In Grade 9 I discovered the book that would have a lasting effect on my life as both a reader and a writer. On our reading list for English class was Cue For Treason by Geoffrey Trease, a spy adventure story set in Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre during the reign of Elizabeth the First. It was meant to introduce us to the Elizabethan world before we read our first Shakespeare play, but for me it was a revelation. First it showed me that history was not about the dates and facts we were memorizing in History class; it was about people’s lives. And if those people lived in exciting times, it was also about adventure, mystery and danger. For years I had been playing around at writing stories – on my own because we did almost no creative writing in school in those days. Now, suddenly, I knew just what kind of stories I wanted to write—stories set in the past full of the same exciting mixture of mystery and danger that Trease
used in his books. That book set me on a fruitful course. All through high school and university I wrote stories, long and short. A number were published in school year books but it was many years after graduation before I held in my hands my first novel, A Question of Loyalty. Nevertheless, the seeds for that first published book were sown by the books that fed my imagination all through childhood.
