Maggie Dana

OK, I'll bite. What's Garden Leave? It's been so long since I lived in England, I'm clueless about turns of phrase. What do you do for a living ... or rather, what you do before your leave?

You're up late, or perhaps it's early! I'm a dedicated night owl and tend to do my pleasure reading after midnight! Sometimes it's almost dawn before I nod off. Luckily, I'm self-employed, so it doesn't matter what time I get up. That said, it's tough on my editor in London when he needs a fast answer, and old lazy bones here doesn't email him back until tea-time.

Ceinwenn:

Where are you? Canada? The UK? If Canada, you can order the novel from The Book Despository; they offer free shipping all over the world.

Maggie

I'm English. Born in Harrow, brought up in Uxbridge, attended school in Hillingdon, and emigrated to the US (to get married; long since divorced) when I was 21, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

I'd be honoured to have you read the book for your reading challenge. And I'll be keeping my fingers crossed (and toes) that you enjoy it. Lit-fic it is not; but hopefully an entertaining and reasonably intelligent summer read. Maybe, by reading my novel, you could kill two birds with one stone and say you've read a novel by an author from both the US and the UK. I'm a citizen of both!

Ceinwenn:

How sweet of you to visit my site; even sweeter to suggest I'm not old enough to have 5 grandchildren (the oldest is 16; the youngest is 8) ... and don't tell anyone (!!!) but I'll be 69 next week. That photo was taken last summer, in my back garden, by me! I managed to figure out how to use my camera's self-timer thingy, but wasn't expecting to actually like the end result. My publisher's using it for publicity and on the book's inside back cover, I think.

My novel will be published in the UK by Macmillan; so far, they haven't sold US rights, but my fingers are crossed (makes for challenging keyboarding), so you should be able to find it at your local book shop in early June.

Thanks again for getting in touch.

Maggie

Ah, I just clicked on 'View Conversation' ... thanks for the tip. I'm not as bone-headed with this site as I am with some others because I'm a member of Backspace (a writer's site) that uses the same 'engine' or whatever it's called.

A question about profiles. You can have one photo, right? Do some authors, instead of putting up a photo of themselves (or an avatar) put up a jpeg of their book's cover? I don't want to put mine up and have it be inappropriate. What's considered 'good form' here?

Hi Michelle:

Yes, that's me. Once I get my feet a bit wetter, I'll post something about the book. So far I'm enjoying the discussions and have contributed several comments about some of my favourite authors ... Joanna Trollope and Elizabeth Buchan.

This is a great site. I'm frantically making lists of all the books I want to buy when I come over in June. I'll be going home with a much heavier suitcase!

Again, thanks for helping me out yesterday.

All the best, Maggie