About Me

When my Dad, my last surviving parent, passed away some years ago, I had the task of going through all his belongings to recover anything personal before the house was emptied and sold. I spent the day searching drawers and cabinets, digging through the contents of boxes and checking between the pages of his many books

I discovered a treasure throve of old photographs, letters, notes, postcards, and—to my delight— my great-grandmother’s diary, written in a beautiful cursive lettering. Most importantly, I came across a small stack of blue school essay-books that my mother had kept in a cabinet in her office. They were filled with my earliest writings. Since some of these stories and vignettes were penned at the ages of eleven and twelve, you can say that my journey as a writer began early.

I was born in a town called Vejle, situated next to a scenic fjord on the east coast of the Denmark’s Jutland Peninsula. When I was eight, I moved with my family further north to a small town with about 1200 inhabitants called Ranum. It was located some three kilometres from the shore of Limfjorden, a long stretch of water that separates the northernmost part of the peninsula from the rest of the mainland.

The idyllic green forests of my early childhood had been replaced by an open landscape where trees on the fringes of town were shaped by the fierce wind that often blew in from the unforgiving North Sea twenty kilometres to the west. The winters, I remember, could be brutal, with snowdrifts that would at times cover our front door, and the summers were cooler than in the southern and eastern parts of the country. Yet I came to love this harshness of nature and I still consider the eight years I spent here my formative years. Anyone who has grown up in a small town knows what a unique experience it is. I came to appreciate the sense of community and feeling of belonging I found there.

As soon as I learned how to read, I couldn’t get my hands on enough books to quench my thirst for knowledge and adventure. I read voraciously. My school’s modest collection of children’s books were soon read and reread. I finally turned to the town’s library, which was located in a single room above the local senior care home and was run by my school’s math teacher and his wife. The library’s small collection mostly consisted of adult fiction.

Armed with my mother’s library card and under the guise of borrowing books for her, I scoured the shelves. The limited children’s collection of reading material at this point held no sway over me. I remember reading The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas when I was ten years old. Granted, some of the words went over my head, but there were plenty of sword fights, as well as intrigue and romance. When my mother caught me reading What Makes Sammy Run by the American writer Budd Schulberg, she tore it out of my hands, telling me that that was quite enough. Of course it made me want to read the book even more, so I would sneak into the living room when my parents were sleeping, pull the book from its shelf and bring it with me to bed, where I read it with the help of a flash light. Needless to say, reading has always been an important part of my life.

At age sixteen, I moved with my family from the Jutland peninsula to Denmark’s biggest island, Zealand, where the capital of Copenhagen is located. I again lived amongst a landscape of lush greenery and lazy streams in a town on the east coast called Naestved. What I remember most about the four years I spent here though was how fiercely I missed northern Jutland!

I wrote my first novel at age 19 and, full of excitement and a feeling of great accomplishment, I sent the manuscript off to a publisher in Copenhagen. A couple of months later, the manuscript was returned to me with a very kind rejection letter. Disappointed, I put the bundle of pages away and soon out of my mind as I busied myself with my studies.

Much later in life, I wondered about the manuscript and what had happened to it. What I found quite aggravating was that I didn’t even remember anymore what the story I had written was about. At one point, I asked my parents if they had come across the bundle, but they didn’t remember having seen it. This manuscript was also one of the items I found among my father’s belongings after his passing. It was hidden away in the bottom of a big blue trunk, underneath the letters, books and papers I had left behind at my parent’s address when I moved out on my own. I didn’t even remember having put it there.

I spent the last four years of my life in Denmark in Copenhagen studying for my degree in library science. This four-year study included two periods of work-study which took place in the second and third year. Together with a classmate, I decided to spend the final two months of the last practicum in a library outside of Denmark. We applied at the San Francisco and Los Angeles public library systems. Los Angeles accepted us.

I stayed four months in Los Angeles and the first two of those were spent working in the music department in the Central Library, located between Grant Avenue and Flower Street. It was during this time that I met my future husband, a Canadian living in Los Angeles. When I had finished my degree in Denmark we got married and I immigrated to the United States.

During my first years living in Los Angeles, I studied fine arts at a university and worked part time in their library. After I had children, I decided to stay at home to take care of them.
During my seventeen years living in California my desire to express myself in writing never waned and I kept on writing. I also took classes in creative writing at a local college and attended writers’ groups.

It was not really before I came to Canada that I began pursuing my writing in a serious manner with an eye towards eventually publishing. I give great credit to the writer’s group at the Shadbolt Centre in Burnaby for helping me to hone my writing skills and providing me with a sense of direction. It was during this time that I realized I most enjoyed writing for children and young adults.

I’ve won prizes and honourable mentions for my short fiction. Lost in Barkerville is my first published book.