Patti Stories homepage: The Patti Stories and how they began.

About Heather

Heather has lived on a Canadian Gulf Island for most of her life, but when she was ten or so she lived on a farm in Southern Ontario and that experience is fictionalized in the Patti Stories. However, many of Patti's experiences are a blend of that setting and of raising her own family of three girls in a rural setting on Saltspring Island. These stories draw on the realities of both places and it is this that gives Heather's writing that extra ring of truth.

Heather has been a teacher, a CUSO volunteer in South America, and has sailed the Pacific in a wooden schooner. She has two BA s from the University of Victoria, in English and Psychology and in Creative Writing. She has also published poetry and magazine articles.

She is presently writing an adult novel set on the West Coast.

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

The Patti Stories and how they began.

Heather began writing the Patti Stories while taking a creative writing course at the University of Victoria. At first she wrote the true story of the fire in the field that she had experienced as a girl on a farm in Southern Ontario ('Life on the Farm'). Patti just seemed a good name for her main character, but of course as so often happens Patti quickly became her own person. The rest of the books were a natural progression spread over several years. 'Little Guy' was written in a borrowed room in Mexico while we were sailing to the South Seas, and 'Joan's Summer' began in Australia.

Now, as her husband I can recognize Heather in Patti, and I am happy to do so, that spunky child grew up to be a pretty terrific adult, but Patti lives in a family quite different from Heather's own childhood one. I can recognize Patti's family as related to the one Heather created for herself and has lived here on Saltspring Island, but only slightly - Patti has long since grown beyond Heather's personal experiences.

While the first two books were first published by Penguin, they are now republished, along with Joan's Summer by Promontory Press.

Like Patti, Heather has a million enthusiasms and projects on the go, plus she is already deep into a novel set on the West Coast, so I, Bill, her husband, have volunteered to manage her website and facebook account. Stay tuned!