Hello! Welcome to my website, where you can find information on my books and plays, and current teaching projects. First though, let me introduce myself.
The child of Canadian
diplomats, I grew up with three brothers in Canada, the United States,
Spain, England, the Czech Republic and Cuba. Educational stints in a
Draconian French Lycee in Madrid and a Dickensian British boarding,
coupled with holidays behind the Iron Curtain at the height of the Cold
War, have equipped me to write about the conflicts between love and power, truth and justice, image and identity. I hope my books are entertaining and high quality literature. The facts that both my novels have been
award finalists, and that one of my plays was banned and then published
and studied in India encourage me.
You can meet Vanessa, the main character is my novel The Oak Island Affair, and see some photos further down this page. For more book information go to my Books & Plays Page.
I have taught creative
writing at the Haliburton School of the Arts and at Trent University,
and spent several years as an Ontario Arts Council Artist in Education,
taking a creative writing/drama project into farflung Ontario schools,
including Ministik School in Moose Factory.
For information on my new Creativity In Writing course, scroll down this page.
Creativity in Writing Course
Story is one of the most powerful forces in human life, and the sun is shining, the birds are singing. Now's the time to dig out the stories you haven’t finished, to weed out the obstacles keeping your dreams from coming to life on paper, to make writing your priority. Creativity in Writing, at the Haliburton School of the Arts this summer, marries the nuts and bolts of story construction with exercises that take you to the place where your unique creative energy lives. The course will run July 4 - 8.
Bring your story’s characters to life. Free yourself from self-censorship and connect with the creativity that fuels your writing. Then practise the writing techniques you need to shape your project. All this will happen in a constructive, supportive environment that always turns out to be a lot of fun. Whatever your project, whether it’s fiction, non-fiction or memoir, and whatever your writing experience, come and enjoy a week devoted to your writing life. Flex your creative muscles and go home with a story well on its way to completion.
There will also be time for one-on-one consultation with me. I have taught creative writing at a variety of Canadian venues for many years, and have worked with a wide assortment of writers. To register go to www.hsta.ca or call 1-866-353-6464. If you would like to discuss the course ask the school for my contact information.
2008 Indie Book Award finalist
HELP CHILDREN LEARN TO READ
My novel, The Oak Island Affair, a finalist in both the General Fiction and Action Adventure categories of the 2008 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, is helping to raise money for Network for Africa's learning centre in Rwanda, where 35 - 50 genocide orphans and homeless youths go six days a week to learn how to read and write English so they can use the internet to create a new future. The novel uses the real 213-year old, multi-million dollar treasure hunt on Canada's Oak Island as a metaphor for its main character's search for the essence of love. The Rwandan centre, a project of love, is a real treasure.
Click on the book's cover to go to the Books and Plays page, where you can order The Oak Island Affair.
WEBSITE: AAGH! Something's pushing! My cyber-skin's splitting--! A hand! A head--!
VANESSA: Phew! (Looks around) Hello.
WEBSITE: What? Who are you?
VANESSA: Don't you recognize me? I'm Vanessa, from Jane's new novel, The Oak Island Affair, and I thought why stay cooped up in a book--?
WEB: Not Vanessa Holt, the main character?
VAN: That's right, and look, I've brought pictures.
WEB: Suffering syntax! Capering keyboards!
VAN: This is Oak Island from the air. That's Joudrey's cove in the upper left corner.
WEB: It looks like a pretty scrubby place--
VAN (laughs): You got that right. Those white buildings in the middle are where the treasure shafts have been sunk--
WEB: For 213 years, by so many different treasure hunting groups.
VAN: That's Smith Cove to the right, where they found the remains of an ancient coffer dam and the opening of a flood tunnel to the main shaft. This picture was taken in winter. This next shot is of the bay at Chester, where my Gran lived.
VAN: And this is our boat, Dancer, on the way to Oak Island. See, there's Joudrey's Cove dead ahead.
And there below is the Joudrey's Cove beach--
WEB (excited): Where you and Brigit landed, and you found--
VAN: Shsh, Web! Don't give anything away. Look, here's the original treasure shaft.
Fall in there and you'd be lost forever.
WEB: Who'd know more about that than you!
VAN: Web please! This last one shows the inside of that white building, where the latest shaft is. It's called Borehole 10X. See the top of the shaft, and the steel casing they sank to try to keep the walls of the shaft from caving in? Not that it worked.
WEB: Think of how many lives have been sunk down that hole. And now a new Michigan consortium is sinking even more money into Oak Island.
VAN: "And still the little island guards her secret," to put it in Jane's words.
WEB: Right. So let's hope they read the book! Did you know people are staying up until 2 am reading it?
VAN: I better get back. Now it's got a gold sticker on the cover. I wonder what that's going to mean for me?
Vanessa's gone back into The Oak Island Affair, but you can reach her by clicking on my Contact Me page. You should know that she is a magazine writer who grew up in Spain and was fleeing an unravelling relationship when she discovered a 400-year old diary written by a failed Spanish Dominican monk in the attic of her grandmother's house in Chester, Nova Scotia. This rekindled her obsession with a mystery that has brought treasure hunters, and investors such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, to Oak Island from Canada, the United States and Europe for the last 200 years.
Vanessa arrived at a new solution to the Oak Island mystery by learning to see beyond the barriers of reason. This plunged her into underworld depths from which "there was no turning back, where the rules of the surface world do not apply."
Click on my Books & Plays page to read the first chapter of The Oak Island Affair.
To see reviews of my work and what students are saying about my creative writing classes, click on the Reviews page. To talk to me, click on Contact Me.
Thanks for your visit, Jane, Web, Vanessa, and all the others
