When I discovered that reading accessed story, I forgot that I "couldn't read" and delighted in the adventures that could be found in books. By the age of 11, I was a book addict who haunted the local library and like all children who over-dose on reading, I penned the overflow. Writing too, became an addiction.
My chosen career would have been in art or journalism but my parents apprenticed me to the local pharmacist when I left school. At the age of 20 I married farmer Ted Cowley, lived on a dairy farm and had four children in almost as many years - Sharon, Edward, Judith and James. In these years I milked cows, changed diapers, made puppets and play dough and wrote short stories in the evenings. One of these stories, reprinted in "Short Story International" was read in New York by Doubleday editor Anne Hutchens who wrote to ask if I had a novel. That query led to five novels published by Doubleday, between 1967 and 1978.
While this was going on, I was also writing stories for my son Edward who was a slow reader. These little stories extended to other children, other schools and by the early 1970s, teachers were making "big books" from them to use with their students. "Can you get these stories published?" they asked.
In 1978 I decided to take 5 years leave from adult novels, to write a children's reading programme with teacher/ editor June Melser. We did the Story Box Reading Programme which was published by Shortland Publications, Auckland, NZ and then The Wright Group, USA. I became deeply involved in early reading and the five years of commitment became twenty years. It was in 1999 that my 6th adult novel was published.
There was much life experience in those years. My marriage to Ted Cowley ended in 1967. In 1970 I married Malcolm Mason, a Wellington writer and accountant who died in 1985. My third marriage in 1989 was to Terry Coles. For many years, Terry and I lived in the Marlborough Sounds in New Zealand's South Island, with an assortment of animals - sheep, chickens, ducks, 8 cats and a dog - and visits from 13 grandchildren.
Recently, we moved back to Wellington and now live beside the harbour, just a stone's throw from the Beehive (Parliament Buildings). Although a three hour ferry ride separates the two writing places, one tends to nurture the other. It is convenient to live in Wellington where everything is in easy walking distance. From the house in the Sounds, an appointment with an editor or a school, demanded at least seven hours of travel. Now it's sometimes less than seven minutes. But the cottage by the sea, two hours from the nearest town, is where my mind jumps into writing mode, and it is here that all the ideas gathered in the city, come alive as story.
I am still writing full-time. These days the creative hours are divided between adult writing - articles, spiritual reflection material, stories and novels - and books for children. I still write graded reading material for schools but I also do picture books and novels, trade titles which children can own. Most weeks, the bulk of writing time is spent answering letters from young friends all over the world, a task that I consider to be more play than work.
