Meet Bonnie

I grew up reading books. All sorts of them, showing little regard for genre, aurhor, subject matter, or style. I dug into the pile of romance books my Mom always had kicking around, I read Judy Blume, and Margaret Mitchelle in the same week. I thrilled to the dulcid tones of Keats (even if not quite understanding them), and the campy fun of the Jacob Two-Two stories. I read Madeleine L'Engle, and Louisa May Alcott, and Peggy Woodford's heartbreaker "Please Don't Go", while sighing in my bedroom.

I think my youthful, ecclectic approach to reading shows up in my books. My fantastic agent  tells me, "You don't write literary books, you write great stories with a literary voice."

Things get "serious"

I've trained  in Christian Counseling (Emmanuel Bible College, Kitchener, ON), and secular psychology (University of Alberta). 

Later, I was hired by a not-for-profit to develop and write social programs for families at risk. 

The biggest was a  223 page smoking cessation program, Strength to Quit, for the Alberta Government (AADAC) which targets pre and postnatal women. Then I developed and wrote the 200 page Training Manual for the Strength to Quit program which was designed to be used by supervisors and managers not previously familiar with the program or with the strength based approach. 

It was near the end of my contract with the non-profit that the seeds for my new career began to sprout. I was in a meeting with the head of the non-profit and the consultant on the project. The consultant asked me, "What you are going to do when your contract is up?" I immediately replied, "I'm going to write books."

No one was more shocked than I was by my response.

I did two things. I prayed. God said, "Yep. Books."
Then, I told my husband. He said, "Let's get you set up with everything you need." I love my husband.

Things get written

I sat down and wrote two books. One, the non-fiction Working Your Best You: Discover and Develop the Strengths God Gave You.  The second, a novel called Talking to the Dead. Both have found homes with wonderful publishers, and will be available spring and summer 2009. Check back for details! I'm working on the sequel to Talking to the Dead, and it will also be published. How grateful am I?

I also wrote the short story The Stuckville Cafe, which was pubished in Hot Apple Cider, and another short work called Master of the Sneaky Hug, published in the anthology Women of Passions: Ordinary Women Serving an Extraordinary God.