Funnily enough, it all began very casually over dinner at an Indian restaurant in Los Angeles. A friend of mine said he was thinking of writing a vampire story. Normally a nonfiction writer, he thought it might be a fun exercise. I nodded sagely and ate some curry, thinking… Hey, I bet I could write a vampire novel. Something with lots of history and heaps of eerie stuff! 

So I had a good think – how could a vampire bring together his past, present, and future into one place? It had to be a storied, historic place that hadn’t changed all that much over the centuries. Once I had devised Hawkesmoor Castle as that place, I was off and running!

My friend never did write his vampire novel. Still, the conversation produced Hawkesmoor – an excellent turning point in life’s little interactions!

Hawkesmoor was born of the things that I absorbed as a child. I grew up with parents who were both fascinated by all things paranormal. Their library had a large collection of books about ghosts, cryptozoology and all things speculative.

My Welsh mother, from the time she was quite young, was fascinated by Celtic mythology and all manner of things eerie. As I was growing up, she enjoyed telling me all about the secret world of Anglesey in Wales and the ancient legends of Celtic elementals such as the Moon goddess, Ceridwen, the horse goddess, Rhiannon and the Tylwyth Teg – elemental spirits who guarded inter-dimensional portals in Wales. All of this rich background is woven into my writing in Hawkesmoor.

That was the foundation of my interest. I just grew up with the paranormal – not as an experiencer of genuine phenomena or anything like that, but with the ideas all around me, in one form or another.

As a writer, it’s a thrill to pull back the veil and allow the reader a look into these hidden realms. And it was great fun to create a character who has unearthly powers like Robin Dashwood!

I’ve been writing ever since I was thirteen years old. For a long time it was purely for pleasure and to fill time between ballet rehearsals. Other dancers liked to knit or crochet legwarmers while waiting, but I was utterly hopeless at that.

All the short stories and novel fragments I wrote betwen rehearsals taught me a lot about writing and helping me to find my own style. I published serious theatre criticism for Salem Press and that emboldened me to write some plays that were produced on Los Angeles stages.

Hawkesmoor is my first published novel. I’ve found the process of moving from wannabe author to published author absolutely thrilling – the culmination of a dream.

In addition to writing, I am the artistic director of a regional ballet company. With some luck, I will still be the artistic director after the Coronavirus is over! The company has taken a serious hit after cancelling our spring season and our fingers are crossed that we can bounce back in time for the annual perfomance of “Nutcracker.”

In the course of my ballet career I danced for various American companies, but I also continued to write between rehearsals. Many dancers knit or crocheted between our endless rehearsals, but I’d plop down in a corner to write.

When I finally retired from the stage I become a choreographer and formed my own ballet company in Los Angeles. I gathered together a small group of retired professionals like myself, and we built a company that was completely unique at the time. In those days, the only new ballets deemed “artistically valid” were contemporary abstracts in which dancers moved to music, without any story. But I wanted to create ballets about people who had fascinating stories and challenges to overcome. So we created completely original ballets featuring fresh stories and characters, and set them to music never before used for ballets.

Over the next 25 years, we would tell all sorts of stories from giddy 1920s comedies to Medieval tragedies and Edwardian murder mysteries. We developed a cult following in Los Angeles and audiences loved the vivid characters, soaring music and beautiful period settings.

After creating so many of these ballet stories, I eventually came to realize I had been writing all along! And shortly after our final performance I picked up a notebook and started the first pages of what would become Hawkesmoor.

I once punched Johnny Lydon (Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols) in the mouth at a nightclub. This was absolutely ages ago – back in the 1980s when I sang in various bands in all sorts of nightclubs. Chalk it up to the general swagger and obnoxiousness of youth!