https://www.bookswelove.com/shop/p/gold-fever
https://www.amazon.ca/Gold-Fever-Joan-Donaldson-Yarmey-ebook/dp/B00PEOSJR8
I worked off and on at various jobs for many years while raising my children and when I began taking writing courses I still had teenage children at home. I wrote some historical and travel articles and had them published in Canadian magazines. My children had left home when I got my first contract for a non-fiction travel book, which morphed into seven travel books about the backroads of Alberta, British Columbia, and the Yukon and Alaska. Travelling, researching and writing each one of those took up my days, evenings, and nights for a year between 1990 and 2000. When I finished the last one, I decided to try fiction writing and spent days in my office on the computer.
However, I found fiction writing lonely, so I also decided it was time to get a job so I would be out and about with people. I took training to be a nursing attendant, also known as residential care aide, and began working in a long-term facility on the evening shift. I also started writing my first mystery novel. Then my husband and I moved to a small acreage Vancouver Island and I got a job in a group home looking after disabled adults.
I do not like getting up to an alarm clock so I took a position in the afternoons from 4-9 pm. This gave me time during the day to work in my yard, hike, dragon boat, pick and can or freeze fruit from my trees, and of course, write. I did this for twelve years and in that time, I also wrote and had published six novels. I finally retired which gave me more time to write, but I also travelled more, sat and enjoyed the sunsets more, and visited family more. I have also published eight more books since then.
I try to write something every day, even if it is just some ideas for a scene or about someone the main character of my WIP might meet. Usually, these ideas occur in the middle of the night, so I always keep paper and pen by my bed to write this down.
And I must be doing something right because, since I began my writing career I have had twenty-two print and e-books published and I have five more coming out in the next two years.
