Author Interview: Maggie Christensen

Today it's my pleasure to welcome author Maggie Christensen back to the blog to talk about her latest book A Mother's Story which was published last week. 

Hi Maggie and welcome back to the blog, can you give us a little intro about yourself?
I’ve always been an avid reader and, as an only child, loved making up stories and playing with my imaginary friends. But it wasn’t till I was close to retirement that I started writing fiction.

I grew up in Scotland and became a primary teacher, but always wanted to travel. When I was twenty-five I came to Australia to teach for two years, lured by the call to “Come and teach in the sun” and a picture of a bare-chested man wearing swim shorts and a gown and mortar board. I loved Australia so much I decided to stay.

Now retired, I live with my husband of over thirty-five years on Queensland’s beautiful Sunshine Coast and, when not writing, spend my time reading, walking on the beach or having coffee in one of our favourite cafes by the river.

If you had to give an elevator pitch for your latest book A Mother's Story, what would it be?
In Scotland in 1941, Rhona Begg defies her parents to join the ATS. At the same time in Australia, Nell worries for her husband fighting in the Far East. Years later the two women’s lives collide in an unexpected manner. A sweeping family saga filled with emotion taking the reader from wartime Scotland to present day Australia.

A lost child. A mother’s grief. A daughter’s journey.

In Scotland, in1941, as WW2 increases in ferocity, Rhona Begg goes against her parents’ wishes and enlists in the ATS—a decision that brings with it heart-breaking consequences. After the war, weighed down with regret and grief, Rhona receives news that has the power to change her life.

Across the ocean in Australia, Nell Duncan worries about her husband who is fighting in the Far East. When she receives the dreaded news that he is missing in action, her world collapses. The end of the war brings changes to Nell’s life, but her dream of bearing a child is no longer possible and she grieves for what might have been.

In 1971, when Joy Baker gives birth to her daughter, she begins the journey to discover her ancestry. What she finds shocks her to the core and propels her on a journey to the land of her birth.

Three women. Three mothers. Three astonishing stories.

Author Interview: Maggie Christensen

Today it's my pleasure to welcome author Maggie Christensen back to the blog.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how your writing journey started? 
After teaching primary school in Scotland for a few years, I got the travel bug and came to Australia lured by images of a bare-chested man in swimmers and a gown and mortar board with the slogan ‘Come Teach in the Sun’. I initially came for two years but when the time was up, I wasn’t ready to return home, and here I am, almost 50 years later! I taught in schools, then achieved my goal to teach in teacher education. It was there I met the gentle giant who is my soulmate.

Throughout my career I was kept busy writing course materials, conference papers and reports. It wasn’t till I was close to retirement that I began to write the fiction I’d always secretly wanted to write. I enrolled in a creative writing course but didn’t finish it as I found the exercises to write short stories didn’t fulfil my writing needs. It was then I began to write my women’s fiction books – fourteen now. But one thing I learned from the course is to write something every day.

If you had to give an elevator pitch for your latest book The Life She Wants, what would it be?
Sparks fly when a straitlaced, inhibited career woman meets an impetuous aging hippie.

Fran Reilly has hidden a secret sorrow for the past thirty years. But turning fifty and losing her mother forces her to re-evaluate her future. Returning to her home in Granite Springs, she’s determined to make changes to her well-ordered life. However there are more changes in store than she could ever have imagined.

When Owen Larsen applies for the position as Head of the new School of Music and Drama at the university in Granite Springs, his only concern is to leave the rat race of Sydney and find a more peaceful existence in the country.

Owen is the exact opposite of everything in Fran’s well-ordered world and reminds her of a past she has been at pains to forget. And Owen’s country idyll isn’t proving to be as peaceful as he imagined.

Can these two opposites find common ground and is there a future for them in Granite Springs?

Your books all feature characters being offered second chances, what inspired you to write stories of this nature? 
My characters are all over forty – some fifty or even sixty. I write about mature women because that’s what I enjoy reading. My characters are men and women who have some life experiences – and baggage – and are usually in the throes of a second chance romance. I firmly believe there an audience for books like this – all those women who made Young Adult fiction popular in the sixties and mature women who don’t want to read -as one reviewer put it - about twenty-somethings who just want to get married and have babies. I like to write characters who my readers would like to have as friends.

The Write Stuff with... Maggie Christensen

Today it's my pleasure to welcome author Maggie Christensen to the blog to talk about her writing journey and why she's chosen to write about older women.

I grew up in Scotland and began teaching primary school there, before emigrating to Australia in my mid-twenties. I was lured by ads of a semi-naked man in gown and mortarboard and the slogan ‘Come teach in the Sun’. I’m still looking for that guy! 

My writing journey all began over 30 years ago when I was working in Higher Education and took a forced transfer to teach in a country town university in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. I didn’t want to go the country. I wanted to get back to the city – to the bright lights of Sydney. However, to Wagga Wagga I went and there, to my surprise I met this hunk of a gentle giant who’d moved there from USA to teach in the same faculty as me. At the ripe old age of 37, I’d almost – but not quite – given up hope of meeting my soulmate. Here he was.

Fast forward around ten years, when I was close to retirement and had started to write fiction and my mother-in-law, now widowed and in her eighties, decided to move from California to Florence on the Oregon Coast. This meant we went to visit on a regular basis, and was my first introduction to that beautiful part of the world which reminded me of my native Scotland and which was to prove the perfect setting for the three books in my Oregon coast Series.