a. Thanks to my expatriate parents, I’ve bounced around the globe like a Ping Pong ball. Now I’ve finally settled in Chania’s Old Town on the island of Crete in Greece with my Yorkshire Terrier. I’m a Pisces so I like doing things in my own way, at my own pace. I thoroughly dislike being rushed. I enjoy writing postcards and actual handwritten letters (I’m old fashioned that way) and what people call Chick Lit.

b. I’ve recently finished writing my first novel “Change of Pace”, which was inspired by my move from Singapore to a miniscule seaside village in Crete. In Change of Pace Anna Cox, turns thirty, gets dumped and fired in one unfortunate week. She subsequently books a last-minute one-way ticket to Greece in a moment of uncharacteristic spontaneity and winds up on a Greek island.

c. When I’m not scribbling down story ideas or walking Taxi Driver (my Yorkie) I’m wearing my Financial Controller hat at Essen&Essen – a coaching and mentoring company.

d. Excerpt from Change of Pace (Anna contemplating her new life) :

Time moves differently here. Hours and minutes seem less relevant. Days float and blend into one another. Of course, I am still aware of time ticking inexorably away as it always does. Here it does so more gently though, with more consideration and grace. Even the alarm clock on my nightstand, which I’ve set to ring at seven o’clock in the morning, wakes me with a less brutal ring than the one I have back home.

e. In ten years time I hope to have written another ten novels! That’s my goal. Now I just have to roll up my sleeves, focus, and get to work. Some days, that is easier to say than do. But nothing worth doing in life comes easily.