November | 2014 | gardenliliepub

This is Heather Grace Stewart! I found this Canadian author on WordPress, and read her poetry book a couple years ago. I even left her my first review that I ever wrote. I had no idea I’d be posting a short interview about her further accomplishments. She is bubbly and vivacious and gets her work out there for others to see and enjoy.

Though she’s trained as a journalist, Heather Grace Stewart has been writing creatively since she was five years old, and says “I don’t see myself stopping any time soon.” She’s had a screenplay, two nonfiction books, a children’s book of poems, and four collections of poetry published. How incredible!

Here’s more about her on her blog. Have a look.

In June 2014, Morning Rain Publishing published her first novel, Strangely, Incredibly Good (a romantic comedy/fantasy). It reached #10 in humorous fiction on Kobo and #28 in Women’s Fiction>Action& Adventure on Kindle. She’s now working on a sequel. Here is more info on Strangely, Incredibly Good. All her books are available in ebook and print format.

A portion of the proceeds from sales of her first two poetry collections go to educating children in developing countries.
You can learn more about Heather and her collections at her website.

In her free time, Heather loves to hang out with her husband and daughter, take photos, scrapbook, cartoon, inline skate, dance like nobody’s watching, and eat Swedish Berries — usually (but not always) and not at the same time.

Below is her book cover:1.) What are your hopes and dreams for your writing? Your child?

I hope to touch readers with my words. I like to entertain, and provide an escape. I think my novel Strangely, Incredibly Good does that, and I hope the sequel will, too. People have said that some of my poems have helped them through tough times. That’s why I do this. I don’t expect fame or lots of money from book royalties—that’s quite rare these days. I write because it’s my passion, and I hope that that passion can make a few people laugh, cry as a release, and help them through difficult times.

As for my daughter – I hope she finds love and joy in whatever she chooses to do, and I hope she learns faster than I did that high heels are great for sitting and looking pretty, but a waste of money if you expect to get any serious work done in them. lol.

2.) What do you love about Canada and do you think that spills over into your writing?

Oh gosh, what a fantastic question! I love how down to earth most Canadians are. Literally, down to earth as in cottage camping loving outdoorsy people, but also, we say it like it is. We’re used to roughin’ it, so, at least in my experience living here, snobbery is uncommon. It’s more like, “Pass the s’mores and bug spray and then we’ll go check out the summer sales at Canadian Tire.” lol. So I’d say strength, resilience and humour come from being Canadian, and spills over into a lot of my writing.

3.) You appear young by the photo of you and your child, please tell us about a perfect or fun date?

Young! Okay, I’ll take that, thank you! I’m 42, which is the new 30 right? 🙂 I’m definitely young at heart. I feel like I’m a teenager, but I don’t think I would fit in in high school any more. I don’t put up with BS like I used to.

A perfect date for me and hubby is ordering a pizza, or Lebanese food (mmm garlic) and opening a bottle of red wine. Then we either sit out back in our gazebo and listen to the crickets & birds in our backyard, or, we put on a movie. In my 30s, before I had our daughter, I loved clubs and pubs, and I still enjoy good beer with friends at a pub, and a chance to dress up in a little black dress and heels, but honestly, the most relaxing evening for me is spent at home.

Heather Grace Stewart

Poet & Novelist

Thank you Heather for giving us a glimpse into your life and books! Good luck on the sequel, too!

~Caroline

~photo credits per HGS

I am pleased to present a writer from France that I found on WordPress! I wrote a brief review for her short story titled ‘Enders.’ She’s an amazing writer based upon this alone, but she is much, much more.

My brief interview:

1. You have a family and pets; how many children and what are their ages? Any quirky or fun facts, please share. How many and which types of pets?

I have five children. The eldest is twenty-five, the youngest just turned fourteen. I’m sorry but if I gave out any fun facts about them my life wouldn’t be worth living! The number of pets is debatable. There are three residents, a rescue Spanish greyhound and two cats picked up (literally) in the street outside. Branwell is semi-resident, refusing to move in unless the dog goes. I’m not sure how many roof cats we feed as many of them look pretty similar. They are known generically as The Fluffies.

2. Please tell us about the transition from England to France, how you coped, language problems, etc. Are women different in these two countries?

My parents moved to England when I was a baby, and I claim honorary Yorkshire nationality. My first job when I left university was in the wine trade. Husband (to be), who was still a student in France thought it was a brilliant idea, assuming it would be a doddle to get posted to France. It wasn’t a doddle, partly because the wine trade in UK is about selling wine to people in UK, not swanning around in foreign parts. I did get sent to Paris after about a year of pestering by bluffing my way through an interview. The head of the Paris office was so thrilled at the opportunity to show off his English, the interview to test my level of French was carried out exclusively in English!

The language turned out not to be a problem although my French was pretty rudimentary to begin with. The ‘total immersion’ treatment is the only way to get the hang of a language properly and quickly.

I’m not sure what you mean about French women being different. French society is certainly very different to British society, much more deferential and ‘traditional’ in many ways. What first struck me about French women was how feminine they appeared. I arrived with my Doc Martens and army surplus bought at Camden Lock and found myself surrounded by women, even elderly women bustling around in high heels, glitzy outfits and a lot of makeup. It made me smarten up my act when we lived in Paris, but I’m old enough now not to care what people think of the way I dress, and the Doc Martens are back.

3. I’ve read one short story of yours, are all your books in the same genre filled with angst, desolation and emotional tugs?

They are certainly all emotionally charged, though with the desolation I think we touched bottom in The Subtle Fiend. I like emotion and if it’s missing in a book that I’m reading I don’t enjoy it. The Green Woman series is about the defeat of a regime that embodies many of the things I find abhorrent—misogyny, segregation, intolerance, religious fascism, and social tyranny. It was never going to be a bundle of laughs. The series that picks up the story three years later, set in the utopia founded by the refugees from Providence, is lighter in tone. Perhaps because the story is about defending something good rather than destroying something evil, and the villains are for the most part human beings, flawed like all human beings, but never wholly bad.

If you want to get an idea of the world of The Green Woman you can’t do better than read the first volume of the trilogy, The Dark Citadel. But if a whole novel written by an unknown quantity seems daunting, try a short story like Midnight Visitors to get a feel of what Providence is like and of my writing style.

Here’s the trailer for The Dark Citadel

In grim grey Providence Deborah dreams
Subversive dreams of a beauty lost.
To feed their darkness the Demon’s priests
Must quench Deborah’s light, her life the cost.

Jonah is waiting in the desert wastes
To take her hand and guide her through
Abaddon’s perils that lurk in the night
To the Green Woman’s Garden where dreams come true.

They march with an army of legends and myths
In their hearts a weapon the Demon fears.
Armed with their love they can change the world
Though the road to victory be bathed in tears.

by Jane Dougherty

Thank you for visiting the gardenlilie blog. Hopefully, you learned something about Jane Dougherty and caught a glimpse of her riveting written words. I know I learned the phrase Raison d’etre, which means reason for existence in French, when I read her Enders story. Below are the links for her books on Amazon.

~Caroline/gardenlilie blog

The Amazon links

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Citadel-Green-Woman-Book-ebook/dp/B00JW86TYM

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Dark-Citadel-Green-Woman-ebook/dp/B00JW86TYM

And links for Midnight Visitors
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Midnight-Visitors-Jane-Dougherty-ebook/dp/B00K8DYOC4

http://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Visitors-Jane-Dougherty-ebook/dp/B00K8DYOC4