Tell us a bit about your family.
My
family are direct descendents from a group of settlers brought over to
Prince Edward Island, Canada, from the Isle of Skye in Scotland in
1803. The earl was not like so many others who were given land grants
here on the Island. He had the foresight to settle the families within a
mile or so of each other so that they would always have help in time of
need. The group was still mostly intact for almost two hundred years
and the descendents now are numerous. We are known as the Selkirk
Settlers or the Belfast Settlers. The origin of the word Belfast was
from the French who lived in our area prior to our arrival. It was
formerly known as Belle Face. We were mostly farmers who believed in
education even for the women and some of the children of the first
settlers became school teachers, preachers, and doctors. My first novel
in the Selkirk Stories series, Mattie's Story,
talks about this first settlement as a story told to Mattie by her
grandfather. They were firmly rooted in Presbyterianism and their lives
were lived in obedience to their faith.
My
immediate family consists of my husband, me, a sister and a brother and
a whole raft of cousins, first, second, and the once removed, and a few
ageing aunts and uncles. I have two cats, Molly and Lucy, named after
the first novel I ever wrote, Shades of Molly.
What motivates you to write?
My
characters talk to me and won't leave me alone until I tell their
story. It's really kind of fun and I'm never lonely. Someone will tell
me a story about the ancestors or their neighbours, and my mind takes
off. I think what if the person had done this instead of what they did,
and away I go. My characters come to me and tell me what they did and
what they were thinking in their fictional world. They talk to one
another and to me. Of course, the stories I write will only have one
germ of truth in them, the rest is all imagination.
What writing are you most proud of?
I
love all of my stories. I don't know if I can choose one to be more
proud of than another. I think if I were forced to choose it would have
to be the Selkirk Stories series, which includes Anna's Secret. However, there is also the Haunted PEI series that are a lot of fun too. In fact, Shades of Molly, the
first novel in that series, came about right after the creative writing
class I took as an undergrad. If my husband's computer had not been
switched on that first day I would not be a writer today. I was
computer illiterate and couldn't type very well.
What are you most proud of in your personal life?
I
think I would have to say that I am most proud of my mind. It is the
basis of everything I think say and do. It is very inquisitive and goes
lickety-split. I can't possibly talk as fast as my mind works and very
few people can follow where I go. When I was nursing I was doing
in-service education, and another nurse and I were meeting on the choice
of topics to present. However we got onto it I don't remember exactly,
but I got us from fire safety education and fire drills to outer space
by free association. Needless to say the other nurse could hardly
believe that we'd taken that whirlwind tour of the cosmos all because of
fire drills.
What books did you love growing up?
I loved the Anne of Green Gables stories and ultimately read every one several times. I liked J. M. Barrie's Little Minister, and Maggie Muggins.
There were others of this nature. I also liked the Cherry Ames series
(nurse) and the Nancy Drew series. My father encouraged reading and
education and he always read to me when I was tiny and read poetry to me
when I was older.
What do you hope your obituary will say about you?
That
I was joyful. I don't know what else to say. Of course, I am many
other things like warm and kind but those traits are kind of cliche to
say out loud. I'm gentle and mostly non-judgemental although if you
look at judgement as discernment that opens up a whole other
discussion. I am discerning. I've thought off and on that I should
write my obituary just for the exercise of it. It seems a little
extreme but it could be very revealing. The other side is that what I
would write now and what I would write in ten years time could very well
be something entirely different.
Anna
Gillis, the midwife and neighbour in Mattie's Story, has been found
killed. The close-knit community is deeply shaken by this eruption of
violence, and neighbours come together to help one another and to
discover the perpetrator. But the answer lies Anna's secret, long
guarded by Old Annie, the last of the original Selkirk Settlers, and the
protagonist of An Irregular Marriage. Join the community! Read Anna's
Secret and other novels by Margaret A. Westlie.
Buy Now @ Amazon & Smashwords
Genre – Fiction, mystery, historical
Rating – G
More details about the author
Website http://www.margaretwestlie.com
