Today's guest is the lovely Morton Gray. Morton was the first person I met when I joined the Romantic Novelists' Association. We chatted on the RNA facebook group and in a strange coincidence it turned out she was also a member of the Birmingham chapter, so when I attended my very first meeting I already had a wonderful and supportive friend. I'm so happy to welcome Morton to the blog to share her amazing and inspirational journey:
I am a firm believer that if you have a dream and are willing to face your fears you can achieve it. Acquaintances probably see me as a confident individual, who has changed direction at least twice in her life. Little do they know about the lurking insecurities.
Rewind
to 1990 and I was facing divorce and thus solo parenthood. I had worked hard at
my career and earned a good salary, thankfully had a wonderful childminder to
look after my son, but as you can imagine I felt pretty low and stressed with
the juggling of parenthood, house and career, especially when I was transferred
to an office thirty minutes’ drive away. I knew I couldn’t continue with the
pace of the life I was living at that point, I’d already begun to have chest
pains and had put on lots of weight with comfort eating. But when you have a
child to support and a mortgage to pay, change can feel like an impossibility.
It was hamster on the wheel time.
My
sister introduced me to a homeopath to help with my eczema and she became a
friend. She suggested we go to an evening class together which was half
aerobics and half the philosophy of a positive thinking teacher – Louise Hay
(who has sadly since died!). On the surface it sounds strange, but that evening
class set me up to make changes in my life.
I
decided to train as a teacher of the Louise Hay philosophy and found myself on
a course in Stroud in Gloucestershire with thirty-two other people from all
over the world. The course was all about letting go of negative beliefs and
repeating positive affirmations in their place. The book by Louise Hay that
really helped me is called The Power is Within You. I can’t remember a
week before where I laughed and cried so much. Other participants included a
couple of hypnotherapists and people who practiced Reiki therapy. After the
eight day course, I drove back up the motorway and resolved that I would train
in both of these therapies.
You
can tell the impact that the course had on me and my way of being – my one work
colleague asked if I had found a man when I returned to the office!!!!
Fast
forward a few years. I had dated during my time as a therapist, but ran a mile
if anyone seemed remotely serious, until I met my second husband (I met him
online and fell in love with him from his photograph, but that’s another
story). I never imagined I would have another child, but I gave birth aged 45
to my second son. Unfortunately, I wasn’t well for a while afterwards and
stopped working as a therapist, but that’s when I discovered writing and began
change two.
My
new dream was to be a published author. It wasn’t really a new dream, because I
wrote my first ever novel aged fourteen. I remember giving that manuscript to a
school-friend to read. The Sidanion has a tall ship, a pirate and a
feisty heroine. I still have the handwritten pages. Life got in the way of
writing for all of those years, but now I was serious about being a published
author.
I
honestly don’t think it is a bad thing to come to writing later in life, after
all you have so much more material to work with. Many of my life experiences
make their way into my writing.
Attending
a weekly creative writing class with a friend, I began to enter competitions. I
won a short story competition, came second in a flash fiction one, was a
finalist at the Festival of Romance with a first chapter of a novel and then
won Choc Lit Publishing’s Search for a Star competition in 2016 with the novel
that became The Girl on the Beach.
I’m
just about to publish my sixth book for Choc Lit. Summer at Lucerne Lodge
is out on 20 April 2021. Its never too late to change direction and follow
another dream! If you begin to doubt please listen to the Katy Perry song Daisies
– I’ve adopted it as my theme tune.
About
Morton S. Gray
Morton
loves learning new things and these often end up in her books. Crocheting
blankets, making her own perfumed soap and weaving have kept her sane during
lockdown. She has been tracing her family tree for many years and is fascinated
by the new avenues of research opened up by genealogical DNA testing. When she
writes fiction, she enjoys the process of solving a mystery that links her
characters. Her sixth novel for Choc Lit Publishing, Summer at Lucerne Lodge
is published on 20 April 2021. Her books are stand-alone titles that can be
read in any order, but are linked by her fictional seaside town of Borteen.
About Summer at Lucerne Lodge published by Choc Lit on 20 April 2021.
Could a beautiful old house and a handsome stranger hold the
key to a life-changing secret?
Rosie Phillips could be forgiven for not being immediately won
over by Tanner Bryant. After all, their first meeting involves him knocking a
tray of prawn cocktail over her very expensive dress at a charity event in the
grounds of Lucerne Lodge.
But little does Rosie know how pivotal that awkward first
meeting will be, or how the Lodge will become the unexpected backdrop for a
summer spent finding out who she really is, and who she could be ...
Links
Amazon
http://getbook.at/SummeratLucerneLodge
Choc
Lit link for other retailers https://www.choc-lit.com/dd-product/summer-at-lucerne-lodge/
To
keep in touch with Morton you can use the following links:
Website
and Blog - www.mortonsgray.com
Twitter
- @MortonSGray
Facebook
page – Morton S. Gray Author - https://www.facebook.com/mortonsgray/
Wow Morton, I’ve known you all these years and all this is new. Way to go girl. What an inspirational post!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment Georgia. I'm so in awe of all Morton has achieved!
DeleteHi Georgia - I guess we’ve never got around to this conversation! We must talk more present day and writing lol. Maybe when we can finally meet up again, I’ll tell you the full story 😀
DeleteThank you for hosting me, Elaina! Xx