The work milieu having been stressful and family life no great consolation, two alternatives presented themselves, to wit, hitting the bottle or picking up the pen. After due consideration, I chose the pen, but then I was almost used to it, at least since boarding school days in England, when our history teacher, the inestimable Miss E, whose middle name was Sarcasm, who was Australian and built like a tank, thought we were too dim to read books on social history and made us learn about it by reading historical novels instead. For me, it was a short step to trying to write my own, as an escape from Colditz, which was what we not-so-affectionately termed the institution we were imprisoned in. The juvenilia of those days turned into full blown tales much later, and the sheer discipline of undertaking proper research into everything from buildings to biscuits itself became a therapy. As this therapeutic process went on for rather a long time, the characters built up in the stories began to write their own parts; I just willingly held that aforementioned pen.

Granted, I wrote primarily for my own sanity and pleasure, rather than for a market according to rules invented by – whom? Critics, intellectuals, the book industry? I do not know the answer, but when I read what some of them write about other authors, who would supposedly be my ‘rivals’, I feel rather unhappy about it all. As I do not entirely obey all their rules, would that make me an Indie Author?

In any wise, it occurred to me that other stressed-out folk might even be amused or at least diverted by what I had produced and am still producing, so here it is, and there is more to come. A famed author once said that the story mattered most of all. I would presume to add that variety counts for a great deal. Thus, here you will find folk with huge amounts of wealth and power which have given them a deep sense of heritage, and at the other end of the spectrum, people who are plunged into horrendous squalor of the like I hope no-one visiting this site will ever experience.

When writing, one should not assume that one knows more than one’s reader, even if I like being exposed to facts through fiction (big, Australian Miss E’s legacy). However, folk do not go about with a dictionary of period slang or old idioms in their heads, a problem that yours truly encountered and frankly, found irritating. I have tried to account for this when I present my texts.

Bona fide readers, be welcome and pray make this site your port of call.

Anne H.