Gail Hamilton
In case you are wondering, I’m a writer living in Prince Edward County, a rural corner of Ontario covered with red cedars, limestone shale, chipmunks, tenacious farmers, new wineries and summer visitors seeking farm cuisine and actual green pastures.
As for my books, the count is up to about 24 now if I include the ten Road to Avonlea adaptations I did for HarperCollins of the much-loved TV series. After writing a number of romances, mostly for Harlequin, and some heavy-duty non-fiction reference books, I took to historical fiction with a novel called The Tomorrow Country.
When my agent took me to lunch and suggested a heroine with a background as a Home child (charity orphan), she may have had a bodice-ripper in mind. I, however, got totally sucked into the epic 19th century child emigration movement in which Britain hit upon the idea of scooping up its unwanted pauper children and shipping them to the colonies. The Tomorrow Country, set in 1870’s London, deals with a cast of desperate children and the often equally desperate characters trying to rescue them. I got to put in all the adventure, pathos, humour, romance, danger, skullduggery and crazy eccentrics I wanted.
Since The Tomorrow Country ends at the Liverpool dock, I’m working on the sequel, following the roller-coaster fortunes of the children in Canada. I’ll keep you updated if you check in here once in a while. Local research is uncovering all manner of delicious scandal, such as the time Sir John A. MacDonald, revered founder of Canada, propped up a dead horse in the pulpit of the local Methodist church or the crate on wheels once used to scrape insensible drunken sailors off the village street.
The gurus say I need to blog for marketing purposes but it only takes fifteen minutes before I veer off the marketing trail into the much more intriguing woods. So I’m just going to blog for fun. Tree friends, vampires, shipwrecks, cat antics, wild turkeys, the county fair, lottery thoughts, Victorian petty crime and weird history are all part of the mix inside my head.
I hope you’ll visit when you need a little break and become a friend too.