About
Becoming an author is a change of tack for me. I grew up in Somerset West, a town cradled by the Hottentots Holland Mountain range, close to Cape Town in South Africa, and graduated from the University of Cape Town in 1982 with a BA in English and Psychology. After dabbling in journalism and personnel, I found my niche in IT and marched up the career ranks. The next couple of decades passed in a blur of motherhood, sailing, and co-founding one of country's first Internet Service Providers (ISPs). During this time, I qualified as a BS 7799 Information Security Lead Auditor with the British Standards Institute (BSI) and helped to introduce the IT security standard into South Africa. The only things I wrote were programming code, exams, and business-related documents.
I particularly enjoy reading historical fiction. It makes the past fascinatingly accessible. Growing up under the apartheid regime, the history we were taught at school was abysmal. I felt the lack. Slowly the dream of writing Cape-based historical fiction emerged.
Overwhelmed by the task of actually writing a whole book, I took the baby steps of doing a few courses and entering a Woman & Home short story competition. Cape Doctor was published along with the other Top Ten entries (Days of Sunshine, Caxton Magazines, 2012). Writing about Doctor James Barry crystallised my desire to showcase our strong, inspirational women.
While down an internet research rabbit hole, I stumbled across Margaret Cairn’s fascinating articles on the life of Catharina Ustings, a young widow from Lübeck in Germany who arrived in the Cape in 1662, just ten years after the Dutch East India Company had founded their refreshment station there. I had found my heroine. My sincerest wish is that Lioness, my novel of her travels, trials, husbands and children, keeps you as entranced as I was when I first encountered this remarkable lady.
After helping to negotiate a Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) deal for the ISP and launch an international yacht delivery company, I relocated to Plettenberg Bay in the Garden Route. When I’m not immersed in writing, you can usually find me walking on a beach with my husband, hiking on the Robberg Peninsula, in the sea, or in a Pilates or yoga class.
Lioness
New Release
Catharina Ustings, a young German widow, leaves Lübeck and sets out for Batavia in the Dutch East Indies. After five interminable months at sea, the Hof van Zeeland eventually drops anchor in Table Bay in 1662. She decides to remain behind at the Cape of Good Hope refreshment station. The untamed environment claims an alarming number of subsequent husbands; each death leaving her with yet more children. Negotiating a patriarchal society, draconian Company laws, and simmering inter-racial tensions, she needs to find an alternative route for her family - not just to survive - but to thrive.
