writing Darcy

Darcy , my first published novel, was inspired by a friend's impressions of dating in post war England, of desire and intimacy within a severely constrained situation. 

I wrote it for myself, wrote my heroic relationship, my desire for intimacy, my perceptions about how images of healthy sex are still often repressed. 

This is a book which, despite its profundity, meditations on love and language, exploration of intimacy and contemporary gender roles, is a quick and fun read. A book which will pick you up and read you. In turns gothic and satiric, it is entirely contemporary in its themes while using an old classic as a jumping off point. 

 I wrote the first draft of this novel after the end of a romance, sadness, and a year of burying myself in the syntaxes and attitudes of Regency and Victorian England, by way of Austen, the Brontës, Fanny Burney. Oliphant, Eliot and more.  

Writing allows me to shift my perspective. So does walking in the woods, talking to a friend, being alone in silences for a long time, reading a good book. 

Teaching, healing, listening. They are all part of it.