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About me
I was born in Perth, Western Australia on 13th September, 1960. I was the youngest of five children. My father was a pathologist and my mother was first a librarian and then an historian. I grew up in a staunchly Catholic home.
When I was nearly five my parents returned to South Africa and settled in Durban. As a child I loved singing and reading. My mother became the librarian at a teacher's training college, and she brought home piles of the best new children's books for me to read. My father was very clever, and had a photographic memory. He loved to recite poetry over dinner - apart from the English poets he introduced me Homer in Greek, Dante in Italian and Chaucer in Middle English. Sometimes we got some Goethe in German too. Sadly, I suffered from overload and today have an aversion to poetry and poets. I was ten when I wrote my first book. My love for writing only really took off when I was a teenager and had an inspirational English teacher. After school I studied music, and then married Luke Stubbs, who was training to be an Anglican priest. We lived in parishes all over the Western Cape for eighteen years before he left the church to become a publisher of theology. We had three sons called Peter, James and Philip. I began to write when my youngest child was a baby. I spent three years teaching myself the craft of writing, mostly by analyzing successful writer's work. 
When I was forty one I went into therapy. This was the turning point for my writing.
By learning to understand my own emotions, and by allowing childhood wounds to heal, I found that I could focus my creative energy and start writing the way I had always wanted to. I try and write 1000 words a day.
In 2009 Luke died from cancer. We'd been married 25 years and 6 days. It was a very dark and sad time. Now I live alone with two of my sons, my dogs Isidingo (she's my favourite) and Spot (who Philip found in a rubbish bin), and my cat, George (he's really annoying). I like being around children, so I teach part time at St George's Grammar School in Mowbray. I play the piano for assemblies and teach creative writing to a class of gifted writers. I also have lots of friends who are children. I make them cupcakes and fudge and write them stories, a chapter a night emailed at bedtime. I teach writing online through the South African Writer's College. I like helping people to master the art of telling their stories. I love to make things. I have handmade 120 miniature books that I write my secrets in, and once decorated my garden fence with things other people had thrown away. I like to play the piano and to sing jazz, to make people laugh, to tell stories and to shop in charity shops. If you'd like to know more about me, you can read my memoir, 'Here be Lions.' |
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