Author

Psychological

Journalist

Thrillers

Maggie began telling stories before she started school. Even her paper dolls wound up having imaginary adventures because a country girl without live playmates needed someone to share her world.

Lacking experience with children, she mistakenly channeled her love of language and learning into teaching elementary school. Upon discovering teachers are expected to be patient, she quit teaching. Now she packs her grandchildren off when they learn to walk and welcomes them back after high school graduation.

Not that the separation is complete, of course. Raised with the firm belief that idle hands are a waste, evening frequently finds her, surrounded by cats, plying her knitting needles, crochet hook, or quilting frames, especially if the television is showing a good mystery. As a result the little girls in her life have Barbies with extensive wardrobes and her boys get sweaters decorated with dinosaurs and pockets. Her big ‘kid’ prefers Aran patterns and hand knit toques.

She found housekeeping boring. While her toddlers napped, she wrote. The practice honed her language skills and confirmed her interest in a new profession. Graduation from Sheridan College’s journalism program set her on the road to a lengthy career as an award-winning reporter/photographer for daily and weekly newspapers in the Toronto area covering everything from municipal council meetings to visits from the prime minister, school concerts to fires, and murder trials.

Work got temporarily de-railed when first her husband, and then her parents, succumbed to age and illness. When she returned to the job scene, it was as a notetaker for deaf college and university students studying everything from world religions and forensics, to molecular biology and calculus.

These days she loves to travel – by plane, train, boat, or even balloon. But no motorcycles, thank you. Britain, Europe, Alaska and Australia have all provided ideas for setting which can be combined with material from her reporting days and – with a little manipulating – turned into a juicy novel.