My mother was born and raised in a big blue farmhouse in Alberta, Canada. She lived in a hamlet where everyone and their dog knew each other, where the air was fresh and untainted, and where the ratio of farmland to oilfield plant favoured the farmer and his crops. 

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This background of my family really rooted within me the desire for the simpler life I was never able to have. We lost our family farm when I was a little girl, and the only way I've been able to hold onto it since has been through books and films about agricultural life. So naturally, when I decided to write my first book, what else would come into my head but the story of a farm girl?

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Road to Avonlea was also a major contributing factor to the tone of the storylines in The Fields by My House. The "slice of life" style of this book series owes its inspiration to the TV show I'll never stop loving. Watching it is like being in my second home, which is a feeling I can only hope to give readers of the Mabel books.