Toni-maree Rowe

Born in Brisbane, Australia in 1970, my parents were '10 pound poms' who immigrated for a better life - which they found - in New Zealand! My childhood was one of moving, moving, moving. Not a bad thing, I believe it gave me the ability to adapt to the many different situations that life forever throws at you.

At sixteen my English teacher kindly told me that I would never amount to much and that my writing was nothing to write about...given that writing and reading was all I loved to do this was a major blow to a young girls esteem. What followed was several years of finding my way, some travel and the slow realization that an education was probably a good thing.

In 1991 I enrolled at the University of Auckland in a Bachelor of Arts, where I studied Anthropology, Archaeology, History and much more. After graduating I decided that what I wanted to do most of all was archaeology. And so I found myself at the University of Exeter (UK) studying for my Masters of Arts in Archaeology. My final piece of work was a landscape study of the north coast of West Penwith in Cornwall.

Once in Cornwall I was very loath to leave and even though jobs were few and far between I stayed. Cornwall had become the land of my soul and it was quite soon when it became the land of my heart - here I met and married Adrian, several years later my son Michael was born.

During my time in Cornwall I was a teacher of archaeology in adult education, cajoling and bullying grown ups into passing their GCSE or A level in archaeology. I struck up a friendship with Jacqui Wood the director of Saveock Water Archaeology and spent some time teaching and working on her training dig site near Truro. I also had my first attempt at writing, publishing a slim volume called "Cornwall in Prehistory".

In 2005 another life change occurred - my Cornish born and bred husband decided he'd like to live somewhere else? New Zealand was the obvious choice. Here archaeology took a back seat as I focused my attention on raising my son and later a daughter (Hannah). BUT with a brain that doesn't go to sleep I thought I would like to attempt a novel and so 'A Viking Moon' was born.

It took several years from concept to completion as things like kids and life kept interfering but perseverance won out. Book two shouldn't take quite so long...