My writing is intricately connected with my life, which is why so many of these answers are biographical! My life spills into my writing; my stories bubble up from the place where all those experiences are stored. So, if you want to know what makes me a writer, you should know the following:
The Sugar Planter's Daughter
I was born and grew up in Guyana, South America. It was then British Guiana, a British colony, and anyone who shared that background would agree it was the best place in the world to have a childhood! Such a mellow, soft, friendly atmosphere among flowers and animals and lovely people and music and good food. Guyana now provides the backdrop to most of my novels.
As a teenager I rebelled against everything: society, school, my father's radicalism, my mother's too liberal parenting - yes, it's possible to rebel against a parent who lets you do everything you want! Coming of age in the sixties was exhilarating and a time I wouldn't have missed for all the world, despite some of the silly things I got up to. I was the quintessential hippy: I tuned in, turned on, and dropped out. The latter, quite literally.
When I was 18 I found work as a journalist for a local Guyanese newspaper. I saved some money and with a couple of friends went off on an extended trip around South America. It started in the Amazon and (in my case) ended up, over a year later, in a jail in Colombia -- a long story which I'll tell another time. We travelled on the cheap, lived on the cheap, going wherever the wind blew us. We were at Macchu Piccu long before it was overrun by tourists - we dropped acid (LSD) for the first time at the very top, where there's a big alter in honour of the Inca's Sun God. We lived for half a year in a commune of mostly Americans in Ecuador. It was all pretty crazy, but unforgettable! One of the most surreal events of that time was running into Mohammad Ali - yes, THE Muhammad Ali - on a Lima street and being invited to spend the day with him. And yes, he really is one of the funniest, wisest, most entertaining and lovable people I've ever met! And no, I didn't take a selfie of us together! I learned to simply throw myself at life during this trip, and that's how I write as well: I thrown myself into a story, not knowing where it will go, and always surprised at the outcome!
I am literally tongue-tied! My tongue has a little skin on the underside that binds it close to the floor of my mouth: it's called lingual frenulum. This makes it hard for me to speak quickly, and led to a reluctance to speak when I was a child, to mumbling and stuttering. I was very self-conscious about speaking as a child, and avoided it whenever I could. I still do. I'm that person in a group who says nothing or very little, which tends to make people judge me as either stupid or boring, mostly the latter. I've always admired people who can speak eloquently and quickly and used to feel a tremendous pressure to speak up while being too shy to do so. This is one of the reasons I turned to writing - I can express myself much better in writing than in speech. I did have the lingual frenulum cut when I was older, but it didn't help much.
I once lived on a farm in a very remote district of Guyana, practically in the rainforest near the Venezuelan border. Also quite near to the place where Jim Jones founded his People's Temple retreat and those terrible mass suicides took place. That story became a novel, still unpublished.
Probably related to the speech problems I mentioned earlier, I'm very introverted. As a child I would sit for ages trying to figure out the great philosophical questions of all ages: Who am I? What is mind? What are thoughts? Where do they come from? So it was inevitable perhaps that I discovered Yoga when I was 18, and never turned back! This was at a time when Yoga was practically unknown in the West, and people would tease and mock me when I spoke of it, so in the end I just did it secretly. It changed my life around; I had been overweight, and immediately lost all my excess weight. I also stopped both drinking and smoking, both of which had been problematic.
When I was 21 I wanted to get deeper into the spiritual teaching behind Yoga, so in 1973 I took off again, this time to India. I flew to England and from there travelled overland with some friends, through Europe and then Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Another unforgettable trip! I lived for almost two years in an Ashram in South India. I met some extraordinary people. I found answers to my questions, and worked hard on my self-esteem and self-image problems. And eventually led to the confidence to become a writer.
I love nature. I love nothing more than a walk through the forest, or just sitting on a beach watching the sea roll in and out. My favourite beaches are in the Caribbean - Guyana actually counts as a Caribbean country so I've been to a few of the islands and just seeing the sea makes me expand and feel myself again. Mountains are a close second, though! I like watching them more than climbing them. The most beautiful country in the world for me is Switzerland. I also love flowers, especially roses. I can look at a beautiful rose, smell it, and I am in immediate bliss!
Most authors can't wait to give up the day job. I'm the opposite: I started writing as a stay-at-home mother when my daughter was five, as I finally had the time to write. I never went back to work while my kids were growing up, and kept on writing throughout their youth. But then at 62 I returned to Germany and went back to work as a social worker in a hospital. Earlier this year I took on a second job in a home for unaccompanied underage refugees. So, just as my writing career took off, I went back to work! Incidentally, my work with the refugees has been one of the most rewarding and interesting jobs I've ever done. I love those kids!
I love growing older! I have no time for women who complain about being invisible when they turn 50 - who cares whether others see me or not, ignore me or not! Maybe because I always was a wallflower that I find the sense of finally growing into myself, of fullness and ripeness that has come with my sixties simply wonderful. Life has been full of ups and downs and I wouldn't exchange a day of it for an extended youth. I suppose I'm lucky in that my health is good and hopefully it will stay that way for a further ten years at least as my life feels as if it's just beginning! I'll be 65 in September and I retire next year and I can't wait to see what's around the next corner. I'm not a planner and I have no idea where I'll end up, not even in which country. I'm ready to be surprised! All the people I've most admired in my life have been in their 80's. I'm hoping my 80's too - if I reach them --will be special.