About Deanne

I was born and raised out on the fringes of the rainy Pacific Northwest on fishing boats and cold beaches with only a dog and kittens for company, and so my love of reading and creating stories started very early. My dad would illustrate my early stories and I would listen to him ramble about European history and warfare, eagerly asking questions about Kings, Queens and our own family history. In my adult life I am wife to a brilliant and hilarious web designer and mother to two wonderfully weird children whom I am trying to pass on to my love of learning about the world. I'm an amateur genealogist, amateur photographer and amateur history major haha. I'm good at doing amateur stuff lol. During the last couple years I finally turned my life-long urge to write into a serious endeavor and finished my first novel called (for now) The Stone and the Stars, about a dying dystopian society, and one girl trying to escape it before it collapses. While I finish cleaning up the edges on my novel for the umpteenth time, and before I send it out into the world, I've lately begun a novel about utopia, this time on Earth. I'm finally living up to the nerdy book-worm title my family 'lovingly' pinned on me from the time I was small, and finally doing that one thing I feel like I was born to do. Cliche and silly? Yes!

Ross Poldark; a Novel of Cornwall: by Winston Graham

The year is 1783 and the wild winds sweep majestically over the Cornish cliffs of southern England. A mysterious dark man stares out to sea brooding, then whips his majestic horse into gear and gallops off into the sunset. I jest, but it’s true too. This is the sometimes a … Continue reading

A Thousand Miles To Freedom: My Escape From North Korea: by Eunsun Kim

Eunsun Kim had a relatively happy childhood. As naive to the problems experienced by her country and her family as only small children can be, Kim enjoyed the small holidays designed to further the cult of the leader of North Korea Kim Jong-il and fully believed that her country was … Continue reading

Ten Five things I hate about modern fiction.

I’ve never thought of myself as picky or overly difficult to please, although my nearest and dearest might laugh at this. I love to read. Like I LOVE to read, it’s like breathing. The problem here of course is running out of material. Like the apostle Paul (might have) said … Continue reading

Brideshead Revisited: by Evelyn Waugh

  Those aren’t my stars at the bottom of that picture, I have KITTENS. I’ve used this tiny image because it was the ONLY one I could find of the cover that I had. There have apparently been six hundred and ninety seven permutations of this book (exaggerations may be … Continue reading

A Story Lately Told: by Anjelica Huston

A Story Lately Told lightly chronicles the actress Anjelica Huston’s early childhood years in Ireland, Europe, and America. During the 1950s and 60s her famous director father John Huston, and her mother Ricki moved in the highest circles of film society rubbing shoulders with everyone from Hemingway to Marilyn Monroe. … Continue reading

Queen Isabella: Treachery, Adultery, and Murder in Medieval England: by Alison Weir

How can you not be interested in a Medieval Queen nicknamed ‘The She-Wolf of France’? Queen Isabella was a model citizen and dutiful wife – until she wasn’t. Queen Isabella amassed herself an army and deposed her husband, King Edward II, in the first successful invasion of English shores since … Continue reading

The Sisters Who Would Be Queen: by Leanda de Lisle

Few today remember teenage royal Jane Grey when talking about history: ‘the nine days queen’, who was deposed by Queen Mary and soon thereafter beheaded for presenting a Protestant threat to Mary’s Catholic throne. Many that do remember see her as a tragic victim of Queen Mary. Even fewer today … Continue reading