I'll Take My Answer in Aloha!

Born in London, England, I’m a third-generation writer from my father’s side, and a German composer on my mother’s. Immersed in the rich culture of British Arts (theatre, dance, art galleries and museums) I composed my first song at age 5, was reading Shakespeare at age 7, writing, directing and performing in my own little plays - as well as winning a school songwriting competition at age 9, and having my first short play performed (by nearby school) at age 10...ergo, from the earliest age I enjoyed an eclectic and cosmopolitan as well as artsy(!) education, eventually earning a place at Kings College, London University (History).

I was profoundly influenced by my three grandmothers who were all deeply spiritual (one of whom was a gifted clairvoyant Spiritualist following on from a far-back line of clairvoyants in that side of my family and wrote a fictionalised autobiography), despite the hardcore Agnosticism of Socialist England in the latter part of the 20th century of my youth, and this formed a foundation which almost certainly saved me - and has served me well since - as due to my parents divorce during puberty, and meeting my soul-mate at age 13 but losing him to drugs, I suffered from migraines and depression during most of my adolescence, culminating in a life-threatening health situation just before my 21st birthday which had the effect of forcing me to choose: Life over living Death...but all of this also had the benefit of catapulting me into therapy much sooner than most, so introducing me to psychology and gaining a deeper understanding of the tapestry of human relationships, motivations, and actions, much sooner than most, also.

One of the best pieces of advice my father ever gave me was that all life-experiences are grist to a writers’ mill, and indeed, I have lived my life at full tilt/throttle emotionally (my father also says I have enormous and extraordinary energy!) ever since, seldom holding back from whatever was unfolding in front of me - even at the expense of ‘crash-landing’ several times and having to subsequently process the pain and trauma! Oh, well; Grist to the Mill, right? Truth-telling is sometimes tricky, but life is worth living fully...for what would life be worth living for, otherwise?!

So I have lived this full, truth-telling, tricky life in (my native) London, Europe, Los Angeles, Nashville, and now call Hawai’i home. I tried to live a normal life by working various normal jobs (very successfully), and making headway by working (hard) on perfectly good career paths most people would have been perfectly satisfied by, but broke my heart a few times on men who were unavailable for living a nice, normal life - coincidentally...
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Of course I kept writing - because a writer doesn’t choose to write, but is compelled to self-express - whether or not what they write achieves any measure of commercial success. Eventually, I threw Normal out the window and actively pursued a career as a Singer/Songwriter - first in London, and then in L.A. where I supported myself as a Reader and Casting Extra - with some success. But when Van Halen’s former manager offered to manage me and bring my burgeoning career to full flowering, the reality of what it would be like as a woman in the man’s world of contemporary popular music at that point in time, finally sank in; to be successful, I'd have to sell my Soul and sell Sex appeal to sell my songs. So I passed. By then I knew enough to know that I had to stay true to myself, no matter what; that had kept me strong, so that became non-negotiable from then on.

For the next 5 years I settled down to an affluent life in Bel Air, California, but that degree of superficiality proved not to be for me (unfortunately!); I married a man who was a founding father of the Krishna Consciousness movement in the U.S.A., as well as father to 7 children, to whom I was Stepmother (so I dove off the diving board from Superficiality straight into the deep end of Spirituality...and helped him run his Art conservation business, to boot!) When we divorced, I finished my first screenplay, with which I had some modicum of success. The late, great Anthony Minghella read it and very kindly encouraged me. So I wrote several more, worked diligently, got less recognition than I worked for (a familiar tale!), but garnered a few Producer credits along the way (please see IMDb). I experienced an extensive and disastrous Best Friend romantic relationship with a multiple hits Songwriter who utilized my various talents as ‘secret sauce’ to gain millions of $ and numerous awards and recognitions, while I gained pain, persecution, PTSD, and precisely no money or recognition...just a soupcon of notoriety! Never mind, moving on - more grist to the mill...

After 15 years of living in L.A., I relocated to Hawai’i because I experienced a burst of creativity here which hasn’t stopped; here, I experience a happy confluence of physical, emotional, and spiritual self. A still single woman, with cats, the island of Kaua’i almost completes me. As a still relatively unrecognised and unrewarded writer, peer recognition and an award-winning career will complete me.
:)