Jane Buchan

For as long as I can remember, I’ve made sense of the world by reading and writing about it. I’ve kept a journal since my early thirties, and before that, I wrote for university courses and English classes, not in response to specific tasks, but as a way to sort out what I thought about what I was reading and teaching. I can’t imagine a world without story and am moved by Ray Bradbury’s description of the Book People at the end of Fahrenheit 451, each reciting a book burned by the Firemen.

After years of teaching in the Humanities, I take great pleasure in staying home to work, where I can focus on the energy animating a story I feel called to write, this energy building until the words just spill out. I forget who said this originally, but some wise person insisted you know you’re a writer if you love revising. I adore revising! I like the initial gush of energy, but I am often fraught with anxiety because I don’t know the story. Once it is out of my viscera and imagination and on the page, I can get to discovering and shaping. This is the part of birthing a story that feeds me. I’m never satisfied, but at some point, I make myself release the narrative. If I didn’t make myself do this, I’d live in the same story for far too long, over-work it, and lose all sense of my original vision.

I am a mother of adult children who fairly frequently teach me something significant about their generation. I would be stuck in the cloistered world of the Baby Boomer generation were it not for their gentle schooling and I am very grateful for their patience with my ignorance. I am also married, happily, to a visual artist who makes paintings, labyrinths, stone circles, Hobbit Houses, rattles, drums, what he calls Sacred Place Making. Being married to an artist is wonderful for a writer. Each knows to leave the other alone when the creative urge is in full flow.

A Canadian living in the North East King/Queendom of Vermont for twenty-years, I, a city-bred visitor to these wooded mountains, have come to value hunting culture and self sufficiency as never before. I have written short stories inspired by the Vermont landscape and its people, but recently, I have felt a novel stirring, one that will help me to express my appreciation for these resourceful people and this beautiful, mysterious place.

If you'd like to learn more about me, I hope you will visit my website at: www.winterblooms.net

Thank you so much for reading me. I hope you enjoy my books.