee Fo Fi Fum, here comes my meety Chum.”
Remember, this was before the days of CGI and talking dogs and, apparently, dictionaries. I still have the typed reply politely explaining that Pedigree’s advertising plans were set for the following year, but please accept this case of dogfood as our thanks.
The experience was useful because it helped me realize that my true passion was editorial. I went on to pen a (very short) series of stories set in a ballet school, a novel about a crime-solving girl and her imaginary friend Beaver, and a sequel to Little Women. When I was ten my family moved from Montreal to England and I went to a very posh, academic girls’ school in London, but unfortunately, my enthusiasm waned when it came to learning. I took English Lit as one of my graduating subjects but spelled Prejudice incorrectly all the way through my final exam. At university my attention span was even smaller. I was so excited to be there, living in a house full of friends and have a boyfriend, that I forgot to go to lectures or write most of my papers. That was the first time I thought I might not be completely stupid, when I still managed to leave with an honors degree in Sociology from the University of Sussex.
After graduating I bounced around the London media industry for a couple of years, working as a temp for RCA Records and Island Music, as well as Good Morning Britain and the BBC Visual Effects Dept, where Doctor Who’s dog K-9 scooted around my desk. It was fun, but made me think about what I really wanted to do, and the answer was write. Looking back, I realize how privileged I was to be living in a time when there were more jobs than applicants, and I’ve always been good at talking my way into things, so … I managed to get a job as the editorial assistant in a small publishing company.
I had no relevant experience or qualifications, but remember thinking “how hard can it be?” Harder than anticipated! The first duty I was given was to help my male boss lose weight. He explained that he would click his fingers when he wanted a cup of tea and I was to go into the kitchen and make it, reducing the amount of sugar by a few grains each time, so that he would not notice as his drinks became less and less sweet. I lasted barely a month and felt a huge failure until I learned that my successor had walked out on her second day after hurling the Oxford English Dictionary at him.
My next publishing job was secretary to the editor of Living Magazine, and that helped me to talk my way into writing freelance features for young women’s magazines. My first celebrity interview was with a DJ called Peter Powell. I turned up with twenty questions scrawled on a large lined pad and no pen, shorthand skills, or tape recorder—long before the days of mobile phones. A few minutes into the embarrassment he asked if this was my first time interviewing anyone and when, with scarlet cheeks, I admitted that it was, Powell ordered champagne, gave me some good advice, and filled in the answers to the questions himself.
I then worked on various other women’s mags. In 1985 I wrote to an up-and-coming publishing company with an idea for “a magazine like Vogue for 16-year-olds who shopped in affordable stores”, and bingo—I was the launch editor of LOOKS magazine. It was beyond exciting, putting together writers and designers to execute my vision, and we had a blast. I went on to conceive and launch more magazines, and decide whether to kill or resuscitate struggling ones.
Art. I wanted to be a visual artist. Art had been my favorite subject at school and was still in the back of my mind. Some might have seen this as a mid-life crisis, but art became all I could think about. So … I went to Central St Martins and Camberwell Colleges of Art, made two meters tall standing stones out of clay, hanging elasticated sculptures out of latex, and some of my most precious friends.
By the time I graduated, London had lost its appeal and I wanted to live in the country. Although I’d been in England for thirty-four years, I still had a Canadian passport, so my next move was from central London to the woods of Southern Ontario, where I have worked as a practicing artist and educator for over twenty years.
Even when my main interest was visual, I was still writing. Writing has been a mainstay of my identity since I was a child. My basement has a trunk packed with journals. There are three shelves of notebooks in my studio. A few years ago I sat down at my laptop and started typing about my younger life, which developed into a novel—a therapy novel that no one else needs to read, but it gave me a taste. That’s when I enrolled in Humber College’s Post Graduate Writing Diploma.
The idea for my soon-to-be-published book, Coming of Age … Again, came during COVID. There are too few novels with older protagonists, and they are seldom sexually active, and that’s what I wanted to address.
Finding a publisher isn’t easy, especially when you’re an older debut author writing about sex and relationships for a mature readership, but I finally found someone willing to take the risk. Coming of Age … Again is due for publication next year and I am now I’m working on my second book, written for the same demographic.
