'Charter to Redemption' didn't begin with that one book. It started a long time ago. When I was a little girl, my father would bring home a book after every working week. This was his way of showing me affection, through the enjoyment of stories. This unspoken sharing and appreciation of the written word was something I grew to equate with love and belonging. Here was where I felt grounded. This was part of my foundation. I grew up with stories of castles and churches, cathedrals and places of antiquity. When I was eight my parents took me back to my father's childhood country. For one long and flower-filled English summer I lived the stories I had read so much about. Those places became alive to me. When I was in primary school, it stood to reason that I wanted to be an archaeologist. But I was always in the school library borrowing ghost stories, to the extent that the librarian told my mother that my penchant for the spiritual needed to be nipped in the bud. For a time it worked. But when I was fourteen, I began to write my first novel. Sitting around after our customary Sunday roast, I told my father that I was going to be an author. He merely said, 'To be an author, you've either got to be really good, or really lucky.' Now I know that determination is part of the mix for success, and being 'very good' and 'very lucky' are only part therein. I suppose my dad's words were a challenge, as it were. I never stopped writing. With rejections enough to mark the rite of passage, I like to think that I live by the adage that determination always wins. Yet this 'Charter to Redemption', started over forty years ago has really just begun. I continue the journey to share my words.