About
I'm a realist in my writing, as well as my art. I don't have as much imagination as many other writers—a handicap (or strength) that comes partly from my training and experience as a mental health researcher/evaluator and program developer. I'm also a flâneuse—a female observer-wanderer. So, I watch, and observe. And listen. That's where the meat of my writing comes from.
But I’m also a sucker for happy endings. I find enough that depresses me about real life, but seek no catharsis by writing about it. I want escape, entertainment. I don’t strive to enlighten. Not consciously, anyway, but because my previous training has given me a bias, I’m interested in the inner lives of characters, including the passages they go through.
I’m inspired by Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell and their awesome feminist heroines. So, I tend not to rely on broad shoulders and heaving bosoms. Instead, I go into protagonists' thoughts and emotions, their conflicts and their joy, their struggles to reach balance and grow. My novels deal with insecurities and disappointments, love/hate relationships with parents, characters who seem to behave out-of-character, and even life events not typically included in romantic fiction.
I have a book blog here:
and musings on travel, art, and food here: Journey on a Limb
Description
<p>When Jessica Bryant pesters her wealthy parents to allow her to have a dog as a pet, the answer is a resounding "No"; but they soon come to regret their decision when thier home is broken into one evening whilst they are out and their daughter kidnapped and held for ransom. The kidnappers, in the form of four seedy and incompetent characters wearing Disneyland-type masks, take her hostage and keep her incarcerated in a place from which there appears to be no escape. However, they reckon without the resourcefulness of our heroine, and the courage of a wonderful stray dog who comes to her aid and whom she names 'Murdo'. And so begins an exciting and humurous accounting of the couples' adventures together as they consistently foil and outwit the abductors whilst on the run together.<br /> This is a lovely story of the friendship between a girl and a dog, bringing out themes of responsibility, camaraderie, redemption, salvation and self-sacrifice. It includes some wonderful dialogue sequences as Jessica teaches her new four-legged friend how to communicate with her, with additional delightful conversations between the animals when a rabbit and a sparrow join forces with them in an effort to outwit the kidnappers and restore Jessica safely back to her parents' home. </p>
Story Behind The Book
Exploring a character’s inner life is a rather scarce literary commodity nowadays. We love action and anything else that gets our adrenaline going. A character’s musings on what she’s witnessing or her brooding engagement with her feelings slows that action down. Maybe, it’s the downside (or upside, depending on your values) of our high-tech society of fast and vast information.
This book is essentially a love story, not only between lovers, but between mothers and daughters and how they are each shaped by the era they lived in, their unique backgrounds and experiences and how they carry those experiences into the next generation.
Reviews
<p>Journey has woven a beautiful narrative filled with complex relationships and interactions between women – aunts, mothers, and daughters. – <em><strong>GoodbooksToday.com </strong></em></p>
<p>Hello, Agnieszka ! is flawlessly written with a unique plot developed to give the reader an emotional experience. I absolutely loved reading it and could not put it down until the very end. It is one of those love stories so phenomenal that it touches your heart forever. <strong>- </strong>★★★★★<strong><em>Faridah Nassozi for Readers’ Favorite </em> </strong></p>
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