ABOUT ME
At 60, I started writing a novel. I'd never written fiction before.
I'm French Canadian. English is my second language. I wasn't the reader at school — I was the mother inventing wild bedtime stories my children still remember. For most of my life, the imagination found its container in oil paint. Bold colour. Emotion on canvas. The things I couldn't say.
Then a story arrived that wanted prose, not paint. A young protagonist. A world. A pattern I could feel before I could see it. So I sat down and started writing it the only way I knew how — the way I paint. No plan, no map, just colour and trust.
That book is called The Shapes Between the Trees. A YA epic fantasy. Currently in revision — Pass 0 of 6 — on a 30-week schedule.
I'm not here as someone who has arrived. I'm here as someone in the middle of the becoming.
This space holds both lives. The paintings, made over years. The novel, in the making now. The retrospective of how I got here, and the dispatches from where I am. The pantser's confessions. The almost-mistakes. The slow, patient work of letting a story become the book it wanted to be.
If you are writing your first novel — or thinking about it, or quietly dreaming about it — pull up a chair.
It's never too late.
My recommendation: Version 2. It's the one that does the work. Same hook line as your Instagram Post 1 ("At 60,