Doreen Kerry

Born in North London in 1956, my literary journey started out through reading the Janet and John books. I then went on to read just about every story written by Enid Blyton, with her wonderful assortment of imagination and humour.

As a young teenager I found myself reading "The Diary of Anne Frank" which I found both touching and inspirational.

Although her story was so much different to mine, her style of writing has had a great influence on my own.

As I moved through secondary school in preparation for my English 'O' Level exams, Shakespeares "Macbeth", William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" and Graham Greene's " Brighton Rock" were standard reading in my day.

I am of the belief that, no matter what the context, learning English literature at school helped define my personal as well as professional identity.

In a Fairy tale, of all the elements that make it come to life, is it not the characters that are the most important?

My memoirs have been crafted from the loss of my husband in hospital several years ago - the biggest tragedy in my life - and there was nothing enchanting about his admission or the way he died quite unexpectedly.

Letting readers into my private space in relation to the incident itself and the journey I have travelled so far to find some sense of closure has been far from easy yet still continues to this day.

Being able to turn my writing skills into something that comes from the heart as opposed to that based on the works of others has been a most pleasurable outlet to help me through the grieving process and in combining real life events with fiction I hope the story I have created will resonate with others and inspire them to do the same.

I learned early on how competitive the book market is and knew that if I were to get noticed my story would need to stand out among the rest.

I aspired to become an author when the time was right and my loss gave me the 'kick up the backside' that I needed to get started.

I am not after fame and fortune just a chance to prove that it is never too late to follow your dreams.

My first book in the series, "Pathway to the Moon" is featured on the inside page of The Villager and Villager Express Vol.88 No. 14 April 5 2018 - New York state's best weekly newspaper serving Downtown Manhattan.

The second 'episode', "When Angels Fall" presents itself on the inside cover of the Downtown Express Vol.88 No.15 April 12 2018 - a community newsgroup paper serving Brooklyn, New York.

In the nine years that have gone by at the time of writing, it is with some pride that those two books have now been bought in by my local library.

Now onto episode eighteen in the series, the first seven 'episodes' are available to buy direct from the publishers - Mereo Books/Memoirs Publishing, whilst all are also for sale on Amazon and in some well known bookstores like Waterstones and Barnes & Noble and across the global network in both paperback and e-book form. Any reviews will be gratefully received.

In order to broaden my horizons and to show some diversity with my writing, I created a rather unique style Indian curry recipe book which has been published and is now held at a private bookstore in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. It is a memoir-style cookbook which I took to writing during the time of the Covid-19 pandemic to remind me of all the wonderful places I had eaten at before I found myself left in a state of anosmia after the virus hit me in the worst possible way. I considered 'Tartan Gravy' to be a catchy title. Likewise, before that I created three other cookbooks which I named Vanity Fayre for reasons that will become obvious once the first page of the first edition is turned.