About The Author

My Background ~ In 1962, my parents emigrated from England to New Zealand with my two elder sisters. I was born in 1964, my brother two years later. From the age of seven, I could read and write. In class each time the teacher asked us to write a story, I remember being gripped with a spirit of joy. In the powerless world of the child, I had something I was good at.

Growing up ~ I was a tomboy. I spent my days outdoors, barefoot – there was a sense of limitlessness then. That state is what I crave to return to in my books. We spent half the year exploring the forest and backyards. We played Bulrush, cowboys and Indians, raided the old orchard for peaches. We picnicked in the bush and rode our bikes. The other half of the year, we spent in the Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand. We camped and fished with Dad off the beach. We explored the mountain and raced down vertical hillsides on cardboard. We made tunnels and caves in the waist-high bracken.

After High School ~ At sixteen-years-old, I left school with University Entrance accredited. For the first three years after high school, I studied fashion design part time. I worked at several jobs. I worked in a café, as a bartender, a cleaner, a phone salesperson and a shop assistant. I studied photography, art and writing part-time. And in my spare time, I wrote short stories and children’s stories. I forced the short stories, but the children’s stories came naturally. That was when I began to feel the pleasure of storytelling I’d had when I was a little girl return. I began to develop characters along mythical story lines, The Survivors, and The Great Adventures of Splat the Wonder Dog, and The Colour Secret.

Freelance Journalism ~ In 1983 after attending a live band, I wrote about the show, and the article appeared in the Auckland University newspaper, Bifim. Later, I landed my first job as a freelance journalist for the Inner City News. During the rest of that decade, I wrote articles, interviews and even restaurant reviews for the inner city papers: the Inner City News, the City of Sails, the Harbour News, the Sunday News and Fifty Plus. I also wrote feature articles for More and Metro Magazine.

In the 1990s ~ I began developing ideas for picture books, writing and illustrating The Unsightly Wet Nightie, The Best Day Ever, Free Wally, My Good and Honest Friends, and The Impossible Race.

In 2005 ~I began writing my series for 9-13-year-old readers, The Chronicles of Aden Weaver. I finished the trilogy and self published under my imprint, Shining River Press, in October, 2020. Grab your copy today: The Or’in of Tane, The Sasori Empire, The Last Tree. It’s great to see the story come to a satisfying conclusion. Bittersweet and also exciting!

 

Keep Creating!

Yvette Carol

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Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. ~ Lao Tzu